Teenage girls who have a poor body image are four times more likely to start smoking than girls who do not have such concerns. According to research, teens are lighting up to bolster their self-esteem, not to lose weight.
Researchers had once thought that young girls smoked to control their weight, explains author Michael Siegel, M.D., an associate professor at Boston University School of Public Health in Massachusetts. Instead, he found a connection between self-image and smoking. Girls with low-self esteem--thin or not--were at risk. "Across the spectrum, it really has to do with a negative body image," he says.
In his telephone survey, Siegel randomly contacted 273 girls, ages 12 to 15 and asked them to rate the importance of being thin on a scale of one to ten. They were also questioned as to whether they had ever smoked a cigarette. Four years later, Siegel contacted the same subjects and found 23 percent had picked up the habit. He found that girls who reported unhappiness with their appearance were three to four times more likely to smoke, regardless of their weight.
