Self-objectification, body image disturbance, and eating disorder symptoms in young Australian children

Highlights

• Self-objectification in young girls overlaps with self-objectification in older females.

• Significant proportion of children report body dissatisfaction.

• Girls and overweight children report greater body dissatisfaction.

• Minority of children report body shame and disordered eating behaviours.

• Self-objectification is significantly associated with body image and eating disturbances.

Abstract

Self-objectification has been examined extensively in adult populations. Despite theoretical evidence suggesting that children may also be vulnerable to experiencing self-objectification, whether children do self-objectify has not been determined. Accordingly, the present study examined the degree to which children self-objectify. The prevalence of body image and eating disturbances in this population, and the relationship between self-objectification and these disturbances, were also investigated. Results from over 250 boys and girls aged 6–11 years revealed that young girls report levels of self-objectification that are similar to those observed among older girls and women. Self-objectification was also found to be meaningfully related to body image and eating disturbances in children. A significant proportion of children reported body dissatisfaction and a minority engaged in disordered eating behaviours in the four weeks prior to the assessment. These results suggest that children may be at risk of experiencing the negative psychological outcomes associated with self-objectification.

Introduction

Objectification theory emphasises objectification as a social construction that encourages specific attitudes, cognitions, and behaviours that may lead to the development of eating disorders. A core tenet of this theory is that learned cultural practices of objectification routinely encountered in Western society socialise individuals to self-objectify. In doing so they internalise an outside observer's perspective of their physical selves and they learn to view their own bodies as objects that must be constantly monitored and scrutinised to ensure conformity to internalised cultural standards. This habitual body monitoring (or body surveillance) can result in a host of deleterious psychological experiences as individuals strive, and typically fail, to reach unrealistic and virtually unattainable cultural standards of beauty and thinness (Noll & Frederickson, 1998).

These negative psychological experiences, which include body shame and appearance anxiety, may put pressure on both healthy-weight and overweight individuals to become thin or maintain a thin physique, thereby motivating them to meet this internalised ideal (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997). Attempts to meet the internalised ideal and reduce body weight will typically involve dietary restraint and exercise. However, body weight is not as amenable to change as the mass media suggests (McKinley & Hyde, 1996), and a failure to achieve satisfactory weight loss or muscularity (or both) may result in males and females resorting to more extreme and maladaptive behaviours such as self-induced vomiting, excessive and compulsive exercise, laxative misuse, anabolic steroid use, food supplements, and cosmetic surgery (Cafri et al., 2005, Calogero et al., 2010, Leit et al., 2001, Ricciardelli and McCabe, 2003, Ricciardelli et al., 2003, Sarwer and Crerand, 2004). These behaviours and experiences may, in turn, serve as antecedents to psychological disorders such as eating disorders and depression.

Extensive research has been conducted examining objectification theory in undergraduates and other adult populations. Self-objectification and body surveillance, and their negative psychological consequences of body shame, appearance anxiety, and body dissatisfaction, have been found to be key predictors of eating disorder symptomatology (Calogero and Thompson, 2009, Choma et al., 2010, Fredrickson et al., 1998, Greenleaf and McGreer, 2006, Noll and Frederickson, 1998, Tiggemann and Lynch, 2001, Tiggemann and Williams, 2012). However, objectification theory as it applies to children (defined for the purposes of the present study as those in the period of middle childhood, between the ages of approximately 6–12 years) has received limited research attention. This is despite the fact that although eating disorders typically manifest during adolescence and young adulthood, the critical antecedent conditions, putative risk factors, and psychological processes that lead to the development of poor body image and eating disorder symptoms may be established or acquired in childhood (Dohnt and Tiggemann, 2006, Gardner et al., 2000, Kostanski and Gullone, 1998, Sands and Wardle, 2003, Schur et al., 2000).

Children are embedded in a sociocultural environment that places undue emphasis on physical appearance (Dohnt & Tiggemann, 2006). The images that children in Western societies are continually exposed to are idealised images that persistently promote, value, and glorify thinness, attractiveness, and sexiness (Heinberg, 1996, Levine and Smolak, 2002, Murnen and Seabrook, 2012, Striegel-Moore et al., 1986, Thompson and Tantleff, 1992). Children are also avid consumers of the media (Roberts, Foehr, & Rideout, 2005) and have substantial access to the Internet, mobile phones, television, and other media sources. Indeed, recent evidence suggests that children are spending large amounts of time engaging with media aimed at older age demographics (Department of Children Schools and Families, 2009, Harrison and Hefner, 2006, Social Issues Research Centre, 2008). Given the accessibility and proliferation of objectifying content, it is likely that children will be exposed to content that is intended for adults and thus may not be age appropriate. For example, evidence suggests that the objectification of females in the mainstream media and in popular culture has increased and become more explicit in recent years (Krassas et al., 2001, Reichert and Carpenter, 2004, Reichert et al., 1999). This is also true for media directed specifically at young children, with several reviews reporting on child exposure to objectification in the form of dolls, action figures, and children's clothing (American Psychological Association Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls, 2007, Goodin et al., 2011, Papadopoulos, 2010).

