A study conducted by experts with the Children's National Medical Center in Washington, D.C., and the University of Miami has found that peer pressure exerts a strong influence on the body image of adolescent girls. Researchers Eleanor Mackey and Annette La Greca reached this conclusion based on their evaluation of 236 teen girls in Florida.
"Teen girls' concerns about their own weight, about how they appear to others and their perceptions that their peers want them to be thin, are significantly related to weight-control behavior," Mackey told Washington Post writer Sally Squires for her July 14, 2008 article.
According to the Post article, Mackey and La Greca found that girls who were part of low-achieving or more rebellious peer groups reported the highest degree of worry about their weight, and said they undertook more efforts than members of other peer groups did to control their weight.
The researchers also found that girls with higher body mass indices believed that their peers were more concerned with weight - and dieted more often - than slimmer teens did.
The study's authors, who reported their findings in the July 2008 issue of the Journal of Youth and Adolescence, wrote that their insights into peer pressure could be of use to teachers, doctors, and others who work with teen girls. "Health care providers and school personnel might ask adolescent girls about their peer crowd affiliations in order to help identify adolescents with the highest levels of risky behaviors," they wrote.
The National Mental Health Information Center has reported that teen girls are three times as likely as teen boys to have negative images of their own bodies. This claim is supported by a study that was published in the July/August 2003 issue of the American Journal of Health Behavior. According to a July 18, 2003 article on the WebMD website, this study determined that the average teenage girl believes herself to be 11 pounds over her ideal weight, while teen boys' body perception usually matches their actual current weight.
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