Body Mass Index, Dieting, Romance, and Sexual Activity in Adolescent Girls: Relationships Over Time

Abstract

Romantic relationships constitute an important, but understudied, developmental context for accommodation to pubertal change. Using a nationally representative sample of 5,487 black, white, and Hispanic adolescent females, this study examined associations among body mass index, current romantic involvement, and dieting. For each one point increase in body mass-index (BMI), the probability of having a romantic relationship decreased by 6%. Further, involvement in a nonsexual romantic relationshipbut not involvement in a sexual romantic relationship-was associated with a significant increase in the likelihood of dieting. Associations between relationship type and dieting did not vary by age, socioeconomic status, or JOURNAL OF RESEARCH ON ADOLESCENCE, 15(4), 535-559

The effect of body weight on adolescent sexual activity

“…In contrast, two more-recent studies have found evidence of a link between body weight and sexual behavior. Using data from Add Health on females ages 12-17, Halpern et al (2005) found that a higher BMI was associated with a lower probability of being in a sexual relationship. Cawley et al (2006) used data from the 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) as well as data from the Add Health.…”

“…Neither Cawley et al (2006) nor Halpern et al (2005) treated adolescent body weight as endogenously determined. Therefore, the negative relationship between bodyweight and sexual behavior documented by these authors could be due to the influence of unobservables.…”

“…In addition, Cawley et al (2006) and Halpern et al (2005) relied on self-reported body weight and height. Because the Add Health interviewers measured the height and weight of respondents as part of the Wave II in-home interview process, we are able to avoid the use of self-reported weight and height in the majority of our specifications.…”

Life Course Perspective and Body Weight Discrimination: An Integrated Approach to Understand the Relationship Between Obesity and Food Insecurity in Women.

“…For example, the longitudinal study conducted by Halpern, King, Oslak, & Udry (2005) with seventh and eight grade girls established that girls with higher levels of body fat were less likely to report dating activity over the past 6 months.…”

Fucking failures: The future of fat sex

“…From a fat studies perspective this is crucial to understanding fat people's sex lives, yet it is only considered in a minority of the sample articles and even then in rather limited ways (Bajos, 2010;Chen and Brown, 2005;Halpern, 2005;Swami and Tovée, 2009). …”