However, children may not be cognitively equipped to understand and process this content (Borzekowski and Robinson, 1999, Kunkel et al., 2004). Additionally, through social learning mechanisms, the mass media has the power to construct how children perceive themselves. As with adults, the mass media has an overwhelming influence on the lives of children and is becoming an increasingly important and powerful agent of socialisation, creating and reinforcing cultural values and providing pervasive modelling of gender roles and conduct (Brown et al., 2005, Bussey and Bandura, 1999). Media depictions of objectification may therefore result in children, particularly those from westernised societies where objectification is heavily promoted, seeing objectification as both normative and ideal (Smolak & Murnen, 2011), encouraging them to adopt objectified appearances and behaviours.

The lack of empirical data on self-objectification in children means that although there is theoretical support for the suggestion that children could come to self-objectify, researchers have yet to determine whether children do self-objectify. The paucity of research examining self-objectification in children also makes it difficult to determine whether the various findings relating to self-objectification in adults extend to children. For example, of the few studies that have examined gender differences, it has been typically reported that females report significantly higher levels of self-objectification than males (Aubrey, 2006, Calogero, 2009, Tiggemann and Kuring, 2004). Additionally, research from the adult literature has consistently found self-objectification to be uncorrelated with body mass (Calogero et al., 2005, Fredrickson et al., 1998, Myers and Crowther, 2007, Tiggemann and Lynch, 2001). An examination of whether these findings extend to children is required as this information would allow researchers to identify subpopulations of children that may be particularly at risk for experiencing self-objectification.

If levels of self-objectification in children are comparable to those found in adults, it can be suggested that children may also be vulnerable to the negative psychological consequences of self-objectification that have been found in adults, such as body image disturbance and eating disorder symptoms and pathology. Although the prevalence of diagnosable eating disorders is relatively low in children, body image disturbance and eating disorder symptoms have been observed in a significant minority of children, with body dissatisfaction reported by 32–55% of girls and 15–44% of boys (Berger et al., 2005, Clark and Tiggemann, 2008, Dohnt and Tiggemann, 2006, McVey et al., 2004, Olvera et al., 2005, Ricciardelli and McCabe, 2001, Ricciardelli et al., 2003). A significant proportion of both boys and girls (including healthy-weight and underweight children) have also reported the use of weight-loss strategies such as dieting and exercise (Combs et al., 2011, Davison et al., 2003, Field et al., 1999, Kostanski and Gullone, 1999, Madden et al., 2009, O’Dea and Caputi, 2001, Rolland et al., 1997, Tanofsky-Kraff et al., 2004).

However, whilst it is clear that children do experience body image disturbance and eating disorder symptomatology, the prevalence of these disturbances in children is difficult to ascertain as previous research has been hampered by the varying methods used to assess these conditions, and by the widely varying, and predominantly small, sample sizes used in these studies. There is also a lack of consensus with respect to gender differences in both body image disturbance and eating disorder symptomatology. For example, Ricciardelli et al. (2003) found no gender differences in body dissatisfaction, desire for a thinner body, the importance placed on weight, and the utilisation of strategies to lose weight. In the same study, however, boys were more likely than girls to desire a larger body size. Other studies have reported that boys are more likely than girls to desire a muscular and toned physique and place greater emphasis on exercise (e.g., push-ups, sit-ups, and running) as a strategy to lose weight and increase muscularity (Bayes and Madden, 2011, Bryant-Waugh and Lask, 2013, Jones et al., 2008, Weltzin et al., 2005). By contrast, in a study by Shapiro, Newcomb, and Loeb (1997), girls were significantly more likely than boys to report eating foods that will help them stay thin and were less likely than boys to eat foods that will make them fat. Although these girls also reported a greater fear of fatness, boys and girls did not differ on body esteem.

It is clear that more rigorous research needs to be conducted in a large sample of children to provide a more accurate account of body image disturbance and eating disorder symptoms in both boys and girls. Accordingly, the present study aimed to examine levels of self-objectification, body image disturbance, and eating disorder symptoms in Australian boys and girls. Two components of the multifaceted construct of body image were assessed: perceptual body image (an individual's ability to accurately perceive or estimate their body shape and size) and attitudinal body image (the affective, cognitive, and behavioural concerns with one's body size; Brown et al., 1990, Jung and Peterson, 2007, Muth and Cash, 1997). Secondary aims of this study were to (a) examine gender and weight category differences in self-objectification, body image disturbance, and eating disorder symptomatology and (b) examine the relationship between self-objectification, body image disturbance, and eating disorder symptomatology.

Given the exploratory nature of this study with respect to self-objectification, no specific hypotheses were made. With respect to body image disturbance, however, whilst findings on gender differences are mixed, based on the weight of previous evidence, it was hypothesised that girls would report greater body image disturbance than boys (Calogero and Thompson, 2010, Fredrickson et al., 1998, Striegel-Moore and Smolak, 2002). Based on previous research findings, it was also hypothesised that overweight/obese children would report greater body image disturbance and eating disorder symptoms than healthy-weight children (Tanofsky-Kraff et al., 2004, Vander Wal and Thelen, 2000). Finally, based on research from the adult literature (e.g., Calogero, 2009, Tiggemann and Williams, 2012), it was hypothesised that self-objectification would be significantly associated with body image disturbance and eating disorder symptomatology.