The Pressure To Be Perfect In A World of Imperfection

A couple of ladies and I will be having a conversation later this week with teen girls at our local Boys & Girls Club Teen Center to discuss body image and media influence. The Education Coordinator sent me a couple of short videos she wanted to show the young ladies and boy are they powerful. I've included the links below.

Killing Us Softly
Photoshop Effect

These videos really made me start thinking about body image, how we allow other people to influence us and how we unknowingly pass our expectations onto our daughters and sons.

There are several layers of expectations: those we have for ourselves, the expectations of our significant others/friends/family, and the expectations society has forced upon us.

Take a moment to think about this, at what age do you remember first being self-conscious about wearing a bathing suit? For most women, the mention of bathing suit season elicits a feeling of disgust. We dread putting on a bathing suit and being around people who we know are going to judge the way we look. The figure flaws we can camouflage in our regular everyday clothing cannot be camouflaged in a bathing suit- they are there for the world to see.

Regardless of our size or shape, most of us have a flawed expectation of what we're suppose to look like. This image is only misconstrued more when we listen to society and people around us. Should we make an effort to be healthy? Absolutely! But, what we shouldn't do is allow someone else to tell us what is pretty, acceptable, perfect or healthy. We shouldn't compare ourselves to the person sitting in the adjacent office or our best friend or the current sex symbol society has deemed to be perfect.

Do you recall any specific conversations you've had with people that have shaped the expectations you've placed on yourself about how you are suppose to look? I can.

I once had a boss who shared with me that the director of the organization (a man) wanted to hire another candidate over me because she was prettier, but he couldn't get the hiring approved because the other candidate didn't have the education requirements. I tried to brush it off, but after observing how many comments this man publicly made about the appearances of people, I knew it was very likely to be true. The conversation I had in the interview, the credentials I had on paper, the recommendations I had from other professionals didn't have any weight. The reality is had there not been education requirements in the job description I wouldn't have been given the job. Talk about a blow to one's self-confidence. I struggled for sometime to to get over that and resented the boss who shared that with me. What compelled her to feel the need to share that information with me?

Sometimes it isn't society, but the people most close to us that can do the most damage to our self-image. For some reason, people who are close to us sometimes think they have the privilege of being allowed to tell us exactly what they think. Some of those people have done some major damage to the self-confidence of their loved ones and don't even realize it. What these people think are little jabs designed to "motivate" someone to get "healthy" is often continual salt poured on the wounds of people with an already distorted self-image.

Allowing others to tell us we're only valuable if we're this size or that shape or look this way and us buying into that philosophy has stolen away our self-worth. We no longer define ourselves by our academic achievements or professional or personal accomplishments, no, we let everything hinge on our appearance.

This mindset being created by all of the images in the media is creating a very scary culture. A friend recently shared with me that there are "pro-ana" sites that promote anorexia as a lifestyle! This is disturbing on so many levels. Women and men alike have died from this disease and there are people promoting it as the thing to do.

I think females are indeed very vulnerable to the images the media holds up as what a woman is suppose to look like, but the reality is the images also tell males what the "ideal" woman should look like. No wonder we ladies feel the pressure to look a certain way!

The real question we need to be asking ourselves is how do we change our own mindset and teach our daughters and sons to think differently?

How do we change the conversations we have with ourselves in the mirror? You know those conversations that our kids overhear us have as we get dressed in the morning and fret over the way we look in the pair of pants that have become a little too snug. The conversations we have as we try on bathing suits in the department store. The comments we make about the appearances of others.

We have to change our own mindsets before we can change the mindsets of others. So, what are you going to do to shift the mindset you have of your own self-image and the ideals you pass onto your children?