Teen Body Obsession: Too Much Too Young

A British childhood isn’t what it used to be. Our children are growing older younger and want to be adults when we still see them as kids. And as well as acting grown up they want to look like adults too. But is it all too much too young?

Body Obsession: Too Much Too Young meets the schoolgirls as young as ten who are so concerned about their looks that they consider fake nails, spray tans, sun bed sessions and calorie counting an essential part of their everyday lives.

The programme features ten-year-old Sasha whose obsession with her looks started when her mum began entering her in beauty pageants at the tender age of three. Now she is a regular at her local beauty salon, getting her nails done and having spray tans and hair extensions.

The series also features 15-year-old Danielle who is addicted to having a tan and goes on sun beds five times a week.

Danielle tells the programme that she started going under the rays when she was just 11 and used to sneak onto her mum’s sun bed - now she can’t get enough of them.

The programme also meets 14-year-old Emma who is so obsessed with losing weight that she eats just half the recommended calorie intake for a girl of her age and exercises for hours everyday.

And 20-year-old Emma tells the cautionary tale of how at 15 she became so focused on dieting that her weight plunged from nine and a half stone to less than five in just seven months.

Teen Body Obsession: Too Much Too Young, Tuesday 24 July 2007, 10:00pm - 10:30pm on ITV1.