To come to a definite conclusion I ensured that I carried out primary research as well as secondary research.
I chose to conduct a number of questionnaires, and arrange talk sessions. It took me a lot of time planning and re-constructing questions to finally come to the perfect questionnaire.
For personal and privacy reasons no names are stated and I cannot publish any of the girls answers yet I have produced conclusions. PEER PRESSURE FACTOR
The results that I collected from my peer pressure questionnaire where very revealing. It is clear from all of my answers that teenage girls definitely do feel under pressure to look a certain way due to other people being very judgemental about the weight topic in general. When I spoke to a number of the girls who took part in answering my questionnaires they mentioned that the topic is commented and talked about on a daily basis, making them aware of their weight and what they should weigh. Interestingly one of my answers stated that the media also made it a very public topic, causing them to become increasingly aware of what they should weigh and the ideal body image they might want to achieve as this is what seems to be accepted in today’s society. Thankfully I received all “no’s” to the question “would you take up an unhealthy regime in order to lose weight if a friend suggested it to you” informing me that no matter how much teenagers want to achieve their ideal body weight they would not consider taking up either smoking, drugs, or going on any extreme type of diet.
The idea of peer pressure coming from your close friends was not represented in my results at all as no one answered my questionnaire stating that their friendship group would make them loose weight or put pressure on them to lose weight which was positive news, yet peer pressure seems to extended beyond that and be about what other people besides your closest friends think. The pressure seems to originate from what other people in other friendships groups think, and the constant worry about how they may be perceived if they were put in to a new situation with new people. For example when talking to a number of the girls one mentioned that if she was bigger than everyone else in the room she would feel slightly vulnerable and would question whether she was a normal size and would then worry about if her weight would change the views of the people she was about to talk to before they even knew her as a person. It is clear that they are always going to be more worried about their appearance and what their clothes size is rather than their personality or their intellectual ability.
In my questionnaire I also brought up the topic of boys and whether this type of peer pressure impacted them. As everyone knows having a “boyfriend” or being “pretty enough” for a boy is something high on the top of every teenage girls list. Sure it is normal for a girl to want to seem attractive, yet should this be so high on our list that we are obsessing and putting our health at high risk?
Girls even stated that they felt embarrassed to eat in front of boys, as they wouldn’t want to be seen as eating too much and in general that they would watch the amount that they ate in front of their peers. Another answer suggested that they didn’t want to be seen eating fatty food as they felt that boys would then comment and say something along the lines of “no wonder she is so fat, look at the type of food she is always eating”, it seems that not only have girls become aware of what food and how much of it we are eating, it seems that boys have as well, therefore putting pressure on girls.
This particularly worried me and formed a link in my head as it is one of the traits of an eating disorder for example people with anorexia or bulimia struggle to eat around large groups of people, or even eat anything at all in front of anyone. Forming me to state the opinion that peer pressure can trigger a type of disordered eating that may cause someone to then think about their eating and become worried as a result, this worry could then progress further and develop into a type of eating disorder.
Girls even stated that they felt embarrassed to eat in front of boys, as they wouldn’t want to be seen as eating too much and in general that they would watch the amount that they ate in front of their peers. Another answer suggested that they didn’t want to be seen eating fatty food as they felt that boys would then comment and say something along the lines of “no wonder she is so fat, look at the type of food she is always eating”, it seems that not only have girls become aware of what food and how much of it we are eating, it seems that boys have as well, therefore putting pressure on girls.
This particularly worried me and formed a link in my head as it is one of the traits of an eating disorder for example people with anorexia or bulimia struggle to eat around large groups of people, or even eat anything at all in front of anyone. Forming me to state the opinion that peer pressure can trigger a type of disordered eating that may cause someone to then think about their eating and become worried as a result, this worry could then progress further and develop into a type of eating disorder.
What our peers think of us and the pressure this puts on teenage girls is evident yet this also leads to us subconsciously putting extreme amounts of pressure on ourselves. All of the girls mentioned that weight was something they all thought about, and I received multiple answers relating to the pressure that they put on themselves to stay in the same weight range or even lose weight. So not only do girls stress themselves out with thoughts about what others are thinking about them, but as a results they are also inflicting huge amounts of stress
Contrastingly some girls felt that they weren't accepted because of their weight as they felt too thin. Causing me to answer my continuous question “can we ever be too thin?” in this case we can as it has left girls feeling isolated, worried and constantly under scrutiny by their peers for being too thin but in their case their normal weight.
Contrastingly some girls felt that they weren't accepted because of their weight as they felt too thin. Causing me to answer my continuous question “can we ever be too thin?” in this case we can as it has left girls feeling isolated, worried and constantly under scrutiny by their peers for being too thin but in their case their normal weight.
