CONCEPTUALIZATION OF A POSITIVE BODY IMAGE IN CONTEMPORARY FOREIGN STUDIES

Positive body image is a construct that has actively been formed in the last two decades. Its appearance in the psychological discourse was a kind of response to the spreading of the practice of studying the body image from the point of view of pathology in the context of clinical studies of the second half of the XX century. Currently, the world has accumulated some experience in studying a positive body image, which is especially relevant in the pandemic era. The paper analyzes contemporary foreign publications considering a positive body image published in English-language journals on developmental, clinical, and social psychology from 2001 to 2021. The research allows monitoring the transformation of the studied construct in the context of humanistic and positive psychology that considers the body image both through the concept of appearance and through such definition as body functionality. The emphasis on the functionality within the analysis of the embodiment problematics allowed shifting the focus of the psychologists’ attention from the strategies of object attitude to a body to the strategies of taking care of a body as a value. The authors highlight the key areas of studying a positive body image at the current stage of development of science: the characteristics of a structure and components of the phenomenon under the study; the search for the sociocultural, family, and individual-psychological factors influencing the formation of positive body image; the assessment of the efficiency of prevention and correction programs aimed at the promotion of healthy body image; the analysis of positive body image as a recourse of a personality in the pandemic epoch.