3. Friends and peers:
Friends and peers can make a positive difference. It is helpful to have:
- Friends who base self-esteem on factors other than appearance and don't diet. Peer modeling of diet behavior can either start or maintain diet behavior.
- Friends who recognize eating problems and know how to reach and support help a friend with an eating problem
- Friends who refrain from (Levine and Smolak, 2006):
-appearance-related teasing
-sexual harassment
-investment in dieting, thinness, and weight management behaviors (e.g, skipping meals) - A peer environment that is body friendly and takes a non-dieting approach to balanced nutrition and an active lifestyle.
- Friends and peers who are consciousness-raised about balanced eating habits, body acceptance, and the inappropriateness of glorifying the slender beauty ideal and the muscular male physique.
- Peers who are not biased about weight gain: girls who mature and go through puberty later seem to have fewer eating problems than those who transition through puberty earlier. This is because peer bias against gaining weight puts negative social pressure on girls who mature earlier. Those undergo early puberty gain weight early and undergo early breast development (Piran et al, 1999).
- Peers who devalue the tactics of the modeling industry to generate a media-driven definition of beauty and attractiveness.
- Co-participation by friends and peers in a media literacy program like the National Eating Disorders Association (2003, 2005) program, Go Girls, or a high school prevention program like Adolescents Training and Learning to Avoid Steroids (ATLAS) (Goldberg et al, 2000; Levine and Smolak, 2006)
- Positive social networking on the web with friends and peers who are critical of unhealthy media (e.g., pro-eating disorder websites) and promote body acceptance and healthy activity
