Feminist beliefs, empowerment, and positive body image: Exploring associations and between-group differences as a function of feminist self-labelling

We examined associations between feminist beliefs, empowerment, and positive body image. An online sample of 302 British women completed measures of positive body image (body appreciation, body pride, functionality appreciation), feminist beliefs (synthesis, active commitment), and empowerment (power/powerlessness, self-esteem/self-efficacy). They also indicated whether they self-labelled as feminists. Feminist beliefs were weakly associated with facets of positive body image (rs = .15-.31). Hierarchical regression analyses indicated that, once empowerment had been accounted for, feminist beliefs significantly predicted body pride and functionality appreciation, respectively, but the unique contribution to the criterion was small (ΔR2 = .02). Between-groups comparisons indicated that women who self-labelled as feminists and who agreed with feminism only had significantly higher functionality appreciation than women who did not self-label as feminists (ηp2 = .04). Conversely, our findings suggest that self-esteem/self-efficacy was more strongly related to all three facets of positive body image and could be targeted through empowerment education.