“Teenagers & Tweens” offers an “06880” voice for Westport youth. Immediately, rising junior Madeline Johnson writes about physique picture:
Rising up, like most women, I performed with Barbie dolls. Nonetheless, together with sparking my creativeness, this playtime exercise additionally made me self aware about my physique.
I didn’t appear to be a Barbie. My physique additionally didn’t appear to be the fashions in Vogue or on Instagram.
This led me to consider that the best way the fashions appeared was the one customary of magnificence.
Madeline Johnson (nearest the ball), taking part in rec soccer at age 4.
I didn’t understand that Barbie’s unrealistic proportions have been unimaginable to acquire, and I started evaluating myself to those superficial pictures. As a technology, us ladies have adopted a physique and wonder customary from the photographs showcased within the media.
As a multi-sport athlete, I practice year-round by weightlifting as a way to hold my physique wholesome, and in form to carry out at a excessive degree.
With that, my physique is just not slim just like the fashions that I see, however slightly sturdy. I’ve soccer thighs, which I work onerous for and am happy with. It’s taken me a very long time to grasp that about myself, and the photographs I see of girls within the media haven’t helped me.
Madeline Johnson along with her membership soccer group, CFC.
It was solely once I noticed different athletes I appeared as much as, like extra senior ladies on Staples varsity soccer and lacrosse, my coaches, and the feminine athletes in all sports activities who proudly symbolize their international locations with their sturdy and highly effective our bodies, that I began to understand my very own.
As a result of a lot of the pictures I see within the media don’t symbolize me, I nonetheless need to work onerous to seek out constructive pictures to aspire to.
Madeline Johnson, on the Staples lacrosse group.
If I might talk one message about Barbie and unfavourable physique picture, I’d stress the necessity for self-acceptance. Although Mattel has created variety inside the Barbie merchandise they’re promoting, and the media has grow to be barely extra various, there may be nonetheless an extended option to go earlier than girls really feel represented and accepted in society.
Younger women and girls of all ages are lovely simply as they’re. As a society we should work to abolish, or at the least develop the prevailing magnificence customary.
Within the meantime, I’ll be on the health club.
(“Teenagers & Tweens” is an open discussion board for Westport youth. You may write about something: good or dangerous, completely satisfied or unhappy, your passions and goals, your ideas about your life and neighborhood. You need to use your title, or be nameless. You too can submit art work, movies or different media. If , electronic mail 06880blog@gmail.com.)
