Question

1) How does puberty affect the body weight of young girls? What is the typical pattern of weight gain at puberty? What is the typical response of a young girl in this situation? What are the consequences of the societal emphasis on thinness for girls and the normal pattern of weight gain with puberty? Does this affect boys at all? What sort of weight gain patterns can they expect to go through? What other sort of changes might they experience with discomfort?

2) How is sex depicted on television? Give examples of a typical sexual encounter in television. Is this what we expect sex to be like? Is it usually like this? Are our expectations for sexual activity too high or too low? How might these expectations lead to unhappiness in a real relationship?

both please

Answer 1

These set of questions are interesting and actually fall under super-specialty medicine i.e Endocrinologist. An Endocrinologist is the a Medical Doctor, essentially M.D who would take care of the matters. However, given my strong theoretical knowledge on Endocrine Glands and Exocrine System, I am answering these questions.

1. Weight gain during puberty

Before we observe any changes, whether physical or emotional, it is pertinent to understand the Endocrine System of the body. There are basically two types of glands

1. Endocrine

2. Exocrine

Glands produce hormones that will carry out various functions of the body such as physical appearance, growth, moods etc. All the glands that don't have ducts and release the hormones directly into the blood stream are called as endocrine glands. Eg: pituatary gland, pancreas, thyroid gland, parathyroid gland etc.

Now, glands that have ducts and release the hormone into the ducts that reach the specific target region are called as exocrine glands. Eg: salivary glands, mucous membranes, sweat glands etc.

Puberty-the topic of discussion here is related to exocrine system.

Days before a boy or girl attains puberty, there's a region in the brain called as Hypothalamus, that will release a special puberty hormone called as GnRH hormone. The function of hypothalamus is to release hormones and also to maintain the body temperature (if you are maintaining 98.4 F temperature, the credit goes to hypothalamus).

Coming back to GnRH, the hormone released by Hypothalamus, will reach the Pituatary Gland, which is right below hypothalamus. This pituatary gland, which is an exocrine gland, will further add two more hormones called as FSH (Follicle Stimulating Hormone) and Leuitnizing Hormone (LH) directly into the blood stream thereby resulting puberty.

Follicle Stimulating Hormone has its own side-effects such as increasing the weight gain. To understand the relation between weight gain in girls during puberty, several studies were carried out, and after observing each and every step of the process mentioned above, the researchers concluded that it's FSH that's inducing the weight gain. This was ascertained by the US National Library of Medicine.

The typical response of any girl would be shy and confusion. It's natural if one girl feels more uncomfortable as any person irrespective of gender for that matter would feel uneasy and strange when something new happens to their body. It's a part of development, and women are surrounded by elders of the same gender who would provide the much required support and strength during this period, so there's nothing much to focus on it.

Puberty is similar to the boys too, but there's no way that a boy can suddenly understand that he attained the puberty as there are no menstruation cycles as such. Over the next few months, he would eventually notice some major changes to his body. There would be no feeling of shy for the boys in most of the cases. The voice would be the most impacted in boys when they attain puberty.

2. This question is contrary. What we see on televisions and films is just acting, even if it's real, we must understand the fact that they are acting and not living it. Knowledge about these drives should be imparted at schools so that students don't search for that inappropriate material on televisions.

(Please hit thumbs up if you like my question).