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One of the first things that my husband said to me when we found out we were expecting a baby girl was that we needed to make sure she had a positive view of herself. Having grown up with two sisters (and watched me struggle with negative body issues) he was all too familiar with the ways in which our self doubt could affect us.
But new research suggests that it’s actually our sons we should be more concerned about when it comes to body image.
New information, which was shared at the 124th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association, showed that over the course of the last thirty years, it seems that women have been getting more positive about their weight but the boys are increasingly reporting concerns about not being ‘buff’ enough or not having what they deem to be an enviable male figure.
Bryan Karazsia, a professor at the College of Wooster, explains, “While women consistently report being more dissatisfied with their bodies than men, as far as thinness is concerned, that dissatisfaction has decreased over the 31-year period we studied.”
Using data from over 250 individual studies, the researchers collated information on over 100,000 men and women. Focusing on the years 1981-2012, participants were asked questions relating to how they felt about their “fat”.
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