Development of the human body used to approximately judge a child's age based on physical development. Puberty is the process of physical changes through which a child's body matures into an adult body capable of sexual reproduction. It is initiated by hormonal signals from the brain to the gonads: the ovaries in a girl, the testes in a boy. In response to the signals, the gonads produce hormones that stimulate libido and the growth, function, and transformation of the brain, bones, muscle, blood, skin, hair, breasts, and sex organs. Physical growth—height and weight—accelerates in the first half of puberty and is completed when an adult
Sociology of the body such as anorexia and bulimia, and on the other end, there is a growing epidemic of obesity, especially in the US. Both ideals have increased widely over the last few decades due in part to growing mass media coverage in which there are norms within society and the always growing pressure to either look and feel a certain way. Sociology of the body Sociology of the body is a branch of sociology studying the representations and social uses of the human body in modern societies. According to Thomas Laqueur, prior to the eighteenth century the predominant model for a social