Female adolescents are more likely to suffer from body image struggles than male adolescents. However, men have issues with their masculinity. (perfect sports bodies)
Fashion, sport, and health magazines in relation to body image were found to be important predictors of body image and eating disorder struggles.
Boys start taking steroids and other pills in order to get more muscular, which leads to irreparable damage to their bodies. However, girls vomit, use laxatives, and stop eating, which can also be a huge issue.
Around 4-12% of boys in high school use some sort of steroids. This is a similar number for anorexic and bulimic girls.
(BIED) Body image and eating disturbances. Which can lead to eating disorder trends.
What this article or journal is trying to look into is the correlation between teenagers reading fashion and sports magazines and their body image or disordered eating directly because of this, especially when it comes to boys and the idea that they need an insane amount of muscle.
The people who took part in this study are around 400 high school and college students, and they decided to do it on both boys and girls equally.
The idea that they are trying to look at is the fact that it is not just the fact that this is something this demographic is reading, but how much do they actually think about it and how important it is in their daily lives.
What they tried to measure was the amount of time that these people were taking reading these magazines and which type of them they were because there was fashion, sports, health and fitness, and I think this is important to realize because sometimes we treat health and wellness as a trend and not a lifestyle, and this is where a lot of issues surrounding this problem happen.
They also look at the different ways in which processing happens here because they look at social comparison, the way they critically think about their body image, and the idea of not noticing their own bodies or maybe not even wanting to live in them because of the rejection that comes with their bodies.
What they started to realize was the amount of problems that can be seen because of all the above factors, such as there being large body dissatisfaction, how important and how much time goes into being thin, anorexic behaviors, bulimic behaviors, and the amount of muscle boys want to have. (Boys take this to extremes because they take medicines such as steroids in order to be stronger, but I guess the same can be said for girls because a lot of them today have started taking Ozempic, which, if not used properly, can be just as harmful).
One of the main things they were able to realize is the fact that girls read more fashion and health and fitness magazines and felt more comparison in their own bodies to the people in the magazines and indicators of disordered eating, such as trends or habits such as anorexic and bulimic tendencies. Boys read more sports magazines, and they have more satisfaction with their own bodies .
The different types of magazines they read had a direct correlation to the issues the people showed; health and fitness affected girls in the way that they wanted to reach extreme thinness and had more anorexic behaviors such as trying to fast for large amounts of time and using appetite suppressants, as well as bulimic behaviors: binging, purging, and laxatives. (I find this very interesting because if they are reading these magazines I would assume that they are looking to be healthy or this is what it would promote but clearly it is achieving the exact opposite of what they are trying to do, why is this?), Boys only looked at it as wanting to build more muscle and wanting to look larger and started taking supplements and more protein to try and achieve this.
When it comes to fashion magazines, girls could be seen to have more of a correlation with bulimic habits, and boys are seen to have less body satisfaction and lower muscle.
Sports magazines lead to girls wanting to gain more muscle and be healthier, which is somewhat achieving the goal, and Boys had no effect in the research that was shown.
There are a lot of social comparisons, and this affects both boys and girls in very different ways; girls lead to having more anorexic and bulimic behaviors and really want to become thinner and have a very low body satisfaction with themselves. However, boys want to become more masculine and act as such, and want to become thinner as well and also have more anorexic and bulimic tendencies. (Something that I believe is very important to note is the fact that these types of eating disorders do not just happen to girls but also to boys, and at times when they are losing weight or have disordered eating, it is passed by or not given enough attention).
There are also some effects that come from the interactions that might be going on when it comes to girls. They compare themselves a lot, especially when it comes to fashion magazines, and this affects more girls than boys. (This is probably because women and men in magazines are shown in very different ways and with very different characteristics). Boys are more likely to compare themselves to sports magazines, which makes them feel less happy with their bodies; however, many boys don’t pay much attention to this and actually feel more secure about it.
There are three types of issues that can be seen in how these people process their bodies, and it starts off as some of them only thinking about how unrealistic the bodies they want are, and they have to keep their attention always on their bodies. When they process their information and are focused on the articles and the facts, they tend to have fewer issues having to do with anorexia and bulimia and have more satisfaction when it comes to their bodies; they are not just looking at the images, but they are also paying attention to the content. The ones with the best relationships with their bodies are the ones who do not notice their bodies at all, and they have less disordered eating and are less focused on their bodies as a whole.
While I was reading all of this article I was able to see the way that there are so many outside things that are affecting young peoples body image but one question I ask myself is, Why were this the bodies that started to be showed in the media?
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