Self-assessment of adolescents' physique

The article highlights that a modern society focuses on exclusive body care along with appearance of individuals and especially adolescents. Physical exterior of a person seems to be receiving an increasingly growing attention in everyday life situations, as beauty ideals shift in social environments along with requirements to comply with and pursue them. Research, analyzing body dissatisfaction, has received wide attention in a scholarly environment. Body related dissatisfaction has become a highly relevant issue, as it links to eating disorders, such as anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa and others, however there is a gap in research analyzing the pedagogical side of such issue. It is highly relevant to be aware of and understand body and body weight related problems because difficulties emerged during the early adolescence might persist during adulthood as well. Research aim – to reveal how adolescents perceive their physique and individual parts of their body and compare these selfassessments based on a gender. In 2012, using a research method of an anonymous survey a total of 1347 adolescents from 8th grades were surveyed. The research uses a questionnaire to study physique related self-assessment, designed by the author. Results obtained from the conducted research allow to conclude that research participants feel more dissatisfied with individual phenotype-dependent morphological and functional features of a body, which can be altered through well-chosen physical exercising. It was identified that research participants are more satisfied with individual morphological and functional features of a body, inherited from parents. . Findings also reveal that respondents are mostly dissatisfied with shape, largeness and size of individual body parts as well as muscle weakness. Results also allow to conclude that significance attributed to certain elements of physique is gender-dependent