Developmental Teasing About Physical Appearance: Retrospective Descriptions and Relationships With Body Image

Among the potential influences on body-image development are experiences of appearance-related teasing and criticism during childhood or adolescence. The present study of 111 female college students examined the recollection of such experiences. Persistent appearance teasing/criticism was commonly recalled and its physical foci were diverse, though facial characteristics and weight were apparently most often targeted. Peers were deemed the worst perpetrators of appearance teasing/criticism, yet family members, especially brothers, were also often implicated. Women who reported having had more prevalent and distressing experiences of this nature currently held more dissatisfying and disturbing body images.