Our youth or teenage days are the time when we become more aware of what’s trending, what’s hot, what’s not, etc. We might also start to compare ourselves with other people, like celebrities. All of this may affect how we feel about ourselves especially when our bodies grow and go through a lot of changes. Results in a study of Lavoie (2014) revealed that participants were predominately of normal weight, perceived themselves as thinner than they were, and desired a slight weight loss to attain the thin-ideal with 53.8% presenting body dissatisfaction. Body image ideals were comparable to those of Westernized nations; yet, they reported neutral levels of body esteem and societal and Western media pressures to achieve a certain body image ideal, and lower than anticipated disordered eating attitudes and behaviors. Societal and Western media influences were associated with disordered eating attitudes and behaviors, though only …show more content…
In addition, negative body image has serious consequences for health behaviours. For instance, negative body image predicts physical inactivity, unhealthy eating, and weight gain, and is associated with unsafe sex, smoking, and skin cancer risk behaviours (Alleva et. al, 2015).
In The Adonis Complex, (Pope et al.) interviewed many high school boys about appearance issues. Two boys in particular from a self-described working-class town indicated that they believed 50% of their male peers to be weight training to build bulk, and an equal percentage taking supplements or dieting to gain muscle (2000b). This seems to indicate that body satisfaction or rather dissatisfaction is clearly a problem for some adolescent boys currently, if they engage in harmful behaviors in order to achieve a "perfect" male body.
Although dieting among boys are less common when compared with girls, some studies have shown the prevalence of eating disorders among boys cannot be taken too lightly (Braun et al.,