The main purpose of this paper is to explore whether there are differences between men and women in bodily consciousness, bodily dissatisfaction and state of affect and if these differences contribute to gender differences in the reporting of symptoms. A questionnaire was sent out to a randomly selected sample of 1500 persons, between the ages of 25-55 years in Sweden. The results showed that women in this sample were more dissatisfied with their bodies, had higher body awareness and scored higher on the measure of negative affect than men. When considering body consciousness and body esteem in combination with negative affect, the difference between men and women in symptom reporting was reduced, although a considerable gender difference in symptom reporting remained unexplained.
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