Body image refers to how individuals experience and perceive their bodies and can be affected by many factors, including peers and family members. Adolescence is a time when body image concerns are emphasized due to the bodily changes of puberty as well as increased internalization of cultural ideals and pressure to adhere to those ideals. Appearance-related teasing is one particular sociocultural factor that is gaining attention in the research field due to the emphasis placed on appearance during adolescence. The current study examined how appearance-related teasing by peers, parents, and siblings affected young adolescents' body image both directly and indirectly via social comparison. Further, because body image is a multidimensional construct and can include body dissatisfaction and drive for muscularity, the present study examined both of these constructs separately. I collected self-report questionnaires from 73 adolescent girls and 67 boys in middle school. I used Pearson correlations, linear regression, and mediation analyses to examine these hypotheses. First, I hypothesized that adolescents who were teased about their appearance by at least one of their parents would also have siblings who teased them. I found significant correlations between both fathers' and mothers' teasing and siblings' teasing, suggesting that parents are modeling teasing behaviors to their children. Second, I hypothesized that appearance-related teasing by fathers, mothers, peers, and siblings would each be associated with body dissatisfaction for girls and drive for muscularity for boys. My findings indicated that mothers', fathers', peers', and siblings' teasing predicted girls' body dissatisfaction and that mothers' and fathers' teasing predicted boys' drive for muscularity. Therefore, appearance-related teasing appears to be detrimental behavior that negatively influences adolescents' body image. Third, I hypothesized that appearance-related social comparison would mediate the relationship between appearance-related teasing from all sources and body dissatisfaction among girls and drive for muscularity among boys. Appearance-related social comparison fully mediated the relationship between fathers' teasing and girls' body dissatisfaction and the relationship between mothers' teasing and boys drive for muscularity. My findings suggest that boys and girls who were teased about their appearance were more likely to engage in social comparison, which negatively impacted their body image. Therapists need to be aware of the role family members' and peers' appearance-related teasing play in the development of adolescents' body image in order to address the occurrence and negative effects of teasing. In addition, researchers will need to conduct future studies further investigating appearance-related teasing by family members and peers and design intervention and prevention programs to address teasing and social comparison among the family and peer contexts.

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This thesis addresses the problems of registration, localisation and simultaneous localisation and mapping (SLAM), relying particularly on local visual features extracted from camera images. These fundamental problems in mobile robot navigation are tightly coupled. Localisation requires a representation of the environment (a map) and registration methods to estimate the pose of the robot relative to the map given the robot’s sensory readings. To create a map, sensor data must be accumulated into a consistent representation and therefore the pose of the robot needs to be estimated, which is again the problem of localisation. The major contributions of this thesis are new methods proposed to address the registration, localisation and SLAM problems, considering two different sensor configurations. The first part of the thesis concerns a sensor configuration consisting of an omni-directional camera and odometry, while the second part assumes a standard camera together with a 3D laser range scanner. The main difference is that the former configuration allows for a very inexpensive set-up and (considering the possibility to include visual odometry) the realisation of purely visual navigation approaches. By contrast, the second configuration was chosen to study the usefulness of colour or intensity information in connection with 3D point clouds (“coloured point clouds”), both for improved 3D resolution (“super resolution”) and approaches to the fundamental problems of navigation that exploit the complementary strengths of visual and range information. Considering the omni-directional camera/odometry setup, the first part introduces a new registration method based on a measure of image similarity. This registration method is then used to develop a localisation method, which is robust to the changes in dynamic environments, and a visual approach to metric SLAM, which does not require position estimation of local image features and thus provides a very efficient approach. The second part, which considers a standard camera together with a 3D laser range scanner, starts with the proposal and evaluation of non-iterative interpolation methods. These methods use colour information from the camera to obtain range information at the resolution of the camera image, or even with sub-pixel accuracy, from the low resolution range information provided by the range scanner. Based on the ability to determine depth values for local visual features, a new registration method is then introduced, which combines the depth of local image features and variance estimates obtained from the 3D laser range scanner to realise a vision-aided 6D registration method, which does not require an initial pose estimate. This is possible because of the discriminative power of the local image features used to determine point correspondences (data association). The vision-aided registration method is further developed into a 6D SLAM approach where the optimisation constraint is based on distances of paired local visual features. Finally, the methods introduced in the second part are combined with a novel adaptive normal distribution transform (NDT) representation of coloured 3D point clouds into a robotic difference detection system.

