The BBC reports this story about adolescents' body image. The main point made in the article is:
"The Association of Teachers and Lecturers claims the promotion of ideal body images is reducing both boys' and girls' confidence in their own bodies."
However, reading the story uncovers little actual evidence to support the argument. It reports a survey of 693 members of the teachers union ATL and makes statements such as "78% [of teachers] thought girls suffered low self-esteem and 51% thought boys had low confidence in their body image".
It is easy to misread this as 78% of girls and 51% of boys had low confidence, rather than this being the proportion of teachers who thought that children has such issues. Hence the evidence from the sample could be quite consistent with a much smaller proportion of children with body image issues. It is just that a lot of teachers know about the small proportion of such children.
There are also other questions we should ask about the survey. Although the sample size is a decent 693, how was the sample selected? If it is from among union members, who tend to be more left wing and sensitive to social issues, does this constitute a representative sample? How did the teachers conclude that it was the promotion of an ideal body image that causes the lack of confidence?
All this is not to say that there is not such a problem amongst children. It's just that this survey gives us very little new information about it.
