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A Guide to Self-Esteem for All Young Girls Not Living on a Deserted IslandCAROLYN MCMAHON

“Be yourself, everyone else is taken”Oscar Wilde

viiCONTENTSTHE GIRL IN THE MIRROR 1YOUR POWER 3What No Book Can Do 6Two Really Bad Words 8How Mean Are You!? 11What the Bleep Happened? 15Measuring Up 21BEAUTY — THROUGH TIME AND ACROSS OCEANS 27 rough Time 29Across Oceans 33Mauritania 33Karo Tribe of Ethiopia 34Maori 35Chinese Foot-binding 35Your World 38MARKETING MADNESS 41 e Secrets of Selling 44You’re Worth a Billion 48Advertising Tricks 50 e Bombardment 50Creating and Using Your Insecurities 52Overpromising 55 e Model 60 e First Side of the Equation:  e Image 60 ey’re So  in 60 ey Always Look So Perfect 61 e Second Side of the Equation: You 651. Understand What You Are Seeing and How It Makes You Feel 672. Be the Best You Can Be 673. Let Go 684. Celebrate the Beauty in Others (It Doesn’t Take Away from Your Own) 69CONTENTS

FRIENDS, FRIENEMIES AND FOES 73When Friends Hurt 761. Like All  ings, Friendships Change Over Time 772.  e Truth Can Hurt 803. Sometimes People Are just Stupid 804. When Bad Days Happen to Good People 835. But Sometimes Something Bad Is just the Beginning and You Need to Cut and Run 83“So What Power Do I Have Exactly?” 8911 Tips to Help You  rough 90 1. You Are Not Alone 90 2. It’s Hard, but Sometimes You just Have to Walk Away 90 3. Don’t be Afraid of Spending Time with Yourself 92 4. Know that Labels Aren’t People 94 5. Take a Break from the Drama Once in a While 95 6. Remember, Stu Happens 96 7. Expand Your World 99 8. It’s Okay to Have a Bad Day Once in a While 101 9. Don’t Forget to Laugh at Yourself Now and  en 101 10. You Know Yourself and that’s What Counts Most 102 11. Be Who You Expect Others to Be 102Boys, Boys, Boys 104 e Power  ey Have 107 e Adults in Your Life 116Family 120TECHNOLOGY, THE MEDIA & YOU 123And the World Expands Despite Ourselves 124 e Pressures and Pitfalls of Posting Your Life 1261.  e Pressure to Be Perfect 1272.  e Over Exposure 1293.  e Never-Endingness of It 130 ree Quick Ways to Fall Victim to the Internet 1321. Believing It Is All True 1342. Believing a Small Group Is the Whole World 1353. Assuming the Motives of Others Are Always Good 137viiiJUST BE YOU, GIRL

It All Leaves a Mark 138Constant Criticism 140Distorted Images of Reality 141CAUTION: DANGER AHEAD 143Fat Fixation 145 e Fat Facts 147Self-Harm 150Jealousy and Envy 152Attention-Seeking Behavior 158People Pleasing 161THERE IS A LIGHT 165Take Care of What Mother Nature Gave You 167Move that Butt! 167 e Stu You Eat 168Mind Over Matter 171Maximize Your Assets 173Don’t Ignore the Good 178Be Strong 180Pay It Forward 183Give Yourself Time 184Endnotes 186 e  ank You Page 188ixCONTENTS

