It’s a surprise to no one that social and cultural pressures have a strong impact on body image among some adolescent girls. Peers, family and the media all send overt or subtle messages about the value of thinness, says Anna Bardone-Cone, professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill. “Yet this is a level of thinness that most females do not arrive at naturally, and thus many girls feel dissatisfied with their bodies,” she says. “We know less about these pressures, including from peers in school settings, among racial and ethnic minority adolescent girls, where the degree to which thinness is valued may differ,” she says.
School can be a particularly prominent source of body image pressure and comparisons. “With so many female peers in close proximity, adolescent girls have ample opportunities for comparisons,” Bardone-Cone says, both in school itself and in school sports settings where uniforms are especially tight or revealing or in sports where weight is a focus.
Sadly, this pressure doesn’t stop when the school bell rings. She believes there’s been an increase in pressure due, at least in part, to social media, which provides “the opportunity for nonstop comparisons, including with altered images of peers, through the use of filters or editing.”
[Read: Why Teen Girls Are at Such a High Risk for Depression.]
Mental Health Link
Can this type of pressure lead to mental health issues? It’s certainly possible. Kendra Becker, a fellow with the Eating Disorders Clinical and Research Program at Massachusetts General Hospital, says that 40 to 60 percent of high school girls in the U.S. are dieting and 13 percent are purging. “But body image dissatisfaction is a complex issue,” she says. “There is a lot of, ‘it depends.'” Eating disorders typically occur at times of transitions, such as puberty, graduation, marriage, trauma and abuse, so pinning eating disorders simply on body image is simplistic. “I tend to think it is an interaction between genes and environment,” Becker says.
Environment certainly plays a role. Becker mentions a study from the late 1990s that examined girls in Fiji, where television was still rare. The girls exposed to more television over a three-year period were more likely to be preoccupied with weight and body shape, more often thought “thinner is better” and exhibited more purging behaviors. Before watching TV, eating disorders were unheard of. But by the end of the study, over 11 percent of adolescent girls had purged to lose weight at least once.
Families also play a part. “There is some evidence that families are instrumental if there is concern over a child’s weight or the parents have lots of weight issues,” Becker says. But while families may contribute to it, she stresses that families are not the cause. “It is not the family’s fault if someone has an eating disorder,” she insists.
[Read: 5 Ways to Improve Your Body Image.]
A Guide for Parents
Beyond eating disorders, other mental health issues, including anxiety and depression, can develop from body image pressures. So can obsessive behaviors like extreme exercise and strict dieting. But it can be hard to separate dietary changes and exercise that are motivated by healthy reasons — getting in shape to play sports, for instance — from unhealthy reasons. “Some researchers suggest that it’s less the amount of exercise that would be a concern than how driven someone feels to exercise or how obsessive exercise becomes,” Bardone-Cone says.
So how do parents make the distinction between healthy and unhealthy? “In broad strokes, we often think of a psychological disorder involving extreme distress or impairment of psychosocial functioning,” she says. “If body image pressures are leading to elevated and persistent negative mood or are interfering with relationships and school, that would be an indication of a potentially more severe situation that could warrant intervention.”
Examples of red flag behaviors include a girl isolating herself from friends because she feels her body doesn’t measure up or because she is dieting so excessively that she doesn’t want to eat with others. Parents should also watch for sudden, extreme changes in food preferences, “odd changes that don’t fit to how they ate before,” Becker says. “Also, does she avoid eating, leave during meals, show signs of secret eating, start wearing baggy clothes or talk about weight constantly?” Any of these could signal a problem.
[See: How to Find the Best Mental Health Professional for You.]
Becker suggests parents learn as much as possible about body image pressures on girls. Once informed, you should have a conversation with your daughter. “Be honest with your concern,” she explains. “Use ‘I’ statements: I am worried about you, how can I help you. Don’t offer overly simplistic solutions, like ‘Just eat.’ If they could, they would.”
If relevant, parents can share their own struggles with body image, the pressures they felt and ways that they adapted, Bardone-Cone says. “They can talk about their memories of school-aged peers who lifted them up and those who brought them down by exerting appearance pressure, acknowledging that their daughters will encounter both kinds of peers and helping them identify and support the positive friendships.”
Be prepared for pushback from your kid, Becker says. And be ready to talk to the child’s pediatrician or a mental health professional. “The most important thing to communicate is that you care about them and want to help. [An eating disorder] is a very serious condition, associated with suicide, anxiety and depression. If you are worried about it, say something.”
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Do Body Image Pressures Lead to Mental Health Issues for Girls? originally appeared on usnews.com
