Study Indicates Pre-school Girls Idealize Thinness“Girls decide they don’t want to b

Study Indicates Pre-school Girls Idealize Thinness“Girls decide they don’t want to be fat long before middle school or high school.  A study published in Sex Roles: A Journal of Research found that girls as young as three idealize thinness.  The study of 55 preschool girls (ages 3-5) measured the degree to which these girls had internalized the “thin ideal.”  The researchers used games of Candy Land and Chutes and Ladders, asking each child what game piece character they wanted to be.  The three characters were exactly the same, except one was thin, one was average size and one was fat.  After the child chose her character, the researcher asked to switch.  This was done to measure how emotionally invested the child was in the character.  The researchers found that there were significantly more negative comments about the fat character and significantly more positive comments about the thin character.   They were led to conclude, “it is quite plausible that a combination of anti-fat messages and pressure to achieve unrealistic beauty standards is related to the development of body-size stereotypes and thin-ideal internalization in girls at a very early age.” Those messages may come from various sources, like TV advertisements, diet products in stores and the language parents use on a regular basis.  Whatever the source, many of the girls in this study did not only prefer the thin ideal, but expressed hatred for the fat character.  When weight is stigmatized at such a young age, weight discrimination resembles more of a natural trait than a learned attitude.”From the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated DisordersRead the full piece here.Ad from Cotton, Inc., as seen (and critiqued) on Copyranter -- source link
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