Researchers were told of girls feeling ugly or worthless
A UK charity called the Children’s Society does an annual report, and this year’s report shows a rise in misery among girls.
Among 10 to 15-year-old girls, the charity’s report says 14% are unhappy with their lives as a whole, and 34% with their appearance.
Researchers were told of girls feeling ugly or worthless.
The figures for England, Wales and Scotland for 2013-14 represent a sharp rise in unhappiness on five years before.
By contrast the study found that boys’ sense of happiness remained stable.
What explanation came to mind before I read more? Twitter. Twitter, Facebook, selfies, Redditt – and how they all enable and amplify abuse.
It follows research recently published by the Department for Education which showed the mental well-being of teenage girls in England has worsened, compared with their counterparts in 2005.
The study highlighted the growing pressure of social media and suggested that a tough economic climate had created a more “serious” generation of young people.
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The proportion of girls reporting being worried about their looks rose from 30% for the period as a whole, to 34% in the year 2013-14 – while the proportion of boys unhappy with their appearance remained unchanged at 20%.
Social media have made it so much more obvious than it used to be that female people are constantly and ruthlessly judged on their appearance.
In another study, childcare professionals have published evidence that children could be worrying about being fat or ugly at a younger age, with girls particularly affected.
The Professional Association of Childcare and Early Years says staff have noticed children as young as three being worried about their appearance.
That sucks.
How the heck are we making 3 year olds worry about their looks?!
Three’s old enough to ask and follow the endless “why?” questions and more than old enough to have a sense of themselves. It’s certainly not as developed as that of the teenagers (maybe for the best!), but it’s there. They can appreciate and enjoy compliments and approval, and register and be hurt by disapproval. All that’s left to make them worry about their looks from there is (1) anticipation of disapproval, and (2) being able to tie the disapproval to their looks. They’ve got a sense of time going on and permanence of conditions, so (1)’s covered, and if they can understand a “why?” question enough to ask it, (2)’s covered too.
So if someone else can be complimented for being cute and they don’t get sort of comment, an average three year old girl is subject to concern there. If she’s getting anything explicitly negative, she needn’t even be an average three year old thinker. And they’re well able to tell stories and fantasize and understand differences in ages, which opens the door to imagining themselves older – and maybe judging themselves by the sorts of standards the older girls get judged by. Plenty of three year old’s won’t be thoughtful enough or aware enough to open themselves up for that can of woe, but it will be more than none.
My heart goes out to these girls. When I was 9, my mother told me I was ugly…so ugly no man would ever want me. All my life she dubbed me “the smart one”. I had developed a sense of who I was at a very early age, and no matter how I succeeded at school, no matter how much I was able to accomplish, it was a difficult situation because I always compared myself to other girls and came up wanting, no matter what. I was ugly, and that became part of my identity.
Turns out, my mother was wrong. I was not ugly; in fact, most people thought I was prettier than my sisters, the ones she called beautiful. I didn’t know that until I was 40 years old. My whole identity was ugliness for the first 40 years of my life. Didn’t matter that I put high stakes in being educated, accomplished, etc – no matter how much I tried for it not to matter, it mattered. How could it not, when society judges women by how beautiful they are?
Iknklast, forgive the personal note via this forum. I find my heart aching for you. My partner lived with the disapproval and disparagement of her mother all her life, until her mothers death recently. I’ve watched the corrosive effect that had on her and experienced the blow back that it had on her relationship with me and others. I think I can appreciate at a remove some of what you have gone through at least. For what it’s worth, you have the admiration of a stranger for the strength of character, intellect and humanity I see displayed. Kia Kaha!
I really was ugly–actual facial deformities–and heard about it in no uncertain terms (not from my parents, thank heaven, who were both dead by the time I was 15, but from plenty of other people.) It didn’t stop when I grew up, either.
I didn’t have the confidence to say boo to a goose. I couldn’t even imagine myself in any responsible position–as other people would simply see me as a joke. I knew other people saw me as worthless, and I was more right than not.
