The hidden cost of negative body image

Dissatisfaction with one’s appearance is a familiar feeling to many of us. In a society with idealized bodies plastered all over the media we consume, from magazines to movies and everywhere in between, drawing unfavorable comparisons of oneself to the results of Photoshop might even be inevitable. People do not fret over their looks for no reason, either: perceived attractiveness is, for example, likely to be tied to employment rate and wages earned.[i] Teenagers, too, feel the pressure of trying to measure up to modern times’ Aphrodite and Adonis – perhaps even more keenly than adults, at times. Research shows time and again that young people worry quite a lot over their looks, and sometimes those worries can put them on the path to self-destruction. And since such low self-perception and the disorders associated with it tend to be rooted in adolescence, if they do not outright begin then, it is important to be aware of how these problems crop up in young people if we hope to combat them in the population at large.