Girls Just Wanna . . . Look Different
It’s not just this young Chinese woman planing to undergo extensive surgery to look like Jessica Alba in an effort to win back her ex-boyfriend. Most teen girls/young women feel the pressure to measure up to the media-driven standard for female beauty—and the constant realization that perhaps they don’t.
This is confirmed again in a big way by a National Post report on a recent Girl Scouts survey of 1,000 13-to-17-year-old girls.
Almost nine in 10 American teenage girls say they feel pressured by the fashion and media industries to be skinny and that an unrealistic, unattainable image of beauty has been created, a poll showed on Monday.
Sadder still is this report from PRLog that 41 percent of 13-16 year-old girls in the U.K. would like to have cosmetic surgery.
When asked the multi-answer question “What concerns are making you want to have surgery?”, 62% of the female teens who wanted surgery said they wanted bigger breasts, whilst 55% wanted to change their teeth and 49% wanted to have surgery for weight loss. 1 in 3 said that they wanted to change the appearance of their nose.
Parents of girls need wisdom to help their daughters navigate the inevitably choppy waters of body image in today’s culture. A great start is helping kids to feel fully accepted and loved at home—but that is just a start. As always, we think it’s worth talking about these issues with your kids even if you don’t think it’s something they’re struggling with (and especially if you know it’s something they are).
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