If you're the parent of a tween or teen girl, you'll want to read these findings about gender behavior.

• By middle school, thirty to forty percent of American girls say they feel too fat, and twenty to forty percent are dieting-many by the age of ten. By high school, forty to sixty percent of girls feel overweight and are dieting.
• Young girls say that they are more afraid of becoming fat than they are of cancer, nuclear war, or losing their parents.
• Before the onset of puberty, there is no difference in depression rates between boys and girls. By age fifteen, teenagers' statistics indicate that girls are twice as likely to become depressed and ten times more likely to develop an eating disorder than their male peers.
• Today, the average fashion model weighs twenty-three percent less than the average woman.
• The average age for onset of eating disorders is during adolescence.
• While self-esteem for both girls and boys is strong when they are young children, there is a significant drop in girls' self-esteem around the age of twelve.
• In a survey of working-class fifth to twelfth grade suburban girls, sixty-nine percent reported that magazine pictures influence their idea of the perfect body shape; forty-seven percent reported wanting to lose weight because of magazine pictures.
• Media literacy enhances adolescents' abilities to view ads with skepticism, making them more likely to recognize persuasion techniques that advertisers use and distinguish whether ads are truthful or misleading.
• Clinique Laboratories surveyed five hundred moms of teen daughters and found their number one New Year's resolution was "lose weight/eat less." Yet twenty-two percent of the same mothers list the fear of their daughters developing an eating disorder among their top concerns. Sixteen percent of the five hundred teens interviewed in the same survey worried about developing an eating disorder.
• Anecdotal evidence suggests that comments from family members as well as teasing trigger dieting during adolescence.
• According to data presented to the National Institutes of Health, thirty-three to forty percent of adult women are trying to lose weight at any given time, fueled by a cultural perception of a feminine "ideal" that is much too thin for good health.
• Girls with active and hardworking dads are more ambitious, more successful in school, attend college more often, and are more likely to attain careers of their own. These girls are less dependent, more self-protective, and less likely to date or marry abusive men.

Source: ©Joe Kelly; All rights reserved. www.TheDadMan.com. Michael Levine, Prevention of Eating Problems with Elementary Children, USA Today, July 98, Special K report, Business Wire, 1998, Jo Sullivan-Lyons, The Psychologist, American Academy of Advertising, Pediatrics, March 99, American Psychological Assn. congressional briefing.