More than half 12-year-old girls think they are too fat, with many admitting to skipping meals to try to slim down, a new study has found.
A major study of 31,000 British schoolchildren revealed that over 50 percent of girls aged 12 to 13 were unhappy with their bodies.
Older girls — aged 14 to 15 — fared even worse, with nearly 60 percent reporting they wanted to lose weight, and regularly skipped meals to achieve their goal.
Related: Why girls are having sex at 12
A quarter of the girls surveyed had skipped breakfast on the morning they were interviewed, and 20 percent had skipped lunch the previous day.
Of those who had skipped breakfast that day, 36 percent had also skipped lunch the previous day.
Even more alarmingly, the majority of girls who were desperate to lose weight were already at a healthy weight, or even underweight.
“An analysis of the characteristics of the year ten females shows that most of those wanting to lose weight are within the limits of ‘healthy’ weight, and some are already underweight,” the researchers reported.
Related: Are our girls growing up too fast?
The researchers blamed the media for the current body image obsession, citing airbrushing and glossy features on impossibly thin models and celebrities as the major cause of body insecurity in young people.
The study was conducted by the Schools Health Education Unit.
Your say: Do you think airbrushing is to blame for negative body image in children?
Video: The media gave me anorexia
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