A lot of young people have low self esteem for a variety of reasons. If it's not due to parental influence or, in some cases, lack thereof, it can also be a result of their peers. Or, in more extreme cases, a deep innate depression that makes it highly difficult for them to establish a normal sense of self-worth.
However, with that said, I have a distinct feeling that our society's ever-escalating desire for physical perfection or, in some cases, our extremely abnormal perception of it, certainly isn't helping matters.
One example hit me just recently as Shauna was trying on clothes in the maternity section of Target.
Nearby was an underwear rack, so I took the cart with Logan in it to the aisle to see what they had. Truthfully, it's to the point where it almost feels wrong looking at the example on the front. The models, which are a fry cry from what I recall seeing in the 70's and 80's, are chiseled 6-pack toting skin statues, armed with what I can only describe as grossly and hopefully pictorially exaggerated outlines in their trunks. Something that, if real, would more than likely need a license just to carry. They're that ridiculous.
The women's underwear racks aren't much better. Somehow throughout the years women went from having faces that matched their bodies in age as well as a little bit of meat on their bones to something you'd only see in a serial killer's cut-and-paste scrapbook. Faces that look fourteen and bodies that look twenty-five, with skinny arms, legs, and torsos, but somehow ample breasts and buttocks which, in no way shape or form, matches the rest of them.
All of these hybrid freaks aren't the norm but, rather, the exception. Yet these are the goals that society pushes us to accept as being normal. No wonder kids are so screwed up. They are constantly given aspirations that are usually impossible to reach.
Perhaps it's time for a change....
#teen
#models
#teens
#selfesteem
#confidence
#depression
#expectations
