Guest Post on Girlology! Body Image & Self Acceptance: Advice from a Teen to Moms

Last month I was given the wonderful opportunity to guest blog on Girlology! 

"Whether you’re a tween, teen, or adult, learning to love who we are inside and out can be a difficult task. Especially when we are being bombarded with misleading images in the media. We constantly feel the need to compare ourselves to others and strive to be thinner, smaller, firmer, etc. So how do we stop it?


There is no definitive way to stop the beauty industry and media from portraying un-realistic images and ways of living, but what you can do is learn how to view it differently, and how to talk to your daughters about it"....(read full article)

Rising Above The Media's Influence

Constantly as teens, and even as adults, we are being bombarded with billboards, magazines, and tv shows that portray flawless skin, never a hair going in the wrong direction, and size 00 waists. Therefore, we want to live up to these standards and look just like the people we look up to in these magazines and on tv shows. But the truth is, NO ONE actually looks like this without hours spent on hair and makeup, and days spent photo enhancing. Now unless you have a magic Photoshop tool that allows you to do this in daily life, achieving the image you see in magazines is impossible :)

At the same time of being bombarded with flawless looks, we are being given a false image that sex, drugs, and alcohol are encouraged and ok. Not a day goes by that a celeb isn't plastered on the front of a magazine, or on the homepage of the internet for doing something illegal, and very few tv shows portray the real repercussions of our actions for smoking, drinking, or having sex as a teen.

So what can we do to make a change? Well we obviously can't and have no way to stop the photo enhancing and what is on tv, but what we CAN do is not let it affect us. Not give into to the peer pressure to look like unrealistic sized models, or the pressure to drink and have sex at a young age.

Next time you see a model in a magazine, try and imagine what you think they might really look like without the photo enhancement. It's not to say that we should all stop watching tv and/or reading magazines because we all have our guilty pleasures right? ;) But instead of letting it influence how you think you should look or act, don't give into the false image! Don't let anything, or anyone, influence you to be anything other than who you want to be.

"Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else."  ~Judy Garland