Body-figure preferences in male and female adolescents.

Previous research has examined body dissatisfaction and pressures toward thinness among college-age and adult women, demonstrating greater dissatisfaction among women than men. Little is known about when such sex differences arise. The present study replicated the procedure used by Fallon and Rozin (1985) to assess body-size preferences in a sample of 288 female and 283 male adolescents aged 10.5 to 15 years. Both sexes revealed a small degree of body-figure dissatisfaction relative to their chosen ideal, but neither sex rated their own figure as significantly different from the size considered most attractive to the opposite sex. Both male and female adolescents held distorted perceptions of opposite-sex preferences. Girls showed a bias toward thinness; boys revealed a bias toward larger figures. The latter bias was associated with pubertal development. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)