From my questionnaire I have concluded that peer pressure definitely is a fundamental factor contributing to a teenager’s diet, due to the results I achieved from group talks with a number of sixth form girls and the results from my questionnaire. Peer pressure is so strong at school and out of school that girls have ended up obsessing over what they eat in front of people and the type of food they eat in front of people even though eating is just a normal everyday life activity that we endure in order to fuel our bodies with. Peer pressure has sadly influenced and affected teenage girls so much that they have begun to infiltrate their minds with constant nagging voices associated with food and weight.
Nutritionally this may lead to girls becoming deficient in certain vitamins that are vital especially as we are still growing and developing our bodies. I found out that some girls would adopt bad habits such as smoking and filling up on diet drinks in order to banish their hunger pains. Another common pattern that cropped up was that many girls where skipping food all day only to then come home at dinner eat their home cooked meal and binge all evening on sugary, processed snacks as they are so ravenous from starving themselves all day, but then thinking that this is a healthy weight loss trick! In fact I found out that this could in fact lead to obesity and gaining weight, as so much food is consumed in such a small amount of time, without the eater knowing.
MEDIA FACTOR
My media questionnaires where quite hard hitting and required answers to be formulated from pictures from magazines, tv and the internet ( ensuring that I included all of the types of media i wanted to investigate).
Firstly I conducted questionnaires with the picture below (Lindsay Lohan and Nicole Richie). I found this picture on the internet.
My second questionnaire included the pictures below, and focused around the idea of whether girls would prefer to be thin and nutritionally deprives rather than a healthy weight yet regarded as "fat" by the media and the celeb world. These pictures where ground in multiple magazines and on the web.
My conclusion formulated from these questionnaires is that teenage girls strongly associate the image of being stick thin with the celebrity culture supplied to us by the media. It is almost as if teenage girls have a direct brain link that when they think of “thin” they then connect this word automatically with celebrity culture and see this as how they should look like.
It was clear to see from the answers given that all of the girls would have preferred to be a size zero rather than a size 16. Speaking to a few of the girls after I concluded that this was mainly due to the constant media projection of thin as being in.
It is evident from the results that all of our thoughts on body image and how we perceive ourselves in the mirror are identical. Is this evidence to indicate that our thoughts and opinions are being moulded by the media we are forever surrounded by? Surely we should all have completely different ideas and opinions on things, as we are not all genetically the same, but it appears that we all seem to have one opinion on the type of body we should have. I then noticed in conversation with a group of girls which are similar to my age whether they all liked a comedy programme named “the mighty boosh”, I got a few strange looks as it is not a well known show, yet I also got a variety of different opinions, such as “no it’s terrible”, “it’s okay, but wouldn’t optionally watch it”, contrastingly I also got answers like “yes, I love it it’s my all time favourite”, “the mighty boosh is comedy genius”. This proved to me that all though it is a television show which may suit only some types of personalities it is something that we should all each have an opinion on, yet when teenage girls are asked about the ideal body image we all seem to come to the same end formula which equals zero.
“I turned into a zombie. I lost like 30 pounds. I was telling myself I was method acting, which was not true. I ended up getting sick and my hair started falling out.” She has quoted in a magazine before that she would rather “starve to death before I’ll cook for myself. I think I could survive a week without eating.” Known for saying what she thinks, but should teenagers really be looking up to Megan as an ideal body image, as she talks about starving herself and neglecting her body out of laziness?
I was relieved to find out that none of the girls said that they would jeopardize their academic studies in order to be “thinner”, as it has be proved that poor nutrition and low levels of carbohydrate can drastically hinder academic studies and is shown to deplete concentration levels.
The images of Lindsay Lohan and Nicole Richie where again encouraging as I didn’t have any words defining the images as “pretty” or “attractive” instead they said “anorexic” “thin” and “disgusting”. Yet strangely we all strive for this look and want to be these images.
When i carried out a talking session with some of the girls they all stated that there was too much attention on girl’s weight generated from the media. I completely agree with them as whenever I open a magazine, or turn on E news there is always going to be an article or a segment on a show discussing weight. A few weeks go on E there was even a show merely just focusing on the top Hollywood bodies. It is evident that we are constantly surrounded by perfect bodies, it is almost impossible to escape this new reality.
To conclude, from these media questionnaires all of my answers indicate that we are all influenced by the media by some extent, some more than others. We also only seem to have one opinion on the perfect body, and it has not been formulate by our own minds. We all want to look like the images of Lindsay Lohan and Nicole Richie yet seem to not want to directly admit to it.
Teenage minds seem to have become corrupt with the idea that thinness is the ultimate life aspiration.
Teenage minds seem to have become corrupt with the idea that thinness is the ultimate life aspiration.
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