by Cyndi Li

Created on: October 27, 2008   Last Updated: October 29, 2008

I remember how self-conscious I was about my body as a teenager. I constantly compared myself to the images portrayed in the media of slender women with perfect faces; complexion a teen would trade anything for, and just the right outfit to accentuate the look. That was over twenty years ago. Want to know a secret? Nothing has changed.

Sure the women of today's media are skinnier than ever and they wear enough makeup to start their own cosmetic line. And the men are all muscle-bound with just the perfect bronzed-look to their skin, but the message is still the same.

If you want to be successful, popular, wanted by the opposite sex and taken seriously, you have to have a 24 inch waistline and weight no more than 98 pounds. Your looks are the most important thing and you should do whatever you can to look like we do. Our young, impressionable teenagers are falling prey to this belief.

As such they are starving themselves to death or forcing themselves to throw up after each meal in their quest to achieve this "Perfect" look. Some are committing suicide because they feel they are ugly and no one will ever want them. As if that were not horrendous enough, now teenagers have the power to look like these malnourished models at their fingertips, or more appropriately at the tip of the doctor's scalpel.

Each year the number of teenagers going under the knife to "Fix" something that doesn't meet the standards of these images, grows. They mutilate themselves in order to become something they really aren't. They transform their bodies into fake, plastic-looking images most men find repulsive. Reality is still kept at bay; just as it was when I was a teenager.

Nothing in these images says we are all beautiful in our own way. They don't show that beauty comes from the inside not from the swipe of a cosmetic brush or the pluck of an eyebrow. Our teenage children are being fooled by the media just as we were.

I recently came across an old picture of myself and thought it would be fun to compare what I looked like then to what I look like now. You know what? I really haven't changed much.

I am just as thin as I was then. My hair is longer now, but is still a natural shade of blonde. And, the clothing I wear now looks just as good on me as the brown corduroy pants and forest green polo shirt I'm wearing in that old photograph. So why is it I always felt like a repulsive-looking, over-weight slob back then, but now can see the unique beauty I possess?

Because I am old enough to know that I don't have to look like anyone else but me to be beautiful. I can wear clothing that's comfortable and still reveal by feminine sexuality. But, more than that, I can see how that beauty really does radiate from the inside out not from the outside in.

Help your teenagers to see the same thing within them; the media certainly isn't going to do it.

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