Source: French to English Tester Published on: 2026-04-05
Source: The Conversation – in French– By Clotilde Napp, Research Director CNRS, Paris Dauphine University – PSL
Teenage girls are significantly more dissatisfied with their bodies than their male counterparts. This is what we show in aStudy involving nearly 300,000 adolescents in 41 countries, published in March 2026 in the journalPLOS One. This greater bodily dissatisfaction is observed almost systematically, regardless of country of origin, body mass index, socioeconomic background, academic performance, or the age of the adolescents.
Among adolescent girls, body dissatisfaction is more strongly associated with lower self-confidence and reduced well-being than among boys, which gives it a central place in their lives. At the country level, where girls report higher dissatisfaction, more pronounced gender gaps are also observed in terms of depression, eating disorders, and life satisfaction.
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Why do girls feel worse than boys during adolescence?
While girls’ body dissatisfaction is almost always higher than that of boys, the gap varies depending on the context. Notably, it is larger in more developed countries, mainly due to higher dissatisfaction among girls there. This phenomenon, known as“The paradox of gender equality”, has already been observed for depression or well-being.
We finally show that stereotypes associating women with their physical appearance rather than their abilities are also stronger in developed countries and that they are linked to the disparities in body dissatisfaction between girls and boys: these stereotypes could contribute, at least partially, to explaining the observed paradox.
Why our analysis is important
Body dissatisfaction is a well-documented risk factor for eating disorders, thedepressionand low self-esteem. The rates ofeating disordersAmong young women, they are more than twice as high as those of young men and have increased significantly over the past twenty years. Quantifying the differences in body dissatisfaction, and better understanding their origins, is therefore a major public health issue.
Contrary to what one might expect, the most developed and most egalitarian countries are those where girls feel the worst about their bodies. Economic development and the recognition of equality do not seem sufficient to reduce these gaps.
The existence of stereotypes about women’s physical appearance and their possible impact on body dissatisfaction is known. For example, in the United States, parents search on Google “Is my daughter overweight?” twice as often as “Is my son overweight?” and “Is my daughter ugly?” three times as often as “Is my son ugly?”
Stereotypes are hard to quantify, but our analyses of over 40 countries allow us to show the link between these stereotypes and the gaps in body dissatisfaction.
How did we proceed?
We analyzed two major international surveys:PISA 2018, which included a well-being questionnaire for 70,000 15-year-old students in nine countries, andHBSC 2018, conducted under the aegis of WHO with more than 220,000 adolescents aged 11 to 16 in 41 countries. To measure body dissatisfaction, we use for PISA an index built from statements such as “I do not worry about my weight” or “I appreciate my body,” and for HBSC the feeling of being “too fat” or “way too fat.”
The convergence of results between these two sources strengthens the robustness of our conclusions.
Limits and perspectives
Our approach is correlational, and the associations we document, particularly between stereotypes and body dissatisfaction, are not proof of causality: the mechanisms remain to be clarified, notably through qualitative approaches, and the role of social networks would be interesting to consider.
Body dissatisfaction affects girls more strongly, to the detriment of their well-being and self-confidence. These gaps are linked to stereotypes and are more pronounced in developed countries, suggesting that they will not decrease spontaneously with the development of societies.
The fight against these inequalities can involve raising awareness about the unequal treatment of women’s bodies in society, a reduced media focus on their appearance, the promotion of female role models recognized for their skills, and more generally, a lesser essentialization of women and men.
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Clotilde Napp does not work for, advise, hold shares in, receive funds from any organization that could benefit from this article, and has declared no affiliation other than her research institution.
–ref. Teenage girls, more dissatisfied with their bodies than boys: what a study on 300,000 data points reveals –https://theconversation.com/teenage-girls-more-dissatisfied-with-their-bodies-than-boys-what-a-study-on-300-000-data-reveals-279570