Body Image: The survey results are in

Written By Eliza

In February, I put out a call to the Silver & Grace community to complete a survey on body image. The response was overwhelming.

Silver & Grace women told two friends, and they told two friends, and they told two friends … and answers to the survey questions poured in. It just goes to show how important the topic of body image is to all of us.

The responses to each question asked will be analyzed over a series of articles. I know everyone is very curious as to how other people responded, so here is the posting schedule:

March 17 – Do we love our bodies?
March 31 – Are we willing to go under the knife?
April 7 – Are we sexy?
April 14 – How do we view our body parts?
April 21 – Who do we compare ourselves to?
April 28 – Are we satisfied with our weight?
May 5 – Are we looking forward to aging?

Survey respondents

Although Silver & Grace is intended for the over forty crowd, 36% of the respondents were under the age of forty. It was gratifying to have the younger women participate. It will be interesting to see from the survey results if the younger women view themselves differently than the older women.

For the over forty participants, here is the age breakdown:

• 40 – 49 years old – 20%
• 50 – 59 years old – 30%
• 60 – 69 years old – 10%
• over 70 years old – 4%

And it wasn’t just women who participated. Men made up 2% of the respondents. Thank you, gentlemen. I will be adding your two cents into the analysis.

A teaser

I tried to go into this survey without preconceived notions of the outcome. But that is, of course, challenging given I have my own body image concepts.

Some of the answers I certainly expected. For example, there is hardly a single woman who likes her belly area. However, I have to admit some of the responses blew me away. The majority answers were absolutely not what I expected. And no, I’m not giving you an example; hence the word teaser.

Reader involvement

Silver & Grace is a place for us to share our thoughts on the spiritual and physical aspects of aging. Your responses to this survey helped to collect your thoughts into nicely packaged statistics to analyze. However, survey questions force us into yes/no and black/white answers. I, therefore, encourage everyone to add their opinions and concerns on each of these important topics in the comments section of each post.

I am really looking forward to some in depth conversations of how we view our bodies, be we under forty or over forty.

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Posted on March 10, 2010 

Filed Under Body | 1 Comment