Wednesday, 21 January 2015

Teenage girls and body image

I am pretty sure that I have mentioned this before but for those of you who are new around here, I am a guide leader! I absolutely love it and have been doing it for nearly 5 years now! I honestly love nothing more than seeing those smiley faces on a Wednesday night...

Last week was the start of our new term for 2015 and obviously the first guides of the new year. In our hall we have a display board which we try and update every term. Last week we decided to get rid of Santa and update the board with dorm thing for the new year. At the start of the year, most people like to think about goals and aspirations and so we decided to ask the girls to write down what their goals and aspirations were. 

As we were going round reading some of them and eventually pinning them up on the boards, I was quite shocked by the amount of girls who's posters said something about losing weight! Our girls range from the age of 10-14 and non of them are overweight! It got me thinking about it after I left guides and all week in fact. 

There is such a pressure of the teenaged and young people of today to constantly look good. Magazines/Facebook and other social media is full of posts about stars looking good and losing weight ready for donning their bikini's. How many can we honestly say stand on the front of magazines and say it doesn't matter what you look like or be happy how you are. 

Girl guides have an badge called free being me which advocates all about being yourself and being happy with how you are! I think after last week it is as important as ever that this is something we need to do! 

It has seriously got me thinking about this is week and I definitely think this is a topic you are going to see some more of on my blog!