Adolescent Body Dissatisfaction in Contrasting Socioeconomic Milieus, Coming from a French and Luxembourgish Context

Abstract

Purpose: To analyze the relationships between body mass index (BMI), ideal body, current declared body shape, and gap between ideal and declared body shape, and the associations that these have with social and cultural factors among 329 adolescents (11 to 15 years i.e., at two stages of adolescence, the early and late adolescence), attending an international school in Luxembourg, and 281 from Paris. Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted using an online questionnaire. Missing data were addressed using the data augmentation method in a Bayesian framework. Results: For both sets, higher the BMI and bigger their current body shape (CBS), the slimmer their ideal body shape, especially for those who perceive a link between body shape and beauty. For girls, slimness is a shared ideal; for boys, older they are, more they want a muscular body shape. Most students want slimmer bodies, but in affluent or intermediate social milieu students in relations to identification to personalities such as celebrities, while students from modest milieus, this is expressed in relation to success in love. In addition, they declared that their “talk diet with friends” were associated with large gap between ideal and declared body shape. Conclusions: A social control norm was revealed involving a displacement of values affecting body weight and health in the late stage of adolescence to early adolescence, especially for boys.