Girls often face significant pressure to look attractive. The quest for a perfect body or appearance can take a heavy toll, though. Find out what you can do to help your daughter develop and maintain a healthy body image and self-esteem.
Maintaining a healthy body image during adolescence, a period of major physical and emotional changes, can be difficult. Factors that might harm a girl’s body image include:
- Natural weight gain and other changes caused by puberty
- Peer pressure to look a certain way
- Media images that promote the ideal female body as thin
- Having a mother who’s overly concerned about her own weight or her daughter’s weight or appearance
Research suggests that seeing material that sexually objectifies girls — where a girl is seen as a thing for others’ sexual use rather than an independent, thinking person — can also have a harmful effect.
