“Inside of you is a smart and powerful
dynamic and capable self-confident, alive and alert fabulous diva! Let her come
out to play the world is waiting for you.” —Louise Hay
Teenage is a delicate age where mind
oscillates between good and bad abruptly. It is highly indecisive, emotional
and sensitive. Most teenage girls fail to understand this stage and fall into
short-term temptations landing in troubles and crises causing problems for them
and their parents. Parents find it tough to understand and persuade their
teenage daughters.
Teen
Girls and their Challenges
Nowadays, girls spend lots of money
for looks and appearance than to prove their substance. They care for what
others care about them rather than what they care about themselves. Their
expectations are high, and get stressed and depressed easily when they fail to
accomplish their expectations. Internally, they are more worried about fear of
rejection and criticism. They go to any extent to be accepted by peers and
colleagues which often leads to compromising certain aspects including their
character.
Presently girls are influenced by peer
pressure. They imitate negative aspects more than positive aspects from others.
They are more conscious about their appearance than their intelligence. They are
more interested in exploring bad than good. They get into wrong zones quickly landing
into troubles and regretting in later part of their lives. Self-esteem is very
low among girls especially if they are not attractive. They get depressed
easily if boys don’t look at them. They crave for male attention. Here are some
shocking research findings:
- In school today the most important currency is “hot monitor”. Girls will exchange anything and everything for validation about their appearance.
- Sex is a commodity you exchange for popularity and acceptance.
- Campus is a misogynistic bear pit where only the strong walk away unharmed.
- There has been a 12% rise in under – 16-year-olds with drink related problems. Six children a day will be admitted to hospital with drink-related issues. Binge drinking is more prevalent among girls and 25% of girls aged 15/16 admit to binge drinking at least once a week.
- In Africa being born a girl means you are more likely to get raped than learn to read; in China being born a girl increases your chances of being trafficked as boys are prized in a nation where a single child policy is favored; and if you are girl conceived in India you are lucky to even be born as an illegal dowry system makes you unaffordable and dispensable and you are just as likely to end up a discarded foetus at the bottom of a disused well.
- 25% of all daily search engine requests are for pornography. 96% of the people doing the searching are male. Every 39 minutes a new pornography video is created in the USA to support this demand. The industry is worth over $97 billion worldwide, more than the combined revenue of Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Yahoo! eBay, Apple, Netflix and Earthlink.
- The Lab surveyed 1,000, 15-19 year-old girls in 2005 about their ambitions; 63% said they would rather be a nude or semi-nude glamour model than a nurse, a doctor or a teacher.
- Girls are now three times more likely than boys to suffer with depression and anxiety attacks.
- Sex is now seen as a commodity not an intimate act. Both girls and boys are not concerned about the number of sexual partners they clock up, compounded by reality TV programmes like The Magaluf Weekender: Sun, Sex and Suspicious Parents; Geordie Shore and so on.
- Nearly 70% of female university students have experienced verbal and nonverbal harassment in and around their institution.
Researchers[1]
have found that reality TV has six key messages for girls. Take a deep breath..
1. Your
looks are the most important thing about you.
2. Your
physical characteristics (shape, weight, skin, hair, teeth, colour, smell) are
NEVER, EVER good enough.
3. Sex
is primarily a currency that you exchange for love, attention and power.
4. It
is normal to have sex with people you don’t even know or especially like.
5. The
world is a scary, lonely, dangerous and competitive place. Better get going –
you might lose the race.
6. The
answer to all life’s problems is to buy something.
Girls crave for attention, recognition
and validation. They weigh their popularity based on how many boyfriends they
have. Their self-esteem is very low currently. They want to hit limelight at
any cost compromising value system. This trend needs to be checked immediately by
parents and society.
Depression
in Teen Girls a Disease
Mental illness has become a major disease
globally. Research shows that women suffer from depression more than men. They
are more stressed than men. Knowing this research helps people guard from this
global menace. Although technology connected people and made globe into a small
village, it threw lots of other challenges. Presently people don’t interact
physically. They appreciate interacting virtually especially through phones and
skypes. The technology has changed the world leading to more of mental diseases
than physical diseases. It a challenge people must understand and overcome it
successfully.
Solution
Here are some solutions to enhance
self-esteem in teenage girls:
- You must love yourself first before being loved by others.
- Believe in yourself. You are the best, and the gift from God. Be proud that nobody can be like you.
- Emphasize on attitude, not appearance.
- Surround with positive friends who provide you constructive feedback and support you wholeheartedly.
- Be assertive. Don’t succumb to pressures. Don’t accept unreasonable requests.
- Strive for excellence, not perfection.
- Look for satisfaction, not recognition and approval. Remember, approval comes at a cost while recognition comes with consistent positive efforts.
- Parents must take initiative to interact with their children to boost their confidence. Physical intimacy is more important so called virtual intimacy including social networking sites like Facebook.
It is sad to note that teenage girls
in future will have depression, emotional problems, breakups, heart burns,
suicides, mental stress and trauma. Only solution is to love your family and ensure
physical intimacy.
The onus lies with parents and
educators to build self-esteem in teenage girls. The pressure to get noticed
and the pressure to prove is higher in teenage girls. Hence, parents must guide
them at home, and educators must counsel them properly in educational
institutions to boost their self-esteem.
Conclusion
The Future Foundation interviewed 500
girls across the UK and concluded girls fail to reach their full potential
because they are suffering from low self-esteem about how they look. Girls must remember that they are valued for
their mind, not simply how ‘hot’ they are because when their hotness goes away,
it is their character and intelligence stays on. Girls must shift their minds from ambition to
inspiration; parents must shift their minds from competition to collaboration;
and society must shift its mind from money to values. An integrated effort from
all stakeholders including teenage girls, parents, educators, educational
institutions, non-governmental organizations is an imperative to address this
social menace globally.
The need for writing this article on
teenage girls is that I am a conscious citizen caring for students and
teenagers globally. Hence, I took time off from my busy schedules of authoring
a book titled ‘21 Success Sutras for CEOs’ to write this article to provide
right direction to girls who grope in darkness. Additionally, the satisfaction
of seeing the light go on for other people is what gets me out of bed in the
morning.
This article is dedicated to all teenagers
suffering from self-esteem to build their confidence to dream and achieve big
in their lives.
“Teenage years are hard. And, having
taught high school for a number of years, I think they're particularly hard on
teenage girls. The most self-conscious human beings on the planet are teenage
girls.” —Rob Thomas
References
NUS Hidden Marks Survey 2010
Survey Girls Scouts Research Institute
2011
Diva Wisdom: Find Your Voice, Rock
Your World, Pass It On! by Jane Kenyon
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