FRIENDS AND siblings have a far greater influence on how teenagers perceive their body shape than celebrity magazines, according to new research to be published later this week. It also highlights the prevalence of undiagnosed eating disorders.
Sociologist Dr Majella McSharry said the popular press validated the “aesthetic-athletic” body, but it was peers who really determined how teens saw themselves.
She polled 242 students across five second-level schools around Dublin, then conducted in-depth interviews with 30 of them about body image.
“I went out like everybody else thinking that they are going to talk about the media and they did, ultimately that was where they got these ideal images from,” she said. “But where they were actually validated and played out was in the real bodies that they met in day-to-day life, the ones that sat beside them in school, the brothers and sisters they came home to, the parents who fed them. They had much more of an influence on them than just the celebrity bodies.”
Teens were aware of tricks like airbrushing and the kinds of body images used to sell products, said Dr McSharry, who did the research for a doctorate at NUI Maynooth. She now lectures in sociology at Dublin City University.
Her research will be published on Thursday in a book Schooled Bodies – negotiating adolescent validation through press, peers and parents.
Dr McSharry found students were familiar with the practice of vomiting as a means to control body size. “They weren’t saying it was uncommon. It seemed to be like a quick-fix solution, like a crash diet, the way they described it.
“If the narratives in this book are anything to go on, there are an awful lot of people out there with undiagnosed eating disorders.”
Schooled Bodieswill be launched on Thursday at DCU and is available from the publisher, Trentham Books (trenthambooks.co.uk).
