Adolescent Girls :: essays research papers

This study examined the perceived office of three types of sociocultural agents (peers, pargonnts, and media) in influencing dead frame dissatisfaction and dietary hindrance in adolescent girls. Participants were 577 grade 10 girls from six schools who completed questionnaires in consort and had height and weight measured. Two path analyses resulted in a resembling pattern. While current body size strongly predicted sublime body size and body dissatisfaction, perceived influence of multiple sociocultural agents regarding leanness also had a direct relationship with body saint and dissatisfaction. dietetical restraint was predicted directly from body dissatisfaction and sociocultural influences. Peers, parents, and media varied in their perceived influence. The findings support the idea that those girls who show the most body dissatisfaction and dietary restraint live in a subculture supporting a thin ideal and encouraging dieting.Body concerns and/or dieting behaviors are cut throughed by mast adolescent girls (Paxton et at, 1991 Wadden, Forster, Stunkard, & Linowitz, 1989 Wertheim, Paxton, Maude, Gibbons, Szmulker, & Hillier, 1992). Although body concerns may lead to healthy alimentation choices and example in some girls, many others diet despite already organism a healthy weight or overcompensate using wheezing methods such as fasting or vomiting (Paxton et al., 1991 Wadden et al., 1989 Wertheim et al., 1992). These latter behaviors are of concern since longitudinal studies suggest that dieting in adolescence is a adventure factor for the development of eating disorder symptoms (Killen et al., 1994 Leon, Fulkerson, Perry, & Early-Zaid, 1995 Patton, Johnson-Sabine, Wood, Mann, & Wakeling, 1990).Most theories of dieting, body image, and eating disorders assign a major role to sociocultural factors (Levine & Smolak, 1992 Stice, 1994), such as the media. There has been a trend in the media, over several decades, for little ideal female body size d espite increases in the unfeigned body size of young women (ODea, 1995). These findings have led to the idea that body dissatisfaction results from the discrepancy between a females actual body size and an ideal size strongly influenced by images in the media.Indeed, larger girls (those farthest from media ideals) report more dieting and body dissatisfaction, and many normal-weight girls also diet and report dissatisfaction (Huon, 1994 Patton et al., 1990 Paxton et al., 1991 Wadden et al.