Food for Thought

These days I've been thinking A LOT about what it will mean if this baby is a girl. The thought of raising a daughter is oh-so-much more terrifying to me than raising a son for a variety of reasons.

I think young women today face so many more challenges than my generation did, most of them the result of media gone AMOK, and well meaning but misguided mothers.

Working with University students has really brought this issue to light for me. I see the extremely detrimental impact of popular culture on the body image and self esteem of young women. Young girls today are NOT taught that they are beautiful just the way they are, (or the way God made them, which was the message I often heard in school and church when I was a child) and are bombarded by fake images and role models that they can never realistically imitate. Plastic surgery has reached epidemic levels in the West, while digital enhancement has meant that we likely haven't seen an image of a REAL body or face in at least a decade.

I won't even get started on the impact of sexual explicitness in the media and access to pornography via the internet. If you had any idea just how distorted beliefs about "normal" sexuality have become in the upcoming generation you would truly have trouble sleeping at night.

As much as the media gets blamed for (and is indeed partially responsible for) many of the issues that impact the self esteem of young women, the truth is the home is the most important place. I really learned this working with young women with Eating Disorders last fall. In every single case, many of their distorted beliefs about what their body should look like, what was healthy eating, started at home.

This article is a good glimps into the kinds of things that go on in families, that while good intentioned, can have a lifelong negative impact on how young women see themselves.

I can only hope that if Olive Pit is my daughter, that I do not accidentally impose these detrimental beliefs on her.