The Obsession with Body Image Among Adolescents

As each year passes, it is becoming more and more difficult to be an adolescent. Many problems are beginning to arise for teens. Such problems include trying to deal with societal pressures to handling the stresses in life. Without the proper guidance and information, it is easy for the adolescent to veer in the wrong direction. The negative outcomes may include low self-esteem to resorting to eating disorders. Body image is also very important among teens these days. The pressure of trying to attain the “ideal” image is detrimental to some. Body image is commonly defined as “the degree of satisfaction with one’s current physical self—size, shape, or physical appearance” (Jones, 2001, p.1). Many studies have shown that adolescents, especially females, place great emphasis on body image due to social comparison. The finding has been that females who often compare themselves to models and celebrities from the media are more likely to be dissatisfied with their own appearance (Jones, 2001, p.1). Social comparison refers to “the cognitive judgments that people make about their own attributes compared to others” (Jones, 2001, p.1). The media tends to display repeated images of thin females and muscular males to shape the viewer into thinking that that these are the forms of standard beauty. As a result, the viewer, most often time being adolescents, tend to have a negative self-perception of themselves. Another contributor of low self-esteem among adolescents are their own peers. Peers are a “vital part of the lives of adolescents and play an increasingly prominent role in defining social expectations, establishing identity, and evaluating self” (Jones, 2001, p.1). Studies have supported the fact that at a young age, children are pressured by their peers to conform to appearance expectation. Males and females tend to have different perceptions on which attributes are deemed “attractive”. Females feel that body weight is the determinant in being

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