This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citation map  • Citing articles on HighWire  • Citing articles on Web of Science (20)  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

To the Editor: The obsession with thinness in contemporary society has been cited as a contributing factor for the increase in eating disorders, particularly in young women.¹ Recent studies have found that as many as 50% to 75% of adolescent girls are dissatisfied with their weight and their body image.² Professions in which there are strong pressures to control body weight, such as athletics and dance, exhibit higher rates of eating disorders.³ Beauty pageants are another tradition through which society defines its ideal of beauty, including body weight and shape.

Methods

We compiled data on weight and height of winners of the Miss America Pageant, from 1922 to 1999, obtained from the Miss America Archives.⁴ The pageant was not held from 1927-1933, and data from a few other years are unavailable. We determined the body mass index (BMI), calculated as weight in kilograms divided by the square of height in meters, . . . [Full Text of this Article]

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?

THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES

Obesity, Body Image and Diet Drugs: 100 Years of Change
Scheindlin
Mol. Interv. 2008;8:64-69.
FULL TEXT  

Real Women Have Curves: A Longitudinal Investigation of TV and the Body Image Development of Latina Adolescents
Schooler
Journal of Adolescent Research 2008;23:132-153.
ABSTRACT  

Socioeconomic Status and Obesity
McLaren
Epidemiol Rev 2007;0:mxm001v1.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Shaping the Effects of Television on Adolescents' Body Image Disturbance: The Role of Parental Mediation
Nathanson and Botta
Communication Research 2003;30:304-331.
ABSTRACT  

Extrapolation of Correlation Between 2 Variables in 4 General Medical Journals
Kuo
JAMA 2002;287:2815-2817.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Body Image in the Balance
Devlin and Zhu
JAMA 2001;286:2159-2159.
FULL TEXT  

Diagnosis and Care of Patients with Anorexia Nervosa in Primary Care Settings
Mehler
ANN INTERN MED 2001;134:1048-1059.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT