As the mother of two young girls the constant barrage of articles in the media about Body Shaming worries me greatly. Both of my girls are beautiful, inside and out, and I want them to be happy with themselves as they grow into women.
The ignorance, or should I say arrogance, and sheer nastiness that people often show, all because they’re safely behind their laptops and smartphones (and therefore faceless) seems to exacerbate the issue. These people do not hold back on their comments.
Through Facebook and other social media, young girls are constantly shown other young girls taking selfie after selfie, all aiming to get the perfect picture, aiming to look skinny enough, busty enough, or things as trivial as drinking the correct smoothie!
And then there are all the YouTube videos showing how to contour correctly with makeup to create the perfect look.
Don’t get me wrong, I wear makeup daily and I like to wear nice clothes. I like my girls to dress nicely and have their hair brushed and neat when we are going out – or making sure eldest’s school uniform is clean and wrinkle free (at least for the start of the day)! I think taking pride in one’s appearance is important, but SHOULD NOT become obsessive!
But, even more importantly, I encourage them to be relaxed and natural. When we are at home and having some down time, it’s tracksuit pants and bare feet … and at this time of the year, gum boots outside!
What I want more than anything for my girls is to be happy, to be comfortable in their own skin, and most importantly, confident and strong in the face of a Social Media World that often confuses beauty advice as encouragement with beauty advice that is detrimental to a person’s self-esteem.
Our children are all growing up too fast in today’s world. We as parents need to slow that down a bit. Let’s teach our girls to be strong and ignore the Body Shamers.
Like I have mentioned in a previous Blog, Social Media is big and it is here to stay. We cannot stop our kids’ reading these articles, or potentially trying to live up to the perfect images that are portrayed, but we certainly can try our hardest to educate them, to inform them, and show them that in reality no body is perfect … and that’s OK!
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