In this study, competitive goal-oriented adolescents were more frequently satisfied with their body size, perceived their physical fitness as higher, and rated their overall health as better than that of adolescents in the reference group. In multivariable analyses, competitive goals in sports were not associated with BSP. After adjustments, those with appearance/weight motives to exercise and poor perceived physical fitness had higher odds of having a perception of a too fat body. Additionally, BMI was positively associated with perceived fatness and negatively with perceived thinness.
To our knowledge, this is the first study concerning associations between adolescents’ competitive goals in sports and BSP. One recent study observed that adolescents in competitive sports had better body image than non-athletes [16]. The authors found no difference between competitive athletes and leisure exercisers, and BSP did not differ between young competitive athletes, leisure athletes, and non-athletes [16]. Due to different measures, these previous findings cannot be directly compared with our results, but they are in line with the suggestion that adolescents’ BSP is mainly determined by other factors than having competitive goals in sports.
In accordance with a previous meta-analysis [8], our findings suggest that it is not having competitive goals, but rather the accompanying leanness and/or fitness that mediate the more positive BSP in competitive goal-oriented athletes than others. In addition, our results support the previous findings among adolescents on the association between higher BMI and body dissatisfaction [4, 29]. Gender differences have also been reported: the association between BMI and body dissatisfaction has been suggested to be linear in girls and U-shaped in boys [30]. We found that BMI was inversely associated with perception of a too thin body among both genders. Our finding is in line with a recent study which found that Finnish adolescents with thinness were more likely to wish for a bigger body than their normal-weight peers [31].
Perceived good physical fitness and health were more frequent among adolescents who perceived their body to be about the right size, and nearly all adolescents with competitive goals in sports self-reported good health and fitness. These findings are consistent with previous studies that have reported a relationship between poor perceived health and body dissatisfaction in adolescence [32]. Body dissatisfaction does not seem to motivate healthy weight-management behaviours, but rather motivates unhealthy ones, such as disordered eating and lower levels of exercise and physical activity [33–35]. Our finding supports the current research among adults suggesting that perceived physical fitness is related to body image, and the association between physical activity and body image would be mediated via better perceived physical fitness [36].
Appearance and weight-related reasons to exercise have previously been associated with higher body dissatisfaction in adolescents and adults [37, 38]. In this study, adolescents with competitive goals in sports generally reported more importance placed on motives to exercise on nearly all measures, excluding weight control motives. Appearance and weight management as exercise motives were also positively associated with perceived fatness. This association remained in logistic regression analyses and was therefore found to exist independent of BMI as well. Additionally, girls who exercised to improve their health and physical fitness had lower odds of perceived fatness. One previous study among adolescents found no association between body dissatisfaction and positive reasons to exercise, such as improve health and body fitness, but girls and boys were analysed together [37].
Adolescents who had competitive goals in sports had higher MVPA than youths in the reference group, which may have confounded the association between having competitive goals in sports and BSP. After adjustments, physical activity was no longer associated with BSP in this study. It appears that among competitive goal-oriented adolescents, the actual weight status, perceived physical fitness, and appearance and weight-related motives to exercise also determine BSP more strongly than the amount of physical activity. A previous study among Finnish adolescents [34] also found that physical activity was not related to weight dissatisfaction among girls, but boys who were more physically inactive were more dissatisfied with their weight.
Fourteen percent of the girls were overweight in this study but half of the girls felt they were too fat. The ratio of perceived fatness and being overweight was higher among girls with competitive goals in sports than it was in the reference girls. This might suggest that although competitive goal-oriented girls generally view their weight more positively, they also experience more pressure to reach a certain leanness/fitness level or they may have a stricter body ideal. These findings are in line with the previous studies [7, 13], where body dissatisfaction was positively associated with competition level among collegiate female athletes. A similar effect was not found among boys in our study.
The strength of this study is that it is the first to evaluate the associations between adolescents’ competitive goals in sports and BSP among a representative sample of Finnish sports club participants and non-participants. The study contributes to our understanding of BSP among mid-adolescent athletes, whereas most previous studies on athletes’ body image have been conducted among older adolescents or adults. There are also some limitations in the present study. First, our study design was cross-sectional and does not allow differentiation between causes and consequences.
Second, our analysis was mainly based on self-report questionnaire data, where a large proportion of invited adolescents (60% of the sports club sample and 20% of the school-based sample) did not participate in the study. We have no details on non-respondents, but one previous Finnish study on adolescents’ weight perception [34] has suggested that adolescents who did not participate in the study were more often boys from families with low socioeconomic status, and therefore, boys’ body size dissatisfaction might be underreported.
Third, single-item measures were used both for competitive goals and BSP that might have simplified those complex constructs. Due to the diversity of goal orientations and BSPs, we recommend using validated questionnaires in future studies. Fourth, sports types, such as leanness-focused and non-leanness-focused sports, were not differentiated in this study. In future, the possible associations between various types of physical activity and adolescents’ BSP should be examined.