Recently, one of
the main problems of teenagers is “feeling insecure about the way they look”.
Actually, this can be considered as a mental health problem. This feeling may
lead to “anorexia nervosa”, which is an illness that a person does not eat
anything, or “blumia nervosa”, which is an illness that people binge eat and
then vomit what they have eaten.
Especially during
the pandemic, the number of teenagers that feel insecure about their body has
increased. In my opinion the main reasons of this parabolic increase are social
media, supermodels and advertisement for beauty and health products.
The pictures and
videos that are posted on social media platforms really affect the teenagers
dreadfully. People do not post anything on Instagram without editing their
pictures. They elongate their legs and add abs. as there is an “idealized body
image” on social media, teenagers try to reach that body by dieting and doing
sports. As they cannot achieve a body like that they might suffer from
depression, anorexia nervosa and blumia nervosa.
The other reason
is promoting supermodels. Each teenager wants a body like models who join at
“Victoria’s Secret Show”. Although everyone wants to get a body image like
those models, most of the people -especially teenagers- miss the point that
those models are not healthy at all! Most of them do not eat anything, do tons
of cardio and fitness, get done lots of plastic surgery operations and still
editing their photos and videos.
Another reason for
a “bad self-image” is the beauty and health products. There are millions of beauty
products such as creams, lipsticks, shampoos or vitamins. In order to sell
these products, an unachievable body image is created by these companies. Each
kid, teen, man or woman uses these products although they might even be harmful
for them. Unfortunately, for the sake of economy, those companies poison the
people, or at least, take their money.
There are some
solutions to overcome this insecure feeling. First of all, we should normalize
“not being skinny”. I do not mean “we should not take care of our body and
suffer from obesity”. However, being really skinny is not normal at all!
Instead of promoting the most perfect and unachievable body shape, we should
teach the teenagers how to love their body, themselves. If teenagers make a
peace with their body image, they would be more relaxed, happier, and more
creative or efficient for both themselves and the world. The World will become
a better place if people love themselves.
Secondly, food
should not be classified as “good” or “bad” in our diet culture. This causes
teenagers to suffer from malnutrition. Teenagers are growing up so fast.
Therefore, they need more food, and their diet should include each nutrient,
including carbohydrates and fats. As the foods are labelled, most of the teens do
not eat any bread or do not pour olive oil on their salads. Just in
order to be skinny and eat only “good” food. We should break this silly rule
and be healthy by eating all types of food. Please listen to me all the
teenagers: Do not limit yourselves and break the rules about the food choices.
The last but not
the least, we should create a healthy lifestyle and mindset for teenagers. I
would like to explain the word “lifestyle” before starting. If something is a
part of our lifestyle, it should be sustainable. For instance, most of the
days, a teenager should consume dairy products, fruit, vegetables, meat, fish,
chicken, bread and nuts. They all should take ten thousand steps a day and do
fitness and cardio for two or three times a week. Once a week, they may consume
some sweets, cakes or cookies, for a meal (but always being aware of the amount
that they consume). This lifestyle includes everything, so they will not only
be healthy but happy.
In conclusion,
most of the teenagers in the world feel insecure about their bodies due to
social media, health and beauty products and supermodels. However, by creating
a healthy lifestyle and mindset, we can overcome this serious problem which
affects teenagers really badly.
Suzan R. Hofstede,
December 18 2022
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