Weight, weight-related aspects of body image, and depression in early adolescent girls

Adolescence, Fall, 1997 by Jill Rierdan, Elissa Koff

Body image - the individual, subjective sense of the body - is theorized to be a core component of personality (Freud, 1927). Assumed to be a matter of conscious as well as unconscious apprehension, body image is thought to reflect the combined impact of actual body structure and function, early and continuing body-related experience, lifelong social response to body appearance, and sociocultural values and ideals regarding the body (Fisher, 1990). Body image, thus, is a biopsychosocial construction, partially determined by, but not reducible to, the objective physical body.

Because body image has been viewed as fundamental in personality development, variations in body image have been thought to be related to individual differences in broad aspects of personality and self-experience. Peto (1972), for example, theorized that differences in body image were related to different levels of self-esteem, a normally distributed dimension of personality, and varying degrees of depression, a dimension of abnormal personality.

Peto (1972) focused on maturity of body image in his consideration of psychological vulnerability to depression. In contrast, most empirical investigations relating body image to self-esteem or depression have focused on the valuative aspect of body image, pertaining to body satisfaction. Studies of late adolescents and adults have reported a significant relationship between lesser body satisfaction and lower self-esteem or higher levels of depressive symptomatology (Abrams, Allen, & Gray, 1993; Denniston, Roth, & Gilroy, 1992; Goldberg & Folkins, 1974; Marsella, Shizura, Brennan, & Kameoka, 1981; McCauley, Mintz, & Glenn, 1988; Noles, Cash, & Winstead, 1985; Silberstein, Striegel-Moore, Timko, & Rodin, 1988; Teri, 1982; Tiggemann, 1994).

Further clarification of the relationship between body image and depression seems important for early adolescents, particularly for girls. It is in the early adolescent years that rates of depression increase significantly, with this increase greater for girls than for boys (e.g., Stroufe & Rutter, 1984). Further, not only does the body change dramatically with puberty for both girls and boys (e.g., Lerner, 1987), but for girls it changes away from the cultural ideal of thinness (Faust, 1983): A normal part of girls' pubertal development involves a significant increase in fat, and thus weight (Frisch, 1980; Young, Sipin, & Roe, 1980). Associated with this physical change is the oft-observed decrease in body satisfaction for early adolescent girls (e.g., Koff & Rierdan, 1991), with a prominent focus of this dissatisfaction being weight and parts of the body associated with greater fat deposits (Kirkley & Burge, 1989; Tobin-Richards, Boxer, & Petersen, 1983). This study seeks to clarify hypothesized relationships between weight, weight-related aspects of body image, and depression in early adolescent girls. While empirical findings have confirmed a relationship between global body dissatisfaction and depression among early adolescent girls (Allgood-Merton, Lewinsohn, & Hops, 1990; Alsaker, 1992; Faust, 1987; Hops, Lewinsohn, Andrews & Roberts, 1990; Richards, Casper, & Larson, 1990; Rierdan, Koff, & Stubbs, 1987), it is not yet clear if weight experience per se is related to depressive symptomatology among these girls.

Among the few pertinent studies, Kaplan, Busner, and Pollack (1988) related self-perceived classification of weight to depressive symptoms in a group of 11-18-year olds. They did not focus on early adolescents, whose bodies change most dramatically, nor did they measure and control for actual weight. Rosen, Gross, and Vera (1987) did control for objective weight in their study of high school students, and confirmed a relationship between a wish to change weight - presumably a measure of body image dissatisfaction-and depressive symptoms, with this relationship stronger for girls than for boys. However, they studied students who were past their pubertal fat spurt and they relied on weight, rather than a measure of body mass, i.e., an index of weight relative to height, which would be a more appropriate control for adolescents changing in height as well as weight. Thus, while weight and dissatisfaction with weight have been central in attempts to account for the increase in depressive symptoms among community samples of early adolescent girls, the issue has received scant empirical attention, without appropriate methodological controls.

It seems especially important, theoretically and methodologically, to assess the relative importance of weight as an objective aspect of the body and weight-related aspects of body image for early adolescent girls' depression. Objective physical weight is powerfully associated with social status and evaluation: the social desirability of particular body types, clearly related to weight, is learned early, and personality attributes and social attractiveness ratings are reliably ascribed to children and adults as a function of their weight (Cash & Pruzinsky, 1990). It may be that observed relationships between body image and depression can be explained in terms of the actual weight of the adolescent, with body image dissatisfaction simply mediating the weight-depression relationship. Since early adolescent girls base their self-concept in large part on their perception of the social response to the body (Simmons & Rosenberg, 1975), and since overweight individuals are relatively devalued at any age, the social response to the objective weight of heavier early adolescent girls may provide a basis for a stance of self-rejection and personal devaluation which is characteristic of depression.