Appearance Culture In Adolescents

In today’s society there is a never-ending pursuit for the perfect body with physical attractiveness and beauty highly valued human characteristics believed to be linked with happiness, intelligence and success (Rennels, 2012). The “appearance culture” (Jones, Vigfusdottir, & Lee, 2004), consisting of the continual flow of messages telling us how we should and should not look places constant pressure on individuals. Appearance culture refers to the notion of a culture that values, reinforces, and models cultural ideas of the ideal body (Thompson, Heinberg, Altabe, & Tantleff-Dunn, 1999). With Western societies mindset on physical appearance - the aesthetics, suggests the body is “malleable”, something that ought to be controlled and continuously

Previous research has revealed that up to 70% of adolescent girls and 50% of adolescent boys want to change the way they look and are dissatisfied with their bodies (McCabe & Ricciardelli, 2001a; Wertheim & Paxton, 2012). In Australian adolescents one of the top three greatest concerns reported since 2006 is body image (Mission Australia, 2013). The prevalence of adolescent experience of negative body image is indeed concerning; hence a need to investigate factors and environments that may promote a positive body image is

The field has developed in response to the imbalance in today’s psychology, which focuses mainly on the negative aspects of human psychological existence. The ideas of positive psychology argue psychology is not simply the study of people’s ill-being, weaknesses and suffering as the majority of psychological research is preoccupied with. Instead, Seligman (2002), the best-known proponent of the field, proposes psychology is also the study of human strength and virtue, as examining people’s well-being and elements that support and encourage human strength is just as important as investigating their ill-being. Positive psychology emphasizes people’s strengths, happiness and well-being (Gudmundsdottir, 2011). The overall idea of positive psychology does not only allow for a more complete and balanced scientific understanding of human experiences, it is also imperative for prevention and treatment through understanding what makes people feel good and helps other people feel good (Kurtines et al. 2008). Specifically, the notion is that if we are to identify the human strengths that may act as a buffer against ill-being, and then aim to magnify and concentrate these strengths in people who are at risk, we may have a greater ability to establish effective prevention and treatment (Seligman, 2002). In body image, sport participation is one extra curriculum activity in the