As we have been discussing this week, different areas of the world define "beauty" differently. This is very similar to our discussions about what is "normal" and "abnormal" in the previous weeks. This week, many of you have shared information about eating disorders, body types, exercise, diet, and general health factors. All of these elements are also involved in another concept your text discusses - subjective well-being. Subjective well-being has been researched for quite some time and studies have found that this relates to health - medical and mental - and can even hold some predictive value of life expectancy (Matsumoto & Juang, 2013).
As future mental health providers or in other helping fields many of you may delve into, why is this important?