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether picture presentation influenced men’s experienced body shame or Muscle Dysmorphia symptomatology, and whether there was a relationship between body shame and Muscle Dysmorphia. Participants were 112 men attending Western Kentucky University. Participants completed the Body Shame Questionnaire and Muscle Dysmorphia Inventory. Participants were randomly assigned to either view eight photographs of average men or eight photographs of muscular men. After viewing the photographs, the participants completed the Objectified Body Consciousness Scale and the Muscle Appearance Satisfaction Scale. Although there was a trend, results indicate that men who view photographs of muscular men do not experience more body shame than those who view photographs of average men. In the sample, 63.5% reported that they were dissatisfied with their bodies, 69% with their chest size, 69% with their own body build, 65% with their arms, and 63% were dissatisfied with their own abdomen. Results indicate that viewing photographs of muscular men does not increase one’s symptomatology of MD. However, there was a positive correlation between body shame and muscle dysmorphia symptoms for both men who viewed photographs of muscular men and those who viewed photographs of average men.

The purpose of this study is fourfold: (1) to determine the relationship between sociometric status and specific physique types; (2) to determine the relationship between personal appearance and sociometric status; (3) to determine the relationship between sociometric status and physical defects; (4) to determine the relationship between sociometric status and chronic absenteeism.

This dissertation takes an employee-centred approach to explore the power that employers have to regulate the physical appearance of their employees in the Canadian workplace. Specifically, it analyzes the limitations and potential of existing human rights instruments for protecting the appearance interests of employees in Canada, with primary focus on British Columbia, Ontario, and Quebec. Appearance matters a great deal in the North American context. Scholars of sociology have established that as a social and identity marker, as well as a powerful means of expression, appearance should be considered as fundamental to an employee’s identity, sense of self, and personhood. In particular, these studies show that appearance choices (such as tattoos, piercings, grooming practices, and clothes) are important to an employee’s sense of self; they are therefore worthy of legal protections. Yet, under the current state of law in Canada, workplace appearance regulation is legal, with limits for the most part dependent on whether or not employees are unionized. This dissertation takes up the question of how to address employees’ appearance in the workplace as a human rights issue by offering two frameworks of analysis—the anti-discrimination approach and the fundamental rights at work approach. Physical appearance is not a protected ground of discrimination in Canada. As such, approaching the question of workplace appearance policies and practices through an anti-discrimination lens offers some considerable challenges for employees in a private employment relationship in most Canadian provinces. In Quebec, the Quebec Charter of human rights and freedoms protects a wide range of fundamental rights and freedoms applicable to private employment relationships, including the right to dignity, the right to privacy, and the right to freedom of expression. Quebec employees have successfully raised these rights in order to challenge workplace appearance regulation. Quebec employers are thus more limited regarding appearance policies than their counterparts in the rest of Canada, because of the fundamental rights at work framework, which offers a balanced approach to employers’ and employees’ competing interests. With a careful review of both frameworks, I argue that legislative changes could enable shifts in cultures of work, and I conclude with some modest proposals to achieve better protections for employees broadly, and more specifically with respect to the importance of appearance in the workplace. / Graduate / 2021-08-14

This dissertation explores the making of and research for the film, Fattitude, a social justice based documentary that looks to awaken viewers to the reality of weight bias in media representation. This dissertation reviews the filmmaking process and then engages with the nature of stereotypes about fat bodies. Deeply tied to feminist and fat studies theory, the work here seeks to categorize and shape the understanding of weight bias in the media by linking fat tropes to clearly understood images of oppression, for example the monstrous, the fool, they hypersexual and the asexual. The work also seeks to present theory on the nature of creating media representations of fatness that are not oppressive – making note of current media created by grassroots movements for body acceptance and fat positivity. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2017. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether men with a large amount of Muscle Dysmorphia symptoms had a more favorable outlook and opinion of body work. Participants in the current study were a convenience sample of men recruited from undergraduate classes at Western Kentucky University and the community of Bowling Green Kentucky and Somerset Kentucky. A total of 215 men completed the study. Participants completed the Muscle Dysmorphia Inventory (MDI) and the Attitude-Behavior Questionnaire (ABQ). Results indicate scores on the MDI were significant predictors of scores on the ABQ. This suggests that men with a high number of Muscle Dysmorphia symptoms have a more favorable outlook and opinion of body work.

Title from first page of PDF document. Includes bibliographical references (p. 22-25).

Thesis (M.A.)--Miami University, Dept. of Speech Pathology and Audiology, 2007. / Title from first page of PDF document. Includes bibliographical references (p.33-34).