Adolescent girls see themselves as heavier than they are, study finds

P. Michael Peterson, UD associate professor of health and exercise sciences

4:05 p.m., Sept. 26, 2003--Unhealthy perceptions of body image can lead to unhealthy behaviors among teenagers, particularly among adolescent girls, according to a report by a University of Delaware researcher published in the July-August issue of the American Journal of Health Behavior.

P. Michael Peterson, UD associate professor of health and exercise sciences, conducted the research among 215 high school students. He said he found that high school girls tend to see themselves as 11 pounds over their ideal body weight while boys perceive their current and ideal body images as almost the same.

“The adolescent infatuation with the cultural icon of thinness has contributed to an array of unhealthy behaviors,” Peterson said, adding that such behaviors include poor eating patterns, preoccupation with food and self, extreme dieting, low self-esteem, drug and alcohol abuse and general physical and mental ill health.

Peterson said that understanding how adolescents perceive their bodies can have practical consequences by enabling health professionals to address questions of body dissatisfaction and thus help young people avoid poor health behavior and reduce the risk of associated illnesses.

Peterson tested the high school students at two different times by showing them a range of silhouettes based on body mass index, a standard measure of body shape that relates height to weight.

For convenience, Peterson translated the body mass index figures into pounds, and then adjusted weights to standard heights of 5 feet, 5 inches for a girl and 6 feet for a boy.

He asked the students to pick the silhouette that most closely matched their perception of their current appearance, select their ideal body image and then list their actual current weight and height.

Peterson found that, on average, the girls in the study perceived themselves as heavier than they really were and that they wanted to be thinner.

The girls saw themselves as weighing 141 pounds (assuming a height of 5 feet, 5 inches), more than their self-reported actual average weight of 133 pounds and far more than their desired weight of 130 pounds.

While they were only three pounds over their ideal weight, they perceived themselves as a much heavier 11 pounds above their ideal weight, Peterson said.

Among the boys, Peterson said the study revealed that they perceived themselves as heavier than they were and also that they wanted to be heavier.

Peterson said the boys actually weighed an average of 172 pounds but perceived themselves, on average, as weighing 185 pounds. That figure was very close to their desired weight of 182 pounds, more than they weighed in reality but much closer to their ideal, he said.

“Males’ current and ideal body image perceptions were almost identical,” Peterson said. “In contrast, females tended to overestimate their body size, so they pursue an ideal much slimmer that their perceived current one and so feel dissatisfied.”

Peterson said the study used a set of test images that were much more sophisticated than those used in previous surveys, giving the students a more finely graded set of choices and giving the researchers a way to evaluate the responses more accurately.

The study was supported by a grant from the Jesse Ball du Pont Foundation and the American Cancer Society.

Article by Neil Thomas
Photo by Duane Perry

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