It's About The Way You Think You Look.

Is anyone else addicted to TEDtalks? I just recently discovered Meaghan Ramsey's TEDtalk from several months ago. Meaghan Ramsey is the one behind the Dove Self-Esteem Project and has a passion about our culture's image-obsessive struggles.Did you know that about 10,000 google the phrase "am I ugly?" in one month? If you jump on to YouTube and search 'am I ugly or pretty' you will find hundreds of thousands of videos on young girls asking the world if they are ugly or pretty... and the response to their question is horrific. In her eye-opening 12 minute speech, Ramsey pointed out the fact that “today’s teenagers are rarely alone,” and that “in an image-obsessed culture, we are training our kids to spend more time and mental effort on their appearance at the expense of all of the other aspects of their identities."I feel lucky to have barely escaped the incessant pressure of having to in a sense have to perform for my peers 24/7... the idea that it is almost impossible to escape that pressure that I would feel the moment I walked into the high school where I was constantly questioning my clothes, my hair, my makeup... everything about me.“They’re under pressure to be online and available at all times, talking, messaging, liking, commenting, sharing, posting — it never ends. Never before have we been so connected, so continuously, so instantaneously, so young. And as one mum told me, it’s like there’s a party in their bedroom every night. There’s simply no privacy. And the social pressures that go along with that are relentless."Meaghan pointed out a rather startling statistic that connects the way students perceive how they look and how well they do in class explaining that, “six out of 10 girls are now choosing not to do something because they don’t think they look good enough. These are not trivial activities. These are fundamental activities to their development as humans and as contributors to society and to the workforce."Our self-esteem and the culture of image-obsession is degrading the futures of our teenagers which is heartbreaking. It is so important to realize that our self-talk, the importance we put on specific body types, and the overwhelming amount of importance placed on our appearance is damaging. We tear ourselves apart when we nitpick and degrade ourselves in the mirror. We may no longer be in school and we may have skipped this pressure during our developing years- but when we change our own personal treatment of ourselves we can ripple out that same change out.