I recently began reading Reviving Ophelia by Mary Pipher and found it to be a very eye-opening read. This book talks a lot about the pressures of American culture on women and how young women are pressured to change things about themselves in order to fit the American ideal.

Young women all across the country feel pressured to act like someone they are not in order to please the people around them and most of the time this involves participating in dangerous and unhealthy behaviors. Young women are taught to not love themselves if they don't look or act a certain way. This is slowly getting better as the years go on, but it is still a very big problem that many people don't like talking about. Why does self-worth seem like a blacklisted topic?

It is something that we need to talk about in order to fix it. There is no reason that women should feel the need to put themselves down or compare themselves to other women. It's awful that it has gotten to that point that many women feel the need to change their entire personality around in order to fit in. Young women should be encouraged to do what makes them happy and what is important to them. They should not be encouraged to attempt to change things they cannot control.

Many young women are dealing with eating disorders because they feel that their body or body type is not accepted. This is a huge problem and shouldn't be ignored any longer than it already has been. We are going to lose so many great young women because of this issue. Eating disorders can go unnoticed for quite some time and the women involved in them usually don't see a problem with it. So, it likely leads to major health problems for those who have these eating disorders.

The fact that these women, and even some men, are questioning their self-worth this much to take this step is outrageous. We as a society need to step up and accept that this is a real problem that is affecting real people. The topic of self-worth is a sensitive one but a necessary one at the same time. Instead of encouraging people to dislike things about themselves, we need to encourage them to love things about themselves.

You are you and there is nothing you can do to change that, no matter how hard you try. All you will be doing is harming yourself even more by creating a false personality. As soon as we realize this, it will be much easier to help young women who are struggling with their self-worth get through this and do what they need to do for themselves.