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. 2017 Nov 25;16(1):204.
doi: 10.1186/s12939-017-0678-8.

Lookism hurts: appearance discrimination and self-rated health in South Korea

Hyemin Lee  1 , Inseo Son  2 , Jaehong Yoon  1 , Seung-Sup Kim  3   4
Affiliations

Lookism hurts: appearance discrimination and self-rated health in South Korea

Hyemin Lee et al. Int J Equity Health. .

Abstract

Background: Despite a growing body of evidence suggesting that discrimination harms health, the association between appearance discrimination and health has been understudied. Our study investigated the association between perceived appearance discrimination and self-rated health among emerging adults using a nationally representative cohort study in South Korea.

Methods: We analyzed the 2nd-10th (2005-2013) waves of cohort data from the Korean Education Employment Panel (KEEP). KEEP consists of two groups of individuals who were 15 (group I) and 18 (group II) years old at the 1st wave of the survey (2004) and were followed annually. Appearance discrimination was assessed at baseline (19 years old: 5th wave for group I, 2nd wave for group II) and at follow-up (24 years old: 10th wave for group I, 7th wave for group II). Responses of appearance discrimination at the two-time points were classified into four groups: 1) never (no discrimination at both baseline and follow-up); 2) repeated (discrimination at both baseline and follow-up); 3) incident (discrimination only at follow-up); and 4) in error (discrimination only at baseline). Multivariate logistic regression was applied to examine the association between reporting patterns of appearance discrimination and poor self-rated health, adjusting for potential confounders.

Results: Compared to those who did not experience appearance discrimination, 'repeated' (OR: 3.70; 95% CI: 2.19-6.27) and 'incident' (OR: 3.10; 95% CI: 1.99-4.83) groups had a higher odds ratio of poor self-rated health after adjusting for potential confounders including respondents' body mass index change and baseline self-rated health. However, no significant association was observed among those who reported appearance discrimination 'in error'.

Conclusions: These results suggest that perceived appearance discrimination is associated with the health of Korean emerging adults considering participants' reporting patterns of appearance discrimination.

Keywords: Appearance discrimination; Emerging adults; Lookism; Self-rated health; South Korea.

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Conflict of interest statement

Ethics approval and consent to participate

The Korean Education Employment Panel is a publicly released dataset, so we did not need informed consent to use this dataset. The Institutional Review Board of Korea University provided IRB exemption (KU-IRB-15-EX-29-A-1).

Consent for publication

N/A

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Sensitivity analysis of the association between appearance discrimination and poor self-rated health with changing the baseline waves of appearance discrimination as an independent variable
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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