Body image perception, socioeconomic characteristics, and lifestyle in women participating in ELSA-Brasil in Bahia, Brazil

Body image distortion is an alteration in the perception of the body that can have repercussions on health. This study aims to estimate the prevalence of body image accuracy and distortion among women participating in the Brazilian Longitudinal Study of Adult Health (ELSA-Brasil) living in Bahia State, Brazil, and to investigate associations with socioeconomic characteristics, lifestyle, and gynecological care seeking. A total of 609 women aged 50 to 69 years participated in the study, who answered face-to-face questionnaires from 2012 to 2014. The Stunkard silhouette scale was used to investigate accurate or distorted perception for more or less weight. The relative risk ratio (RR) was calculated by multinomial logistic regression using Stata 13. Most participants have an accurate perception of their own bodies (53.7%). Among those with distorted perception, there is a tendency to distort towards less weight (38.1%). In the multinomial regression analysis, the variables race/skin color and education remained associated with the distortion towards underweight. The race/skin color variable was positively associated with the distortion towards underweight among Mixed-race women (RR = 1.89; 95%CI: 1.13-3.16) and black (RR = 2.10; 95%CI: 1.25-3.55), while the education variable among those with up to high school education (RR = 1.65; 95%CI: 1.18-2.33). There were no associations with the other variables or with distortion for more weight. The results contribute to explaining the relationships between body image perception and socioeconomic factors, revealing that women of different races/skin colors and varying educational levels are influenced in different ways by social discourses, impacting the perception of their body image.