How do you define beauty? Does it mean wearing designer clothes? Is it being ‘fashionable’? Does beauty have to do with your clothes at all? What does it look like?
Let’s take a step back. Here are the facts from the GSRI:
60% of teenage girls compare their bodies to fashion models. Body dissatisfaction can result from this comparison, and leads to serious health problems, such as unhealthy eating and dieting habits.
55% admit they diet to lose weight, and
31% admit to starving themselves or refusing to eat as a strategy to lose weight.
Less than 1/3 of all speaking characters in children’s movies are female. Women and girls continue to be underrepresented in leadership roles in the media.
So if these are the facts, and beauty is being defined by fashion models, then where do we come in? What does this mean? It’s pretty obvious that there are significant detrimental situations occurring from our lack of knowledge when it comes to the definition of beauty; and this lack of knowledge has a negative effect not just for those girls and women, but for the boys and men, too.
- For Women: Competition over narrow beauty standards and attention from boys also damages girls’ friendships, which can have serious health consequences since their relationships are crucial to their social and emotional health
- For Men: Sexualized messages and images of girls and women also negatively impact boys. These negative effects include boys’ developing unrealistic and unhealthy expectations of girls’ and women’s physical appearance, and may impair their ability to develop healthy relationships with girls and women.
No one wants to consider the negative effects media has on our society – but if we don’t… where will we be in just a few years? So the question is: What does beauty look like? Does it look like the super-thin girl on the cover of a magazine with too much make-up and airbrushed legs? We, here at Girl Scouts, think not.
GSUSA has recently launched the It’s Your Story journey. This journey gives girls the opportunity to spend time discovering who they are, what they believe true beauty looks like and having the chance to address the issues of body image in the media in relation to their own self-esteem.
You can check out more information about the It’s Your Story journey, Girl Scouts or the Dove Self Esteem Fund and watch videos from the 4 truly beautiful (inside and out), plus-sized models from Wilhelmina Models by visiting: www.girlscouts.org/itsyourstory
Check it out, see what you think and then tell us how you feel about beauty!
What is true beauty? How do YOU define it? Let us know!
-Morgan Coffey
National Young Woman of Distinction
Girl Scouts of Greater Atlanta
Check out Morgan’s personal blog here!
Referenced: Girl Scouts of the USA and Beauty Redefined: Girls and Body Image Survey (2010)
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