There's been growing awareness in recent years that comparing themselves with the images of women in the TV and fashion industries can make girls unhappy with the way they look. But what about boys? A survey by teachers in Britain suggested they too are getting increasingly worried about their body image. Stuart Bachmann reports.
Flick through any fashion magazine and from every page a host of goddesses, pose and pout, impossibly thin, impossibly beautiful with flawless skin and hair to die for. The guys too are handsome and chiselled with rib torsos.
We may know it's not real, that it's computer-generated illusion produced by a team of professionals. But we still can't help looking in the mirror and seeing the spots and spare tyres that normal people have. The pressure that sort of thing has put on young women has been well-documented. But now the Association of Teachers and Lecturers in the UK has found that many boys too suffer from low self-esteem because of the way they look. They surveyed about 700 teachers and the results are disturbing. 4/5 thought girls had body image issues and more than half thought boys lacked confidence too, in many cases to the point of causing them anxiety.
