“I Was Taught to Think of My Body as Too Sexual”: Comparative Thematic Analysis of Parent and Peer Messages About the Body During Adolescence

Parents and peers play an important role in adolescents’ body image and embodiment. Messages girls receive about sex and puberty during these formative years can contribute to either positive embodiment or disrupted/disconnected embodiment. To better understand how these messages are constructed in adolescence, we conducted a comparative thematic analysis of self-reported, retrospective accounts of messages conveyed by parents and peers. We administered an online survey using Prolific, which included open-text questions that we analyzed for this study. Participants were 339 cisgender women aged 19 to 29 ( M = 24.4, SD = 2.84). Participants identified as Asian/Pacific Islander (23.0%), Black (22.4%), Latina (26.0%), Mixed (3.2%), and White (25.4%). We analyzed the open-text responses using template analysis and constructed five themes: dressing modestly versus dressing for sexual appeal, reinforcement of beauty ideals versus promoting body appreciation, stigmatizing versus normalizing sexual development, emphasizing bodily purity versus bodily autonomy, and parents/peers did not talk about sex. Parental messages emphasized the thin ideal, covering up, body appreciation, and messages about bodily purity. Peers reinforced the curvy ideal, appearance compliments, sexual appeal, and normalized sexuality. Understanding how girls are socialized to think and feel about their bodies during adolescent development is essential for improving body image and sexual health outcomes.