I have always known that body image, especially with the relentless perpetuation by the media that convinces young viewers that there is only one ideal body type, is a problem amongst many in our country. This issue affects everyone, but especially girls and young girls at that. I guess I never really realized how deep it really went, and how girls start being affected scarily young until I started working with kids this summer.

There was this one day I was waiting for the rest of the kids to be picked up from the summer program I was working at, so I walked over to a group of girls who were sitting around chatting. Take note that these girls were between the ages of 8-10 years old. As I walked up to them I heard their conversation. They were saying how they needed to lose weight and how big they were and were comparing their bodies. One of them looked at another girl and was like “ Oh look the way my legs jiggle when I sit.” And “I wish that I had skinnier legs, you’re so lucky you do.” Now I was immediately horrified but mostly in shock by overhearing this conversation from a group of girls this young, but statistically I shouldn’t be. After doing some research I found that girls’ dissatisfaction with their bodies and more specifically their weight, starts at an alarmingly young age. Over 80% of ten year old girls are afraid of being fat. This means by ages 12-13 these girls will experience a huge decline in self-esteem and increase in distorted body image. Ten-year-olds should not be concerned that they are gaining weight, or that their body isn’t the right size. Ten year olds should be dancing, and singing at the top of their lungs, and racing each other up and down the beach, and playing sports, and experiencing and exploring all the amazing things that their bodies are capable of.

In many ways our societal obsession with our weight is harming our young kids. Everywhere you go you see ads for the newest diet fad, on television and on the Internet you see people talking about how they lost this and that amount of weight. Everywhere you turn there are signs and words telling us that fat is bad and skinny is good. Not to mention in the media and the beauty and fashion industry. All this has these young girls, these children, already thinking that they have to look and be a certain way in order to be beautiful and in order to be desired. And this is what troubles me deeply because this thought and feeling roots itself deep within a person and is something that one struggles with their whole life. This leads to immeasurable damage on ones psyche but can also lead to health consequences such as eating disorders, bullying, alcohol abuse and early onset sexual activity.

If I learned one thing from working with kids, it’s that they are constantly watching and observing you. We absolutely need to fight back against this epidemic. We need to do a better job of not only telling our children but teaching them by showing them, that everyone’s body is different and beautiful in it’s own way, and that there is not secret shortcut to being beautiful and desirable. You can do that and decide that all on your own. We need to teach our girls this young, because though you may not notice the influence that the world has on their body image, they certainly do, and we need to change this.