Young children are incredibly sensitive to the world around them, so we must be vigilant about the media messages that pour into our homes. These messages are everywhere, on TV programmes, in magazines, on the high street, in shop windows and in shopping centres. Some of these ads may have an impact on our daughters, while others are targeted at little girls. Either way, the message is unhelpful to girls’ mental health and their self-image. Parents should strictly control and keep out these things that are detrimental to their children's growth. When their daughters grow older, parents should also teach them how to identify which information is harmful to them. We need to be our children's guardians until they are able to combat these harmful messages themselves.
One evening when our daughter was less than 3 years old, she was playing on the rug in front of the TV in the living room while we sat and talked. The daughter suddenly said loudly and clearly: "This is great! That lady's husband will love her more now because she has become slimmer." It turned out that she was not playing at the moment, but looked up to watch TV. We both got up almost at the same time and rushed over to turn off the TV, but we wanted to make our actions less deliberate. This feeling is so weird. Advertisements for slimming products shown on Australian television graphically show fat people looking happy because they suddenly lost weight. Our toddler daughter took in all the messages—being loved equals being thin, being a woman equals grooming, and being married equals life goals.
Joan (33 years old), Daniel (33 years old)
Once, I was picking out clothes for a trip the next day, and as usual, my two-year-old daughter was watching beside me. With. I chose a pair of tight, high-waisted black jeans, the kind you have to strain to pull up. I accidentally caught a glimpse of my little blond girl shaking her body in front of the mirror, turning her head and staring blankly at her diaper-wrapped butt, with a look like "I wear these pants, but my butt looks too big." "It's gone" expression! Seeing this scene, I was shocked and almost shouted.
Claire (39 years old)
About 15 years ago, many companies began to extend their claws to girls. Marketers realize that this is an untapped group, and this group is the most resistant marketing target in the world. Large companies often hire child psychologists and ask them for advice on how to expand sales. They are even willing to use methods that are harmful to children if necessary. Yes, some tobacco companies, and some equally unscrupulous major corporations, have hired psychologists to help them market their products. With so-called scientific support, they become even more unscrupulous. In some underdeveloped countries, unscrupulous companies dress teenage children in fashionable clothes and expensive-looking sneakers, and then send these children to the streets to hand out free cigarettes to other children. And these unscrupulous companies don't worry about whether the tar content of these cigarettes is high or low. Just in 2016, an Australian brewing company launched a pink soda drink with several small red hearts printed on the plastic bottle, and the alcohol content of this drink was 8%. Fortunately, the law now prohibits the production of such alcoholic products, as they are blatantly targeting the younger generation. Similar drinks were quickly withdrawn from the market (but it took nearly 20 years to pass such a law).
At the beginning of the 21st century, the situation became even worse. Experts employed by those businesses say girls and boys are very different. Girls are more susceptible to social cueing. If two elementary school girls are good friends, and one of them frowns or looks gloomy by chance, the other will not be able to let it go for the whole day. If it is two boys who have a good relationship, they may conflict, fight, and even get hurt and bleed a little, but they will soon be able to "laugh away their grudges" and leave all their worries behind. . Boys don't remember things, or to be more precise, boys are born not to take these things seriously at all, while girls care about such things. Of course, we still need to teach boys to act with consideration for other people's feelings.
Armed with this information and other insights into children's psyches discussed in this book, advertisers began spending millions of dollars targeting girls under the age of 10. In fact, the very concept of "girls under 10" was invented by advertisers. In the eyes of advertisers, 11 years old seems to be an age without any special value. An 11-year-old child only needs to add another year to become a teenager (I want to say to advertisers, children are not "less than", they are They are as old as they are, don’t make a fuss about their age).
These advertisers have had great success. Today, 40% of 10-year-old girls worry that their appearance is not good enough. They strictly control their food intake in order to lose weight and improve their body shape, but these efforts are actually harmful and futile. Because all girls will have a little baby fat for half a year before entering puberty, and in order to develop healthily in the future, they need to take in enough estrogen, so it is not good for girls to care too much about their weight.
People in the past knew this and didn't care about a girl's weight. But now? Mothers who are overly sensitive to their daughters' appearance and careless fathers will tell their daughters directly: "Wow! Why are you getting fatter?"
That's the truth of the matter. As a result, girls lose 4 years, 4 years of precious time that they can use to develop their creativity and build self-confidence. 10-year-old children care too much about fashion (or, in other words, they have fashion anxiety), 12-year-old children are afraid of not keeping up with trends in clothing, food and drink, and 14-year-old children use their pocket money to buy cosmetics, but in fact they have a lot of things. Collagen faces don’t need to apply these things at all. A 12-year-old girl may also develop an eating disorder because she fantasizes about being as skinny as the models in magazines she has seen countless times. As a result, the child's weight will be like a roller coaster, rising and falling, so that the metabolism is completely out of balance. Girls as young as 16 are begging their parents to take them for breast augmentation or labiaplasty (yes, you read that right, those words literally mean it). And this trend shows no signs of stopping at all.
There is only one way to avoid all this, and that is to protect your daughter from the influence of bad media information, and this requires you to start with yourself. Now let's talk about what to do.
Once, I went to a school to give a lecture on "How to Raise Girls." In the meantime, I had a sudden idea and said to the audience: "If you are not satisfied with your body, please raise your hand."
Now, you can also evaluate your satisfaction with your body. Check the box below that best describes your situation.
1. I really wish I could change my body. I am dissatisfied with many aspects of my current body.
2. I can basically accept my body, although there are a few parts that I want to change.
3. I feel my body is beautiful and I love it unconditionally. I treat it tenderly and sincerely thank God for giving me such a body.
Among the people who came to listen to the lecture that day, 98% raised their hands, and only 2% would choose the third description. But if you want to help your daughter avoid the trap of focusing too much on appearance, you need to be alert and tell yourself that you should choose the third description.
The following is a personal experience from my teenage years.
I am very thin, very thin. I'm so happy that I have a body that's strong and can do basically anything I want it to do. I love my body because it’s amazing and it’s been with me for 60 years. But when I was a teenager, that was not how I saw it. At that time, our school was very poor and had no swimming pool, so we had to go to the beach to take swimming lessons. In the locker room, I would hide from my classmates and not take off any clothes until they all left before I started changing into my swimsuit. When swimming in the sea, I would also stay away from others (especially girls).
I hate my body. I have tried various methods and spared no time and energy, but I have never grown muscles. So what I want to say is that teenagers will all have this stage. We all want to look handsome and beautiful.
But when faced with the same problem, today's children are under 10 times more pressure than before. So we must be careful not to let our children endure this kind of pressure at home. To do this, dad or mom should take the lead.