Things are better now, thanks to surgery that insurance wouldn’t pay for, plus the fact that I’ve aged out of the constant judgment.
The shame, of course, is all mine.
Jeff, I wasn’t asking about the cognitive ability of children. I mean, I cannot understand how we, as a people, are not treating toddlers with the kind of affectionate response that makes them feel accepted and lovable. I can’t understand what adults are doing to instill a fear of rejection and sense of self-doubt.
I’m sorry, Lady Mondegreen. Lookism is awful and unfortunately will probably be one of the last prejudices to die. I wish insurance did cover treatment for actual deformities even when they don’t constitute a medical danger since it has such a serious effect on people’s lives.
Gotcha, Samantha. I doubt there’s all that much in the way of intentional trashing of three year old self-esteem or specific digs at their looks. But they can pick up on the indirect, unintentional signals about how girls get judged on looks – even if, at their age, it’s just a matter of praise on the one hand or not mentioning it on the other – and read those back into implications about their own worth.
We can cherish them just as we all ought to and still hose them down with toxic messages without ever meaning to by our carelessness, ignorance, and willingness to be harsher with their older role models.
And of course, some people will think they’re helping the girls out by making them aware early on and consistently that their opportunities will depend on their looks. I like to think they’re a shrinking minority – along with the group of people who simply ARE content to be cruel to toddlers of any sex – but they’re still a factor.
I agree. I don’t think my mother was intentionally trying to trash my self-esteem. She was trying to prepare me for a world she was sure would reject me. Consequently, I withdrew and became so introverted that the world DID reject me. This was not her intent, I’m sure, but it was the effect.
This is part of the endless cycle of awfulness that surrounds women in our culture. Everything is so tied to looks that if you don’t have the looks, or believe you don’t, you are very aware that you will struggle to succeed. And if you do succeed, you are assumed to be ugly and unable to attract men. It’s a no win situation, and really not any better for beauty queens who are often so tied to their looks that the minute they see a wrinkle, they feel their life is over.
The real problem is that we tie feelings of self-worth to feelings of physical attractiveness. With men, too, somewhat, but not as completely.
Years back, in the midst of the ‘recovered memory’ madness, one public case involved a woman suing her parents on the basis of remembered abuse by her father that occurred when he wasn’t even on the same continent. She’d gone to a therapist for an eating disorder and had been coached to ‘remember’ the expected events.
It turned out that the family had lived next door to a convicted child molester during the relevant time.
But the reason I’m writing this was that these ‘innocent’ parents were so obsessed with their daughter’s looks that they had put her on diets, and even regularly administered enemas, to control her weight, while she was still of pre-school age.
For that, they probably should have gone to prison.
The shocking image of Jon-Benet Ramsey, decorated like a sex doll, by her own mother, is maybe the iconic representation of toxic parental interference.
John, that’s horrible, but nothing most of us haven’t seen, right? The problem is that parents have “rights” to bring their kids up the way they want, and doing anything is seen as interfering. The idea that children have rights not to be treated like that is brushed aside in favor of parental rights. So a child is returned to abusive parents over and over, until the child is finally hurt so badly or killed, then Child Welfare, which has tried to remove that child several times only to have a judge send them back, is left holding the bag…why didn’t you do something?
But cases like this aren’t even in that area. This is the sort of thing people shake their head at, but refuse to see as child abuse.
A lot of this comes from the idea that children “belong” to their parents. They are not people, they are property, and parents have a “right” to bring the children up to be mini carbon copies of themselves. Until we replace the language of parental rights with parental responsibilities to tend to and care for the child, so they can reach whatever their potential is (provided they want to), then we’ll never get past this nonsense.
Agreed 100%, iknklast. What makes me wonder how we can change things is that many parents who *do* treat their kids as their responsibility, not their property, still *freak out* over talk of “children’s rights”. I don’t know how to get through to them so that they will go back to empathizing with the child, as they might have been up until then, instead of empathizing with a a parent who is doing an awful job of it.