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Billboards everywhere encourage young women to be thin and pretty. Magazines we read display the latest fashion trends and how to apply your makeup correctly. TV ads promote sex and the desired image. Men are pushed to look like over worked out monkeys. They have to have the bulging biceps and the clean cut hair. Our marketing world has dictated to society how we should live and what we should look like. Unfortunately teenagers think that it's "cool" to look like a string bean and inject themselves with steroids to be strong.

The best selling marketing and advertising mediums show skinny women with the gorgeous guys. We see on a TV commercial that in order to get ahead we have to sleep with our boss or pay someone off. What message are we trying to convey to our teenagers. Why are we so focused on everyone looking like everyone else and looking unhealthy? Why are our teenagers starving themselves to look like these models or all the other kids? Why aren't we promoting individuality?

Well, it's not just the media's fault because we have our fair share of parents and peers who harp on children with regards to image. Parents tell children that they are judged based on looks and if you look pretty and thin that you will be excepted everywhere. This leaves children feeling inadequate and with the constant urge to be like everyone else. These teenagers spend their days trying to make everyone else happy because they don't want to be on the sidelines of life. Children pick on other children in school because someone may wear glasses or comes from a low income family. It is hard for a child to build themselves self esteem in a world based on such superficial bias.

We have become so superficial that we base the "in crowd" on how good looking you are and not necessarily how smart you are. Children are constantly being badgered by every angle to look perfect otherwise they will not be excepted. Our kids have role models in the movies who have had 10 plastic surgeries before the age of 40. There are very attractive male/female models who are constantly in rehab for drug problems yet they make millions on their good looks and mediocre acting.

In turn what is that teaching our children? We are teaching them that image is everything. We are teaching them that in order to be someone or go anywhere you have to be physically attractive. We don't promote people to look healthy or be smart because in today's society you can obviously get by on good looks. Then we wonder why teenagers have such an issue with their body image.

Learn more about this author, Lori Salsgiver.
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