Primary study
Ipsos
Most Americans Experience Feeling Dissatisfied with How Their Body Looks from Time to Time
Cited in 3 Likelier entries (0 risks, 3 decisions).
Used in 3 entries
For each citing entry, the verbatim excerpt and Likelier's calculation notes (how the source's number was converted to the lifetime-probability framing) are shown below. Click through to read the full claim ledger.
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- Statistic
7% of Americans say they would be willing to undergo cosmetic surgery to achieve their ideal body; 37% feel dissatisfied with their body whenever they look in the mirror
“"Americans are not as willing to undergo cosmetic surgery (7%), consume laxatives (4%), and/or purge/throw-up after eating (1%)."”
Calculation notes
Ipsos survey of 1,004 US adults (Jan 3–5, 2018). No published survey directly asks non-patients whether they regret not having cosmetic surgery, so no true inaction-regret figure exists. Rather than invent a downward adjustment, this entry uses the survey's own directly-reported 7% figure: the share of respondents who said they would be willing to undergo cosmetic surgery to achieve their ideal body (grouped by Ipsos among the least-chosen extreme measures, alongside laxative use and purging), used as a ceiling/context proxy. It bounds the population plausibly dissatisfied enough with their appearance to entertain surgery, and so plausibly able to feel inaction regret, versus the much broader 37% general mirror-dissatisfaction figure, which includes many people who would never consider surgery specifically. This is explicitly a willingness proxy, not a measured regret rate, and should be read as an order-of-magnitude ceiling, not a finding.
Source date: 2018-01-10 · Accessed: 2026-07-07
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- Statistic
8% of Americans always feel dissatisfied with their body regardless of location/situation; 37% feel dissatisfied specifically when looking in a mirror; 79% experience dissatisfaction at times (vs 21% never)
“"Most Americans experience feeling dissatisfied with how their body looks from time to time, including nearly two in five who feel this way whenever they look in the mirror." ... "For another 8% of those surveyed, it doesn't matter where they are - they always feel dissatisfied with how they look."”
Calculation notes
Ipsos survey of 1,004 US adults (RiverMend Health, Jan 3-5, 2018). The survey directly reports that 8% of respondents "always feel dissatisfied with how they look" regardless of setting -- the most chronic, cross-situational tier of dissatisfaction the survey measures, distinct from the 37% who are dissatisfied specifically when looking in a mirror and the 79% who are dissatisfied in at least one surveyed situation (vs 21% never). This entry uses that directly-reported "always, regardless of location" 8% figure as the inaction-side proxy, reasoning that persistent, situation- independent dissatisfaction is a closer analogue to durable inaction regret than the broader mirror-specific or at-least-sometimes figures -- though it remains a general body-dissatisfaction measure, not a rate specific to foregoing this procedure. No survey asks people who considered but did not get a BBL whether they regret that inaction; BBLs are a niche procedure, and the true share of the population whose lasting regret concerns specifically foregoing this surgery is unknown and could sit anywhere in the general body-dissatisfaction range (8%-37%) or outside it.
Source date: 2018-01-10 · Accessed: 2026-07-07
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- Statistic
37% of Americans feel dissatisfied with their body whenever they look in the mirror
“"Most Americans experience feeling dissatisfied with how their body looks from time to time, including nearly two in five who feel this way whenever they look in the mirror."”
Calculation notes
Ipsos nationally representative survey of 1,005 US adults. The 37% body dissatisfaction figure is a broad measure of appearance distress, not a breast-augmentation-specific regret measure. A small fraction of women with persistent chest-related body dissatisfaction who never pursue augmentation may carry lasting inaction regret, but this sub-fraction has not been measured. The 5% proxy is a downward adjustment from 37%, accounting for the fact that body dissatisfaction is far more common than regret specifically about not pursuing surgery.
Source date: 2018-01-10 · Accessed: 2026-05-10