Why do so many teenage girls hate their body?
The surge in body fatness levels during adolescence and the normal associated changes in the female shape might explain why girls are more likely to experience body image dissatisfaction. Under the influence of sex hormones girls develop fat stores on the hips and thigh. This fear of fatness motivates otherwise sane young women to try unsafe methods of maintaining weight like smoking, laxatives, diuretics, crash diets, and vomiting, all presenting a greater threat to their health than obesity. Who promotes this craziness? There is no shortage of culprits. Certainly advertising, movies, fashion magazines and TV, all forms of the media who flaunt the ultra slender female form as the ultimate in feminine beauty, are partly to blame. One study found that the level of underweight among models in magazines was sufficient to fulfill one of the major criteria for the diagnosis of anorexia! In Fiji for centuries the ideal body was robust, “going thin,” as they called it, was a cause of concern,
