Teenage girls are more than twice as likely to fall into a habit of dieting if their mother has a disjointed relationship with food, a UK survey has found.
A study of 2500 girls in the UK by teen magazine Sugar has found that 15 percent of teenage girls diet regularly due to comments from parents, media images of celebrities and the attitudes of friends.
If that isn’t worrying enough, the number doubles if a teenage girl has seen her mother constantly try new diets.
The study found that mothers’ attitudes to celebrity body types have an influence, with girls more likely to focus on their weight if they hear admiring comments about stars’ bodies. More than half of the girls also said their family comments on what they eat.
Editor Annabel Brog said girls are “assimilating” their mum’s anxieties. “Mums want the best for [their] daughters but we live in a world preoccupied with body size, and inevitably daughters are picking up on and assimilating anxieties their mums have,” she said.
The study also found that 93 percent of the girls surveyed, aged between 13 and 19, were worried about their weight with 75 percent admitting their friends also diet. Twenty-five percent said they have a friend with an eating disorder.
Your say: What do you think of this study? Do you think this is a worrying trend in young girls? How can we help create healthy attitudes towards health and body shapes?
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