We’re approaching the end of “bikini season” throughout most of the United States, a time when obsession with cellulose, BMI, and diets seems to run rampant. Societal pressures—like being swimsuit-ready for Instagram selfies or slimmed down for yearly school pictures—can lead to painful and potentially fatal eating disorders. Early identification of those with “low body image” could help prevent new cases of eating disorders, so let’s examine some factors that may influence low body image.
The National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) has suggested cultural pressures via mass media, age, and even racial bias are indicators of a person’s likelihood to develop low body image and eating disorders. But what about other parameters?
Of particular interest to us: How might private school students' self-perception differ from the norm? We wanted to know if these students would be more or less likely than other populations to cave to mass media pressure to be thin.
As it turns out, several research teams worldwide have tackled this question. The answer? It depends.
Dr. Maria Conti, a body image researcher, has published two papers concerning student body image in both private and public schools. The first study, “Body Image Dissatisfaction During Adolescence and its Relation to Sexual Maturation,” drew its sample from the students of a private school in Brazil. Dr. Conti and her fellow researchers found that post-pubescent females were more likely to exhibit body dissatisfaction than either the male students or their younger female peers.
In a follow-up study published in 2014 (“Body Image in Different Periods of Adolescence”), Dr. Conti drew from a larger population of students from rural public school districts in southeast Brazil. Her findings showed that there was an overall lower prevalence of body dissatisfaction in this sample of public school students than had been found in previous studies conducted by other groups—including the previous study sampling only private school students in more urban areas. However, Dr. Conti also noted that “adolescents seem to increase their personal expectations after menarche, being more dissatisfied with changes related to the accumulation of body fat” in females, a finding which echoes those suggested some 10 years earlier.
Dr. Renee Carey from the Western Australian Institute for Medical Research, along with her team, also explored low body image in local private schools from the perspective of “cliques” and friend groups’ influence on individual body perceptions in her 2013 paper “Adolescent Girls: A Hierarchical Linear Modeling Analysis.” Those students in cliques at all-girls schools apparently “exhibited similar levels of body image concern and dieting behaviors,” having been influenced by their peers, whereas counterpart cliques in mixed-sex schools did not exhibit the same trends.
Finally, Dr. Tamara Mousa from the University of Jordan studied how the “Westernization” of the country affected both private and public school students and their body satisfaction, considering the transition from traditional attire to more revealing “westernized” clothing. Her study, “Body Image Dissatisfaction Among Adolescent Schoolgirls in Jordan,” revealed that “21.2% of participants displayed body image dissatisfaction in which physical changes associated with puberty … were associated with this dissatisfaction”—a particularly interesting revelation that echoes Dr. Conti’s findings in Brazil.
What about the students with a higher socioeconomic status? Dr. Mousa found that “socioeconomic status is not associated with BID [body image dissatisfaction] in the present study,” though she admits that it’s “inconsistent with some studies” while “several studies nevertheless have supported our data stating that adolescent girls of high socioeconomic levels are not at risk to display BID.”
What can private schools take away from these international studies in body image?
- Females are more likely than males to exhibit body dissatisfaction, though males do desire more muscle rather than less fat according to Dr. Conti’s studies.
- Female students post-menarche are more likely than their younger peers to exhibit body dissatisfaction.
- Students in rural areas seem to be less likely to exhibit body dissatisfaction than students in more urban areas.
- Cliques of female students at same-sex private schools are more likely to experience peer-pressure body image dissatisfaction and dieting tendencies than similar friend groups at mixed-sex schools.
- Socioeconomic status seems to play less of a role in a student’s perceived body image than mass media and social pressures.
Body image problems impact pre- and post-pubescent students from all nations and all backgrounds, meaning that no single factor can be eliminated as the root cause of body dissatisfaction and eating disorders.
That said, many schools are taking steps to make their campus cultures places of refuge for those with low body image rather than self-critique. In a future PSN, we’ll look at some of the ways private-independent schools at home and abroad are successfully combatting low body image and the resulting eating disorders in their student populations.
Additional ISM resources:
ISM Monthly Update for Admission Officers Vol. 8 No. 1 Inside the Teenage Mind
Private School News Vol. 9 No. 1 New Statistics on Childhood Obesity
Private School News Vol. 9 No. 4 A Teenager's Search for Happiness
Additional ISM resources for Gold Consortium members:
I&P Vol. 29 No. 8 Food Services for Day Schools: Student Wellness
I&P Vol. 36 No. 3 Addressing Bullying and Sexual Misconduct
