Is Seventeen Bad for You?

• Author: Goode, Erica
• Position: Brief Article

Flip through any magazine for teenage girls, and the message is hard to miss: Beauty equals long legs, perfect hair, and, above all, the half-starved look of someone who subsists solely on bean sprouts.

Psychologists have long argued that these relentless images encourage excessive dieting and poor body image in teenage girls.

Now a new study by University of Texas researchers suggests that for most girls...