Am I Ugly?
Teen Girls are asking the world, “Am I Ugly?” ~ This is a recipe for disaster. As if the media is not already loading the gun with bullets of self-doubt with impossible standards perpetuated further by models and actresses embracing these standards, now our daughters are taking to the internet to ask a world peppered with miserable trolls, “Am I Ugly?”
This scares the hell out of me. The potential for catastrophic long term effects from this seemingly innocuous question is beyond belief. I know how a simple critique can go into a young girls ears and get twisted and bent until it has burrowed itself so deeply into her psyche that there is no chance of recovery. To think that a young girl would willingly open herself up to this kind of criticism is unbelievable. I would take the computers and phones away, home-school, whatever it took to spare my daughters of the pain of living with and suffering daily with body dysmorphic disorder.
Why Am I Ugly?
Let me assure you, there is no such thing as an innocuous question when you are opening yourself up to the world to ask Am I Ugly? There will always be someone who will say yes, even if it’s just to go against the grain. To this new fad of asking the entire world, Am I Ugly? I give the throat Punch because I can assure you that somewhere in the world there is a young girl who just lost all of her self-confidence because the reply to her video was yes.
Somewhere in the world, seeds of self-doubt have been planted and are taking root in a child’s brain. Somewhere in your neighborhood, a 12 year old is crying because she was just told that her skin was bad. Somewhere else, a little girl is running before school and skipping lunch because her reply was that her face looked chunky. There’s a little brunette who is waxing her face for the first time because she was told that maybe if she didn’t have a mustache; she’d have a boyfriend. A blonde with natural curls is wearing a hat because somebody called her hair frizzy. A red head is trying to scrub the freckles off of her face. Another girl is hiding her smile because someone said her teeth are crooked. And yet another tween is crying because her bangs won’t lay right, last night she was told her forehead was too big.
Once these things have been said to these girls, you can’t unring that bell. The girl is changed and she is now self-aware of every real and imagined flaw that have ever existed within her. This is a slippery slope that many girls come to in life and fall down and never recover from it.
It will never end. Beauty is respective. The standard is impossible and the system of measurement is skewed. These little girls need to hear it from their parents, from the time they can hear, that they are beautiful; they are smart; they are funny; they are athletic; they are strong; they are miracles! They need to be self- aware that they are capable of everything, not made painfully aware of their one shortcoming.
What would you do if your daughter made one of these videos? How do you feel about these videos being uploaded by tweens? How do you encourage your daughters to have self-confidence? How do you foster self worth? Don’t let our girls fall victim to the internet by asking Am I Ugly?
8 comments
I hadn’t even heard of this – maybe I’m out of the ‘girl loop’ since I only have a small son. It’s horrible that they even feel the need to ask the question and if they do, that they are asking the public instead of those people closest to them who may be in a better position to react with love and concern. Parenting in the information and social media age is a whole different animal.
Love this post and couldn’t agree more. Value shouldn’t be a reflection of a mirror or television but a reflection of the heart. I try to instill that and remind in my teen daughter, almost daily.
Sometimes I get all up in your blog and I just find myself nodding my head.
After reading this and the posts you linked to, I have nothing to say…
Just picture me nodding….
I am not familiar with this new “craze”and I don’t think I want to. I hope to raise my daughter with enough self-confidence that she won’t feel the need to ask this question, nor cares for the answers she might have gotten if she did.
You are right Daisy, let your daughter know that there is none like her in the whole world.
I heard there was a website pertaining to this and even though i am not a mother, it actually bothers me that young girls were directed to this notion where they let others define if they worth calling beautiful. It seems the trend today…young teens dressing up and looking like like those girls you see on MTV and the what not. It is as if “it is a sin if you’re not beautiful” propaganda! So i think parents should somehow assure their daughters that beauty is relative. What may be beautiful to others may not to others. That it does not mainly rely on physical attributes, that there is beauty in finding one’s self-worth!
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