Young Girls and Self Esteem

A new blog about the pressure on young girls

A coach I know has just started writing a great blog; what is so great about it is that she reads the newspapers and posts some great stuff. Here are three  interesting things that I found.

A six-week, Government funded course is claiming to prepare young women “For the business world and their social life”, by teaching them how to walk in high heels. The course, which is offered as an extra-curricular activity to full time students at South Thames College, is designed to teach students how to walk in heels, improve their posture, walk lighter and improve confidence.

OK, I’m all for teaching our young girls skills but, walking in heels, can that really help? Is that not just saying you are how you look and present yourself? Surely there are better thing the government could be spending their money on?

A major new survey of 4,000 parents and children has found that the average family spends just 49 minutes a day together. Almost half of those surveyed admitted they did not spend enough ‘quality’ time together as a family.

This shocked me. 49 minutes felt like a lot, but what are they doing in that 49 minutes, I wonder? My guess is that it is time with something else going on; what do you think?

Yesterday, I was flicking through The Times, when I came across an interesting article. “Generation Me is too far from reality to care about others.” The article was commenting on some research into the behaviour of college students in the United States. The research found that concern for other people’s feelings is declining among young people. This is being replaced by a ‘Generation Me’ of self-centred and competitive individuals, after the findings found that young people today are 40 per cent lower in empathy than their counterparts 20 – 30 years ago. How sad.

The researchers involved in the study suggest the main reason for the decline may be technology, which has been accused of replacing human interaction. Face book, Twitter, My Space and Bebo, the virtual playgrounds where so many young people love to hang out.

Now this really made me cross when I read this. Lower in empathy; don’t care about others feelings, that is certainly not what I see. I see children who possibly don’t care so much about what others think about them, which I personally think is a good thing, children who may have less respect for their elders, a phrase that always irritated the hell out of me and a generation of children that do feel they deserve more, children that are so galvanised about fairness and ending inequality. How can that be Generation Me?

Oh and guess what, they blame technology because we cannot empathise on-line. Have they not all forgotten that these children have perfectly great social lives with their friends at school and socialise quite well face to face?

Yes, technology does cause some challenges, mainly to do with resilience but it is not making our children self-obsessed. Please stop it with the youth bashing! If you really wanted to look for a Generation Me label, surely is Gen X would fit it much better. Self-reliant rebels who really didn’t care about who they upset!

What is wrong with our young girls?

Why so much foundation?

OK, I had the pleasure of going into town on a Saturday with my daughter, something I hardly ever do. As we sat on the bench eating and watching the world go by, I was struck by two things.

All the youth looked the same and looked so miserable!

I asked Bronte what she noticed when looking at all the young people walking past. After telling me to stop staring, she said, “They all look the same don’t they?” They sure did; foundation plastered on, black eyes, skinny jeans and low t-shirt type tops. “Why do they all look like that?” I asked her. “So that they don’t stick out!” she answered.

As we sat and pondered more and, much to Bronte’s horror looked at them more, I began to wonder who their role models are, who are they trying to look like. I went through all the female actresses and pop stars I could think of and it wasn’t them. Then it hit me – they all looked like glamour models, even the same miserable expressions! They were all mini Katie Price!

Why on earth would they choose to copy her looks? Perhaps, to young people, it looks like she got where she is without any work, perhaps just wearing loads of foundation gets you noticed! I was at a loss.

On the way home I shared my thoughts with Bronte, who with a look of horror on her face agreed with me and promtly asked me to give her make-up lessons when she got home.

How often do our young people follow the crowd without ever thinking why?

Motivating the next Generation

Our Young Girls need this

It is very rarely I recommend books but this book on happiness and self esteem for youth is definitely worth getting your hands on.

Now saying that mine only just arrived ( the joys of living in the U.K.) so I cannot review it yet, however what I can say is that the author Gabrielle Bernstein is an inspiration lady on a mission and I totally can support that.

Gabrielle’s first book ADD MORE ~ing TO YOUR LIFE – A HIP GUIDE TO HAPPINESS is released today

I had a chat with Gabrielle about her book and modern day girls.

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