(PROVO, Utah)  When researchers consider the possible contributions of magazine reading to teen-age girls' developing eating disorders, beauty and fashion magazines are the usual suspects. Little research has looked at the possible culpability of another genre of glossies that tout "perfect" body types, until now.

A new study by researchers at Brigham Young University published in this week's American Journal of Health Education found that girls at two Salt Lake-area high schools who use certain unhealthy weight-control practices were significantly more likely to be frequent readers of women's health and fitness magazines. As a group, girls who read those magazines frequently also scored significantly higher on a test that measures anorexic tendencies than girls who did not.

"We can't say that reading the magazines causes eating disorders -- but what we know is that the more a certain subset of young women read, the more that risk goes up," said Steven R. Thomsen, associate professor of communications at BYU and lead author on the article. "These findings are consistent with the growing belief that women's health and fitness magazines may be an important sociocultural influence in the development and/or perpetuating of eating disorder attitudes."

After noting that the circulation of women's health and fitness magazines leaped in the late 1990s, the same period that teen-age girls' dieting rates also increased, Thomsen teamed with Lora Beth Brown, a BYU food science and nutrition professor, and Michelle Weber, then a BYU undergraduate, to explore the two trends.

In their survey of 498 sophomores, juniors and seniors at the two schools, the researchers asked the girls how often they read health and fitness magazines and whether, in the previous year, they used laxatives, diet pills, made themselves throw up and/or limited their caloric intake to under 1,200 calories per day -- an extreme diet. (Research confidentiality restrictions prevent disclosing the names of the high schools). They also administered the Mizes Anorectic Cognitions Scale, a 33-item test that is an accepted measure of the presence of anorexic thinking patterns.

The research team found ample evidence of unhealthy weight-control practices. About 11 percent of the girls reported laxative use for weight loss or weight control, 15 percent said they had taken appetite control or weight-loss pills, 9 percent said they had made themselves vomit, and 52 percent indicated they had restricted their calories to 1,200 a day or less. On the test for anorexic tendencies, the average score of the 46 percent of the girls who read the magazines frequently -- at least once a month -- was significantly higher than the average scores of the girls who read the magazines moderately or infrequently. About seven percent of the overall sample scored in the range that clinically diagnosed anorexics typically register.

And sure enough, the researchers also found moderate to strong links between those unhealthy practices and the reading of health and fitness magazines. Almost 80 percent of the girls who made themselves vomit were frequent readers of health and fitness magazines. Of those who used appetite suppressants or weight-control pills, about 73 percent were frequent readers. About 60 percent of the girls who had used laxatives in the past year were also frequent readers. And among frequent readers, those who restricted their calories to under 1,200 a day outnumbered nearly two to one those who did not.

Thomsen cautioned that the fact that there is a statistical correlation between the two sets of behaviors does not mean that one causes the other. But, he pointed out, frequently reading health and fitness magazines could indicate that a young woman is proceeding on a path toward anorexic thinking patterns, whether it is that thinking that prompts her to read the magazines or whether the magazines prompt that thinking.

"Don't panic if your daughter reads a health and fitness magazine, but try to understand what her motivations are for reading it," he said. "If it becomes some kind of obsession, or leads to some kind of obsessive behavior regarding exercise and weight control, then I would be concerned. If she is drawing her sense of physical identity from that magazine, I would also be concerned. She may be getting a skewed perception of what women ought to be and what women ought to look like."

The BYU researchers recommend that teens should be taught that magazine depictions of physical "ideals" often involve the use of images and advertising photographs that have been touched-up or computer enhanced and that similar body types often can't be obtained in real life without risking physical and emotional health.

---Brigham Young University

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