The role of puberty, media and popularity with peers on strategies to increase weight, decrease weight and increase muscle tone among adolescent boys and girls

Abstract

Objective: The present study was concerned with the impact of pubertal development, relationships with peers and perceived pressure from the media on body dissatisfaction and body change behaviors among adolescent boys and girls. In particular, the study investigated the underresearched area of strategies to increase weight and muscle. The exploration of body change strategies among adolescent boys has been a neglected area of research. Methods: Respondents were 1185 adolescents (527 males, 598 females) who were enrolled in Grades 7 and 9. Participants completed measures of pubertal development, media and peer influence, body dissatisfaction and strategies to lose weight, increase weight and to increase muscle. Results: The findings demonstrated that girls were more likely than boys to adopt strategies to lose weight, whereas boys were more likely to adopt strategies to increase muscle tone (but not weight). For boys in both Years 7 and 9, the main predictors of body change strategies were puberty and, to a lesser extent, perceived popularity with peers. The major influences for Years 7 and 9 girls were puberty and the media, but these mainly focused on weight loss. For Year 9 girls, perceived popularity with opposite-sex peers also predicted body dissatisfaction and strategies to increase muscle tone. Conclusion: The implications of these findings for understanding factors related to a range of body change strategies for adolescent boys and girls are discussed.

Introduction

Adolescence is a transition time from childhood to adulthood which is marked by the onset of puberty. It is also a time where relationships with peers and more general sociocultural pressures assume greater importance in the shaping of attitudes and behaviors [1], [2]. The aim of this study is to determine the impact of sociocultural influences (perceived popularity with both same-sex and opposite-sex peers, messages from the media) and puberty on body dissatisfaction and body change strategies among adolescent boys and girls. The significance of this research is that it investigates how these sociocultural influences impact on adolescent boys, which is an area that has been neglected in the literature. Further, it examines how these factors impact on weight gain and strategies to increase muscle tone, whereas most previous studies have limited their focus to strategies to lose weight.

The role of peers in body dissatisfaction and the development of disordered eating among adolescent girls has been well documented [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8]. Although research has demonstrated that girls are more likely than boys to discuss weight loss and other related topics with their peers [9], [10], gender differences in other influences from peers, and the impact of these influences have largely not been explored. A study by Vincent and McCabe [11] found that weight-related behaviors of adolescent girls were predicted by encouragement, discussion and modelling of weight loss behaviors by peers, whereas weight loss in boys was primarily predicted by encouragement to lose weight from their peers. Cohn and Alder [12] found that females were more likely to indicate that a thinner figure than their own ideal figure was desirable for same-sex peers, whereas males were more likely to indicate that their same-sex peers would choose a larger body than their own ideal. The views of opposite-sex peers were not assessed. Since adolescence is a time where males and females are starting to form dating relationships [3], more research is necessary to determine the role of popularity with same-sex and opposite-sex peers on adolescent strategies to change body shape, particularly among adolescent boys.

The research outlined above is limited by the fact that it has primarily focused on the role of peers in influencing weight loss, rather than strategies to increase weight or muscle tone. Since the sociocultural ideal for males is a slim, muscular build, whereas for females it is a very slim body, it is likely that peers will encourage males to engage in quite different strategies from girls. This proposal has not been tested empirically, and so the importance of peer popularity in shaping strategies for adolescents to either increase weight or muscle tone will be a focus in the present study.

Most research on the influence of the media on body dissatisfaction and disordered eating has focused on adolescent girls [13], [14]. Although there is a clear sociocultural ideal for males to develop a slim, muscular build, males may be less influenced by these sociocultural pressures [15]. The sociocultural ideal for males is demonstrated in a study by Pope et al. [16], which found that male action toys, which were seen to reflect cultural ideals of the ideal male body, had become substantially more muscular over time. The authors suggested that these toys portray messages to boys, which are analogous to the messages provided to girls on being slim. Whether or not these messages resulted in body change strategies was not explored in this study, and so the nature of the media and the impact of these messages on the different types of weight change behaviors among males will be explored in the current study.

There have been inconsistent findings related to the role that puberty plays in the onset of eating problems in early adolescence [17], [18], [19]. With pubertal development, girls experience a normative increase in body fat and their hips broaden. These physical changes move girls further away from society's ideal body shape for a woman. Despite the contradictory findings cited earlier [17], [18], [19], pubertal maturation and the concomitant increase in body fat has been associated with greater body dissatisfaction [20], [21], [22], increased dieting [20], [23], [24] and disordered eating [25], [26], [27], [28] among adolescent girls. The onset of puberty moves the majority of boys closer to the societal ideal body shape for males. Boys add muscle, and their shoulder width increases. These are physical characteristics that fit the “ideal” cultural image for men's body shape and size. However, the impact of puberty in the etiology of eating problems in adolescent boys has yet to be fully explicated. Two studies were located which investigated this relationship. Keel et al. [29] found that pubertal status was not a significant predictor of disordered eating among boys, while another study found that puberty had no negative effect on body image and was associated with weight gain rather than weight loss behaviors in adolescents boys [30]. Puberty is generally perceived to play a more salient role in body dissatisfaction and eating problems for females than males [30], and may even serve to protect males from engaging in disordered eating [31]. The current study will further explore whether or not this is the case.

This literature review demonstrates that the role of the media, perceived popularity with peers and pubertal timing on body dissatisfaction and body change strategies needs further clarification, particularly for adolescent boys. In such an investigation, it is important to include a consideration of body change strategies to increase weight and muscle tone as well as to lose weight. The nature of the strategy employed (i.e. eating or exercise) will also be investigated. It is expected that the impact of sociocultural messages will be different for boys and girls, and that these would be associated with different body change strategies for each gender. It is further predicted that, since puberty takes girls away from the sociocultural ideal for girls, and moves boys closer to their sociocultural ideal, it will have a different influence on body dissatisfaction and the various body change strategies adopted by boys and girls.