Flikr Images
The universal truth of puberty and adolescence is body change, and relatively rapid body change. Teenagers have to cope with all kinds of comparisons, with their peers, with the childhood bodies they leave behind, and with the altered images used in advertising and in the self-advertising on social media.
It may be that the rapid way the body changes during these years can help adolescents believe in other kinds of change, including the false promises that various products can significantly modify their size and shape. A study published last month in the journal Pediatrics looked at two kinds of risky behavior that are increasingly common over adolescence: the use of laxatives for weight loss and the use of muscle-building products.
It used data from an ongoing study of more than 13,000 American children, the Growing Up Today Study (GUTS). The participants’ mothers took part in the Nurses’ Health Study II, and the children were recruited in 1996, when they were 9 to 14 years old, and surveyed about a variety of topics as they grew up.
By age 23 to 25, 10.5 percent of the women in this large sample reported using laxatives in the past year to lose weight; the practice increased over adolescence in the girls, but was virtually absent among the boys. Conversely, by young adulthood, about 12 percent of the men reported use of a muscle-building product in the past year, and again, this increased during adolescence.
– Perri Klass
Read more: Attention, Teenagers: Nobody Really Looks Like That
Good stuff. High school kids need to be supported strongly about body image, especially given the pressures from the plethora of contemporary communication mediums. I write a blog http://myschoollovesme.blogspot.com.au in which I try to support high school students through the many concerns they have in building their self image.
I love the current emphasis on student wellbeing that is growing across Australian schools. I was a school principal and have a focussed interest in what defines an effective school. My top priority school effectiveness criterion is the wellbeing of the students. Every student as they daily enter the school gates has the right to feel safe, respected and yes, even loved by the other students and the school staff.