Emotions |
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Building a Positive Body Image |
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Robyn Passante
10/29/2009
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Ashley Faircloth was a junior at Middletown Area High School when she started making herself throw up.
Her five year battle with bulimia began as a reaction to a boyfriend breaking up with her for a girl who was skinnier, she says. Just like that, what she thought was a fairly healthy self-image began to crumble. “Bulimia just became the centering thing in my life,” says Faircloth, who lives in Mechanicsburg.
Eating disorders are just one damaging byproduct of body image issues among teenagers. Obesity, promiscuity and depression can also darken what should be happy high school years, all because teens don’t believe they measure up to standards of beauty set by the media, their peers and themselves.
“Especially for young girls, I think it starts out as, ‘I just want to be a few pounds skinnier’,” Faircloth says. “It really quickly, for me, turned into a full-blown addiction. That’s when it becomes about control. People get addicted to that feeling of being hungry. But it doesn’t start there. It all starts from little things like body image.”
The teen years are a time of great turmoil and excitement. All those changes can leave teenagers’ self-esteem vulnerable to pressure they sense from scrutinizing peers and unrealistic images in the media. According to the Teen Health and the Media Web site, a study on the media’s influence on body image showed that at age 13, 53 percent of American girls are “unhappy with their bodies” — a sentiment that jumps to 78 percent by the time girls reach age 17.
At the Boys and Girls Club’s Sherman and Kathryn Hill Clubhouse in Lancaster, director Loretta Pagan-Crespo occasionally hears about that unhappiness from the teens and preteens in her care. “They read magazines that show all the skinnier people, and watch shows like those Top Model programs or The Real World, and I’ll hear them say, ‘They’re all skinny,’ or ‘How come they’re never picking the ugly people or someone who looks normal like me?’” Pagan-Crespo says.
Pagan-Crespo and her staff work to counteract those negative images and impressions every day. The club’s members participate in programs on bullying, obesity and healthy eating habits, and they’re given a safe place to talk about problems with school or at home. “Kids are all about what they wear, how they look, how they feel. And some of the kids are not as confident as the others,” she explains. “I try to challenge the kids to not criticize each other.”
That challenge seems to be working for Mike Lauselle, 16, a sophomore at J.P. McCaskey High School in Lancaster and a member of the Sherman and Kathryn Hill Clubhouse. Describing himself as “very confident” in his own looks, he says he isn’t influenced by the physical ideal heralded in the media or by what his peers say is good-looking. “I really don’t base my opinions on how other people look,” Lauselle says. “I’m pretty open-minded.”
Eleven-year-old Chelsea Caraballo, also a member of the Boys and Girls Club in Lancaster, said she’s happy with the way she looks and wishes her mother was just as happy with her own looks. “My mom thinks she’s overweight, but I don’t think she is. I tell her she’s not,” Caraballo says. “She’ll look in the mirror and say, ‘Oh, I look fat.’ And I just tell her that she’s not, but she still says that she is.”
Caraballo says she eats healthy, especially when her mother’s on a diet, and she’s starting to watch what she eats.
Children as young as 11 already being mindful of their weight can be a good thing — or a dangerous thing. Christine Smith, a member of the Parent-Teacher Organization for Shaull Elementary School in Camp Hill, is helping to create a new program for the school’s third-, fourth- and fifth-graders about positive body image. Fashioned after Dove’s Campaign For Real Beauty, the program’s point will be that it’s OK to be what you are, and to be proud of it. “Everybody comes in different shapes and sizes, and you’re not supposed to fit into a cookie-cutter mold,” Smith says.
Smith, who has children in first grade, fifth grade and sixth grade, knows that body image issues really take center stage during the teen years, but they start much younger — and that’s why she wants to get the message out there to elementary school kids. “You hear the girls in first grade say, ‘I’m fat!’ or ‘I’m not gonna wear skinny jeans because they make my legs look fat,’” she says.
Faircloth, who now is healthy and married with a 1-year-old son, agrees that positive reinforcement of a girl’s self worth can’t start too soon. “If the world could do simple things targeted toward younger girls about body image, it would be so helpful,” she says.
Robyn Passante is a freelance writer and editor who lives in Carlisle.
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