ORIGINAL ARTICLE Biopsychosocial and Physical Correlates of Middle School Boys’ and Girls’ Body Satisfaction Trent A. Petrie & Christy Greenleaf & Scott Martin Published online: 26 August 2010 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010 Abstract Boys (n =629) and girls (n =659) in grades 6 through 8 in the U.S. completed self-report measures of pubertal development, weight pressures, internalization, social appearance comparison, self-esteem, depression, and physical self-concept, and objective measures of cardiorespiratory fitness and BMI. Regression analyses revealed that gender moderated the strength of the relation- ships between the variables and body satisfaction (girls— Adj. R 2 =.49; boys—Adj. R 2 =.20), though BMI, pressures, physical self-concept, and self-esteem were related signif- icantly for each gender. Girls were most affected by pressures related to weight loss, whereas gaining weight and musculature was most salient for boys. Future research needs to examine longitudinally how these variables contribute to the development of body satisfaction. Keywords Adolescents . Biopsychosocial . Body satisfaction . Physical fitness . Self-esteem Introduction Over the last 20 years, body image concerns have become an issue of concern in children and adolescents in the U.S. and other western cultures (Garner 1997; McCabe and Ricciardelli 2003a, 2004; Neumark-Sztainer et al. 2006; Ricciardelli et al. 2003). For example, McCabe and Ricciardelli (2003a) found that 63% and 85% of 8–9 year old boys and girls, respectively, said that they were scared of being overweight. Further, body image is a key predictor of eating pathology and psychological distress (Stice 2002). Although biopsychosocial theoretical models have been proposed to explain the development of such problems (e.g., Cafri et al. 2005a), less is known about how these variables may interact with physical variables, such as actual fitness levels, to influence body satisfaction during adolescence, a key time of physical and psychological change. In this study, we examined biopsychosocial and physical factors that have been hypothesized to influence the development of body satisfaction. We sampled U.S. middle school boys and girls separately to determine the extent to which gender might affect the strength and direction of the relationships amongst the variables. Body satisfaction appears to be defined slightly differ- ently based on gender. Research has demonstrated that, for girls and women, the body ideal primarily is characterized by a thin and lean physique, one that is achieved primarily through dieting and weight loss (Austin et al. 2009; McCabe and Ricciardelli 2003a; McCabe et al. 2002). For boys and men, though, the body ideal appears to be represented along two dimensions—leanness and muscu- larity (McCabe and Ricciardelli 2003a; McCreary et al. 2005; Ricciardelli and McCabe 2004; Ridgeway and Tylka 2005)—which may be attained through exercising and weight lifting and other strengthening activities. Thus, researchers need to take into account these two physical ideals when examining body image across genders (McCabe and Ricciardelli 2004). This study was supported by a grant from the National Association for Sport and Physical Education (NASPE). T. A. Petrie (*) Department of Psychology, University of North Texas, 1155 Union Circle, #311280, Denton, TX 76203, USA e-mail: Trent.Petrie@unt.edu C. Greenleaf : S. Martin Department of KHPR, University of North Texas, 1155 Union Circle, #311280, Denton, TX 76203, USA Sex Roles (2010) 63:631–644 DOI 10.1007/s11199-010-9872-5