I’ve been meaning to blog about the new study, reported in the Washington Post, about the clear gender differences that appear in adolescent disordered eating behavior. The study appears in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, and is entitled Family, Peer, and Media Predictors of Becoming Eating Disordered.
This was fascinating:
Frequent dieting and trying to look like persons in the media were independent predictors of binge eating in females of all ages. In males, negative comments about weight by fathers was predictive of starting to binge at least weekly.
The study makes clear that for younger teen girls, a mother’s negative attitude towards her own body can impact a daughter’s self-image and put her at risk for developing disordered eating; in older teen girls, the media had a much greater influence. For boys, however, critical comments by dads about their sons’ weight turns out to be the most highly reported cause of disordered eating behavior. Boys are less influenced by the media, in other words, while both sexes are impacted by the words and views of their same-sex parent. Indeed, while young teen girls are as influenced by their mothers as boys are by their fathers, by later adolescence males are much more likely to be negatively impacted by Dad’s criticism than their sisters will be by criticism or self-loathing from Mom.
Older girls were, according to the study, much more likely to be negatively impacted by critical comments about their bodies from male peers than by similar remarks from parents of either gender, or by female peers. From the study:
Among the females, teasing by mothers, fathers, and other females was unrelated to the risk of starting to binge or purge weekly, but teasing about weight by males was associated with an increase in the risk of starting to purge weekly.
Among males, a high level of concern with weight and negative comments about weight by fathers were both significant predictors of starting to binge eat at least weekly.
What to make of this? Clearly, one of the most common assumptions we make about adolescent girls is false: popular wisdom often suggests that girls are harder on other girls than are boys. The idea that disordered eating in girls is driven by competition with other women is a popular one, yet this study suggests that teasing by male peers is a more important predictive factor than any other, including same-sex peers, parents of either sex, or even the media. As a society, it seems we often over-estimate the degree to which teen girls exhibit cruelty towards each other, and we may woefully underestimate the damage done by boys and men.
In the case of teen boys, the power of fathers to impact their sons’s self-image is striking. Let’s hope this study is widely publicized among Dads across the nation, as fathers need to learn that their sons are just as sensitive as their daughters to ridicule, while teen boys need to be reminded that teasing girls about their bodies is never, ever okay.
The most important takeaway from this study is that men — both fathers and teen boys — have a greater impact on disordered eating behavior in teenagers of both sexes than was previously thought. In a culture that too often assumes that spite wears a woman’s face, this study appears as a sobering and important corrective.
It seems from your comments that it’s not the cruelty of girls that we overestimate, but rather the impact of it. I was a teenaged girl, and I remember the viciousness clearly even though it was a decade ago that I endured (and doled out) the mean remarks and teasing. I don’t remember very much teasing and cruelty directed towards me or other girls from boys, but I do remember that it was particularly noteworthy and painful when there was any. When you say, “As a society, it seems we often over-estimate the degree to which teen girls exhibit cruelty towards each other, and we may woefully underestimate the damage done by boys and men” you are sort of combining cause and effect in the same analysis.
I am interested in the idea that boys are less influenced by the media than girls are. Do you have any thoughts on why the media means more to one gender than the other?
We always hear so many stories about women whose mothers made cruel weight comments and started them on an endless battle with the scale, I’ll admit to being surprised to hear that fathers do the same to their sons. I think it’s important that it’s being said. It’s certainly an issue all parents should think about for their children.
B, that’s a good catch on the distinction between what is said and what is felt.
Girls consume media differently — they are much more voracious readers of magazines, greater consumers of television programs, and obviously more attuned to fashion. Boys, who are more likely to be attuned to sports and video games, see more of their male heroes clothed (at least partially!)
It also has to do with what the media shows (or doesn’t). Women are more often showing “being,” while men are shown “doing” things. I agree with Hugo that consumption patterns are different, too, but it’s old news that the message to look a certain way is much stronger for girls/women, while boys/men are expected to act a certain way (that is, NOT like girls/women).
I’m not sure that we can conclusively say that “…we often over-estimate the degree to which teen girls exhibit cruelty towards each other, and we may woefully underestimate the damage done by boys and men…” There is the issue of relative sensitivity of each of these studied populations as they to different sources of pressure, or to any pressure at all. As the teen girls get older, when media pressures and the attitudes of peers have more of an impact, they also are dealing with sexual maturation when they are likely to give more credit to the attitudes of their male peers than they otherwise would have. Whether the males, females, or whoever is more, or less, cruel, this study doesn’t really say.
On the question of relative incidences, it seems that the males are less affected, whatever the pressures they face. The article indicated that the incidence of eating disorders among girls was three times as high as among boys. I’ve wondered about the relative focus on males and eating disorders from some quarters, I remember that one of the (relatively few) resources that GenEq at Berkeley had on men and men’s health dealt with this issue. It made me wonder if there wasn’t an “every problem’s a nail when all you’ve got is a hammer” issue. Nothing was mentioned about, say, suicide, which kills at least four times as many adolescent and young adult males in the US as females.