Fear of fat is a real problem among females

Abstract

The weight and shape of the body represent an “important” part of the human personality and the social image that reflects the person’s awareness of the negative aspects of being overweight whether on physical or psychological health, With the development of global means of communication, media and advertising, it has become easy for everyone to see international standards for weight and beauty, especially for females, which led to development of phenomenon of fear of fat because the phenomenon of obesity has a negative stereotype in the civilized person, which prompted the researcher to test hypothesis of the existence of this phenomenon among females in Iraqi society significantly more than males, this required translating a special scale (GFFS, Goldfarb et al.,1985) to measure the fear of fat and then applying it to university students. Indeed, the results were identical to this hypothesis, which established a set of recommendations and proposals based on these results.