Is the latest move by gyms to attract younger customers simply opportunistic marketing or a response to teenage obesity? Kitty Hollandreports

GYM FRANCHISE CURVES hit a collective raw nerve this week when it sent a circular to some Dublin national schools inviting girls as young as 12 for "figure analysis".

While the gym said the invitation was a "one-off", and stressed it was not policy to invite children to its gyms, it raised the question: should children be encouraged to spend their free time happily climbing trees or playing hopscotch on the road, or should they start taking more structured exercise from an early age?

Rose Tully, spokeswoman for the National Parents Council post-primary, said she was "stunned" and "concerned" to hear of the Curves circular. Meanwhile, Aodháin Ó Riordán, principal of St Laurence O'Toole Girls National School in Dublin, which got the circular, said he was "appalled".

"Our job in education is to build young people's self-esteem, to nurture their positive feelings about themselves, and to encourage them to know that they are fine, whatever size they are," he said.

The pressure on young girls to think that "thin is beautiful" and that appearance matters most comes from every angle from a very early age. Cinderella cartoons aimed at three- to six-year-olds show the beautiful, slim, blonde woman with the perfect skin and blue eyes getting her man - while her "ugly" siblings get their comeuppance. And then there are the disturbingly thin icons of teenage "beauty", such as Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen.

Boys are also under pressure to conform and males now account for an estimated 20 per cent of those presenting with eating disorders, according to the support organisations Bodywhys and the Eating Disorder Resource Centre (EDRC).

While some want to be thinner, many men and boys want to be bigger and feel enormous pressure to bulk up. This can lead to them taking steroids and putting their health at risk, says Suzanne Horgan, founder and director of the EDRC. She says that the last thing any 12-year-old should be concerned about is their figure or body shape.

"They should be climbing trees, having fun," she insists, adding that demand for the centre's help is greater than ever and those affected are getting younger. "In the last 18 months, I have noticed an increase in the numbers of clients around the age-12 mark. I recently had a call from a father whose daughter was 12. She has had anorexia for the past three years. That is frightening."

Horgan believes obsessive exercise is a growing component of eating disorders. "An eating disorder can start with exercising to burn fat, then controlling food. Not eating it is the next thing. But exercise is a big part of it. They may not be in gyms. They might be out pounding the streets for hours and hours a day, or on an exercise bike at home."

Exercise itself can become an addiction, a focus for the person's need to feel in control, and this can be exacerbated by the fact that exercise releases endorphins.

"It becomes centre-stage. Life is planned around it and sufferers get anxious if they can't exercise. It also becomes an addictive release. If they get stressed, they exercise. If they get depressed, they exercise, rather than talking to a friend or addressing why they are stressed or depressed."

It can become a vicious circle, she continues, as the obsessive exercise can feed isolation, anxiety, depression and low self-esteem.

The reality is that the age when the majority of children spent their free time getting their exercise from playing outdoors is over. Children are less physically active than their parents were as kids, and the evidence is that Irish children are getting fatter, with an estimated 300,000 children now obese in the State.

PROF NIALL MOYNA, senior lecturer in Exercise Physiology at Dublin City University, says young people should get at least 60 minutes of physical activity a day - but only 44 per cent currently meet that recommendation.

He, along with Dr Catherine Woods, a senior lecturer in exercise psychology at DCU, recently completed a three-year study of physical activity among teenagers in Dublin, called "The Take Part study". It found a lack of physical activity and fitness levels in young people, particularly among girls.

In a test known as the shuttle test, boys and girls aged 15 to 17 were asked to run up and down a hall, each length being a shuttle and each shuttle getting progressively faster. This test showed that 65 per cent were not at the required fitness level for their age. "That was 58 per cent of boys and 70 per cent of girls. Normal-weight boys were able to do 77 shuttles. Normal-weight girls were able to do 42."

Among the various reasons girls were less fit was that they were less interested in team sports, which was the main activity available in schools. "Twenty-two per cent of 15- to 17-year-old girls are overweight or obese," the survey found.

There should be activities such as dancing or biking available in schools, according to Prof Moyna, who points out that older girls prefer to engage in physical activity on an individual basis.

Gyms and leisure centres offer a "wonderful opportunity" to provide this to boys and girls, and young men and women. He says that offering figure analysis to children as young as 12 is a huge mistake but stresses that gyms offer regularised activity, with weight-bearing exercises that can optimise development of bones and muscle, which is necessary as soon as a person is physically active.

"The problem with children and parents is they assume cardio-vascular disease is something that won't happen for 30 or 40 years."

Early inactivity and a bad diet mean a person runs the risk of early onset heart-disease, Moyna says. Encouraging physical activity for overall mental and physical health, while keeping the focus off the "body perfect ideal", is a delicate balance. "That's the big issue and it's like fighting a tidal wave. How do you fight the images of wafer-thin models on the cover of magazines in every shop you go into?"

This is acutely relevant when dealing with pubescent girls and boy, when they are at an age where they are already questioning themselves and their self-image and identity in the world, according to Dr Woods.

Suzanne Horgan, director of the EDRC, also stresses the vulnerability of people at this age.

"They are very susceptible to feeling [that] unless they look 'right', nothing is right. They look to role models, celebrities. And if gym instructors too are telling them their figure isn't 'right', that's very dangerous ground."

She believes gyms should be regulated so that people who are clearly underweight or too young are not allowed to engage in strenuous exercise.

"The responsibility has to be on the gyms to say gently to them that they should leave and come back when they are older or healthier. The responsibility can't be on the sufferer. They aren't thinking rationally."