Body Image and Religiosity among Veiled and Non-Veiled Turkish Women

Demmrich Sarah, Atmaca Sümeyya, Dinç Cüneyt

Abstract

The positive relationship between body image and religiosity, as found in Christian samples,is often explained in terms of a moderate dress style of highly religious women.Unfortunately, almost nothing is known about the relationship between body image,religiosity, and dress style among female Muslims who live in Muslim-majority countries.Therefore, we conducted an exploratory questionnaire study among 59 female Muslimsbetween 17 and 46 years (n = 29 veiled, n = 30 non-veiled) in Turkey, measuring social-appearance anxiety and religiosity (intrinsic, extrinsic, normative, popular religiosity). Theresults show that veiled women score much lower on social appearance anxiety than nonveiledwomen. All four forms of religiosity are highly negatively correlated with socialappearance anxiety for the whole sample and the veiled subsample. The results are discussedin the context of wearing the hijab and normative religiosity as important buffering factorsagainst a negative body image among Turkish-Muslim women.