Parent, Peer, And Media Influences On Body Image And Strategies To Both Increase And Decrease Body Size Among Adolescent Boys Ant Girls - Statistical Data Included

Adolescence, Summer, 2001 by Marita P. McCabe, Lina A. Ricciardelli

In terms of sociocultural influences, adolescents with the highest BMI most strongly perceived that their mothers encouraged them to lose weight and increase muscle tone. Girls in particular perceived that their mothers were sending this message, as well as providing general feedback on their bodies. Boys and girls did not significantly differ in the perception that their mothers encouraged them to gain weight and increase muscle tone. These results demonstrate that adolescent girls, more so than boys, perceive that their mothers are encouraging them to adopt strategies that would move their bodies closer to the societal ideal. These results are consistent with past findings on the role of mothers in shaping the body image and weight loss strategies adopted by daughters (Moore, 1993; Mukai, 1996; Rodin, 1993). In contrast, fathers were not perceived by adolescent boys and girls to be providing different messages about their bodies. Thus, adolescents are not detecting gender relevant messages about their bodie s from their fathers. In fact, the only difference in perception of a particular message from fathers was for adolescents with the highest BMI, who indicated that their fathers were more likely to encourage them to lose weight and increase muscle tone, compared with the other two BMI groups.

Media influence was perceived to be greater for adolescent girls than for boys. The media have generated a very clear image of the societal ideal for females, and this is consistent among the various forms of media outlets (Cusumano & Thompson, 1997; Kalodner, 1997). In contrast, the ideal body type for males is not so clearly presented in the media; thus, males may not perceive strong pressure from the media to adopt body change strategies to conform to a prescribed ideal. However, this may change in the next few years.

As for the other sociocultural influences, both male and female peers were perceived to provide greater feedback to girls rather than to boys, specifically in regard to general feedback on the adolescent body and encouragement to lose weight and increase muscle tone. Interestingly, there were no differences in the feedback they provided to boys and girls on increasing weight and muscle tone. Thus, peers were perceived to pressure girls to move closer to the societal ideal, but the same pressure was not seen to be operating on boys to encourage them to increase muscle size or shape. Within this age group, clear peer messages regarding the ideal male body may not yet have been developed and transmitted.

Male peers were perceived to encourage respondents with low BMI to gain weight and increase muscle tone. This was not found for feed-back from female peers, with there being a high level of encouragement to lose weight and increase muscle tone for all respondents. The differential messages between male and female peers are clear if the adolescents have a low BMI: male peers are perceived to encourage them to increase bulk, whereas female peers encourage weight loss regardless of BMI.