0
Just a side bar. I don't mean to damper anyone's fantasies here. Besides, Cait' makes a good point about hair and age.
Schoolgirls turning anorexic
24 February, 2003
The Hindu
By Bindu Shajan Perappadan
New Delhi
The obsession of young girls with a "perfect body" might be turning into a nightmare for many mothers but a recent study by a group of doctors here have now confirmed their worst fears. More and more girls, they say, are literally starving themselves to acquire the "pencil thin'' look of a model or film-star.
Worse, these girls don't know how "thin is thin'' and as a consequence are increasingly slipping into extremes, a trend previously noticed only in the West. Media images of "thin being beautiful'' and excessive peer pressure have ensured that of the 562 school girls in the 12 to 19 age group interviewed for the study, 33 per cent chose the anorexic model as their ideal images.
``Even girls from well-to-do families believe that unhealthy is perfect and are increasingly choosing anorexic images as the preferred body image,'' says Pooja Sachdev who, along with Jacob Puliyel and V. Sreenivas, conducted the study in two prominent schools of the Capital.
Sharing details of the study, Dr. Pooja says: "Four figures, ranging from the anorexic to the rotund, were provided to children and they were asked to identify their preferred or ideal body image. We then looked for distortion in body image by asking them their perception of themselves as overweight, normal or underweight.'' Overall, 30.5 per cent girls said they were overweight, while 7.6 per cent in the normal or underweight group perceived themselves to be overweight. Also, distorted body images rose from 4.7 per cent in early adolescence to 9.6 per cent in middle and 13.6 per cent in late adolescence.
``The results indicate a worrying trend as several studies have shown that overweight concerns and body dissatisfaction can be a prelude to eating disorders,'' said Dr. Puliyel. "Weight concerns are understood to result from internalisation of an unrealistic beauty ideal. Failure to achieve this leads to weight dissatisfaction which in turn motivates one to lose weight and in its pathological extreme manifests as eating disorders.''
Reply to Topic
