Isn body image a teenage problem?
The roots of the problem can start much earlier than the teenage years. While many teens experience body image dissatisfaction, developmental psychology research demonstrates that children start forming ideas of body image as young as age three! Bearing this in mind, some parents have decided not to buy dolls or figurines that emulate unrealistic body types such as ultra-thin and wrongly proportioned females or muscular male action figures. By school age, girls fear looking fat more than losing their parents, getting cancer or a nuclear war (Cramer & Steinwert, 1998). Further, the fashion industry markets clothes and other products along with certain images and behaviours to ‘tweens:’ pre-teen aged consumers.
