Why Am I Always Concerned About How I Appear to People and How Much I Weigh? Filed under ( Adolescence News ) by edy-koerniawan

adolescence in girls ~ "Why Am I Always Concerned About How I Appear to People and How Much I Weigh?" Age 13 :  During adolescence, girls are challenged to come to terms with the physical changes of puberty, including considerable weight gain. As adolescent girls attempt to reconcile the reality of their bodies with the unrealistic and unattainable cultural demands for female thinness, large numbers of girls experience intense body image dissatisfaction. For a small group of girls, negative feelings about their bodies and their efforts to achieve or maintain thinness contribute to the development of disordered eating. This may include binge eating, restrictive dieting, or induced vomiting and over eating, leading to more serious disorders such as anorexia or bulimia.

Research efforts have neglected the fact that disordered eating typically begins during early adolescence. A complex set of cultural, social, familial, personal, and biological factors contribute to the development of disordered eating. The negative impact of experiences that threaten a girl's healthy psychological development, such as physical or sexual abuse, increase her risk of disordered eating.

Although factors that protect adolescent girls from disordered eating have not been adequately researched, environments that enhance girls' self-esteem in general and body esteem specifically and that protect girls from risk factors such as physical and sexual abuse appear to increase resiliency against unhealthy eating patterns. In addition, certain cultural contexts and expectations that promote acceptance of a broad range of appearances provide support for individuality and healthy development and play an instrumental role in protecting adolescent girls from the development of eating and weight-related concerns.

Research Agenda: Body Concerns and Disordered Eating

• What factors help adolescent girls resist cultural messages that lead them to be dissatisfied with their bodies and their appearance to others?
• How can prevention and health promotion programs be developed that build personal resilience, interpersonal competence, and general self-valuing for adolescent girls?
• How can adolescent girls be assisted in defining themselves in positive terms, apart from their physical appearance?