Mirror, Mirror

In our society today,  there is an overwhelming pressure on adolescent girls to be perfect. The media is constantly promoting images of women that are both over sexual and extremely degrading. This gives young girls a skewed sense of sexuality and body image, causing most to have increasing low self esteems. In dealing with those self esteem issues, society teaches girls to feel better about themselves by competing with their peers and tearing each other down for male attention. They also place things like  male attention, marriage, and commitment on a pedestal, as the greatest things a girl can accomplish and aspire to, while males are told to place careers and self worth over everything else. With this way of thinking, society puts increasing amounts of pressure on the minds of adolescent girls by misrepresentation in the media, putting girls against each other, and the marginalization of the female gender as a whole, thereby decreasing their overall self worth.

While some would like to argue that society does not put pressure on young teenage girls and that sexism in the media either does not exist or is not a problem, that could not be further from the truth. Society gives girls sexist expectations and teaches that appearance is what is most important. When girls are not taught how to love themselves and are instead pressured to focus on the superficial, a toxic environment is created that leads to harmful side effects for the adolescent girls involved. If we are not careful more girls could become depressed and suicidal. How adolescents are treated and what they experience directly correlates with their emotional state. Girls need to be given the same amount of strong role models that boys are,  so they can know that they too can strive to be the best in anything regardless of their gender. They need to be taught that they are more than just sexual objects or a pawn in a misogynistic society. Girls should not be expected to be perfect, but should be taught only to love themselves exactly the way they are. When society places undue pressure on girls through misrepresentation in the media, putting girls against each other, and the marginalization of  the female gender as a whole; they harm young girls, thereby eventually harming the rest of the world.

What do you think? Comment your thoughts below!

Written by Opinion Editor Jasmine Bonner

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