e and Brooks-Gun found that eating problems emerged in response to physical changes of the pubertal period. Personality variables entered this problem, but only at a later stage. Attie's and Brooks-Gun's findings suggest that body shape becomes a primary focus and that efforts to control weight intensify during the middle-school years. In other words, the rapid accumulation of body fat that is part of the female experience of puberty often functions as a triggering effect, in the sense that it starts the attempt of weight-loss diets. Attie's and Brooks-Gun's study did, of course, have its limitations. The authors themselves admitted that their investigation focused only on a sample of white girls from upper-middle-class families. Yet most evidence has suggested that bulimia nervosa is more prevalent in middle-and-upper middle class white girls, although there is evidence suggesting that eating disorders are increasing in other ethnic and social class groups, especially for girls who experience more pressure to acculturate to white, middle-class standards. (Graber, Brooks-Gun, Paikoff and Warren, p.823) In other words, what we see here is that the values and ideals held by the dominant society are an important issue as well. Recent studies have shown us that adolescent girls in competitive environments that emphasize weight and appearance experience increased social pressures to meet the thin ideal. (Attie and Brooks-Gun, p.7O) Another study that very much confirmed the findings of Attie and Brooks-Gunn examined 116 adolescent girls drawn from a normal population of students enrolled in private schools in a major metropolitan area. These girls were fo...
