Lance Woods, adolescent and child psychologist at the UW-Madison School of Medicine’s Department of Psychiatry, agrees: “Girls tend to internalize frustration and aggression and take it out on themselves. The media makes it worse. I’ve yet to meet a teenage girl who is satisfied with her weight.
“Most of the girls we see have, at their core, self-esteem issues. If I tell girls to tell me 10 things that are good about them, most can’t get beyond two or three. But when I then ask them to tell me 10 things wrong with them, they have trouble keeping it to 10. They also tend to believe that if they do well it might be because of luck, but if they do poorly it’s because of their lack of ability or talent.”