Lesbian women demonstrate less body dissatisfaction in a large community sample of middle-aged women

Poor body image is an important risk factor for women, contributing to disordered eating, obesity, and depression. Body dissatisfaction is prevalent among women generally but may be less common among lesbian women. Although the empirical literature trends toward this conclusion when samples are well-matched and body mass index (BMI) is controlled for, many studies do not exhibit these characteristics. Data come from the Epidemiological Study of Health Risk in Women (ESTHER) Project, a study of heart disease risk factors among women ages 34 to 65. The final analytic sample included 478 lesbian and 400 heterosexual women. I used ANCOVA analyses to compare the groups on four established measures of body dissatisfaction, controlling for clinician-collected data on BMI and key demographic characteristics. Lesbian women reported significantly less body dissatisfaction than did heterosexual women on the Body Size Drawings (BSD; p = .006), the Body Dissatisfaction subscale of the EDI-2 (p > .001), and the MBSRQ Body Areas Satisfaction Scale (p = .001). The two groups did not differ on the MBSRQ Appearance Evaluation subscale, p = .121. On the BSD, lesbians reported a larger ideal figure size than did heterosexual women, p > .001. These findings support the hypothesis that lesbian women experience enhanced body image compared to heterosexual women, and report a larger body ideal, using more methodologically rigorous methods than past studies. This apparent “buffering” effect of lesbian identity on body dissatisfaction has important implications for public health efforts aimed at prevention for lesbian women and women more broadly.