viiiJUST BE YOU, GIRL

1THE GIRL IN THE MIRRORHow do you feel about yourself? What do you think when you look in the mirror? Does it depend on the day?Seven out of every ten girls believe that they are not good enough or do not measure up in some way.1 Seven out of ten girls look in the mirror and aren’t happy with what they see or with who they are. Are you one of those seven?Being a girl today can be hard. As a grown up, I can tell you that we have all had to deal with body image issues, jealousies, insecurities and raging hor-mones. But my generation never had to deal with the constant, over the top, bombardment of media images glamorizing an unattainable perfection. Nor did we have to cope with the 24/7 world of the Internet and cell phones, where everyone is expected to be “on” all the time, and where anyone and every-one feels entitled to judge and report on your every move, which, by the way, is recorded for all time.You are not only exposed to many more inu-ences, but also at a younger and younger age. Add to this all the classic issues of growing up and you can see how seven in ten girls may believe they are just not good enough. It can be a tough world to navigate through and many young girls are nding it dicult. Girls just like you. e rst thing to know is that, clearly, you are not alone. ere is nothing that you have said or thought that other girls are not also saying or thinking. ere is nothing wrong with you; you are not a freak. ere is no complaint that you have about your body that thousands of other girls don’t have. You are not the only one who thinks she is too fat or too tall or hates the kink in her hair or the freck-les on her face or the shade of her skin. You are not the only girl who is being ignored by the boys or, worse, being criticized by them. You are not the only girl who feels isolated, overwhelmed or just plain lost. When you lay your head on your pillow at night and the tears ow from sadness or anger or confusion, know that there are a lot of other girls with wet pillows as well. is is not meant to say that your problems are not unique or important. ey are unique to you and important. Anything that makes you doubt yourself is very important. It’s definitely a tougher world to navigate through, but not impossible. And the truth is, you really have no choice. is is your world. You need to nd the strength to not only navigate through, but stand up and be yourself — be the amazing person that you are. No more compromises, no more self-criticism, no more tears. Life is short and you only get one, but luckily you have a lot of power to choose how you want to live yours. THE GIRL IN THE MIRROR

YOUR POWER

4JUST BE YOU, GIRLLet’s start with a truth.There is a lot in your life you do not control. You don’t get to choose your height. You can’t decide your skin color or the size of your feet. You don’t pick your family or the circumstances into which you are born. The truth is, some kids get blessed with being born into a safe and loving environment, while others are not so fortunate. It is not a child’s choice or fault to be born into a life of violence or poverty. It is not a child’s choice or fault to be born ill or alone.  ere are things in life a person does not get any choice in at all. Some of these things can make life very hard, while some of these things don’t need to.As girls, we tend to add an extra burden to our lives. We tend to hold ourselves up to a notion of perfection that is ever changing and, in reality, doesn’t exist at all. We allow the super cial things in our lives, like our height or our weight, to undermine our confi-dence and prevent us from believing in ourselves and everything that we can be. We allow the world to in u-ence our feelings about ourselves in ways that we don’t even recognize. We miss opportunities or fun activities because we are not comfortable with ourselves. We compare ourselves constantly to those around us instead of embracing who we are as individuals. In short, we are often our own worst enemies. Think back to when you were a toddler. You never felt ugly or stupid. You were just happy to be fed and dry, and plopped in front of the TV for a little Teletubbies. So what’s going on now? How did it all change? “I feel ugly and stupid because the guy I’ve had a crush on for two years told me I am ugly and stupid.”

5YOUR POWERYou might think it’s obvious where your feel-ings are coming from. “I feel ugly and stupid because the guy I’ve had a crush on for two years told me I am ugly and stupid.” Okay, fair enough, that’s pretty obvious. But how come you don’t just tell that guy to take a  ying leap? Why do you assume that what he says is correct? And more to the point, why do you even care? No one likes to be put down. No matter how con dent you are, it’s still a jolt. But if you auto-matically accept that guy’s opinion instead of just thinking that he is a creep for saying it, then some-thing else is going on. He has the power because he is playing on the insecurities and the poor self-image that you already have about yourself. It’s time to take some of that power back. You may not have a choice over everything in your life, but you do have the choice over how you see yourself. It is time to realize that you are not de ned by how you look or an embarrass-ing moment in your life. You are not de ned by whether you are popular with the boys at school, or invited to a particular party. You are de ned by you. You are de ned by the messages you tell yourself. You may not have the power over all that life hands you, but you have this power. Use it. Sometimes, no matter how strong you try to be, the external pressures of life are too much. We can’t always make changes on our own. If you are in a bad situation where you are being hurt or thinking of hurting yourself, you need to reach out. Tell a trusted adult, tell a teacher, tell a good friend. Shout it from the rooftops if you need someone to hear you because you deserve to be heard. And don’t listen to anyone who tells you that you aren’t worth it, even if you are thinking that yourself. Life can be so much more than you are experiencing right now and you deserve a great one!

6JUST BE YOU, GIRLTo be fair, I want to say right up front what this book is not. is book is not a set of easy-to-follow rules on how you should do things in order to be happy and condent. It was not written to tell you how to dress, how to do your hair, what makeup you can wear or what kind of friends you should have. In fact, this book tries very hard not to make any decisions for you.First of all, you probably have enough rules in your life as it is. You don’t need any book giving you more rules. Besides, how could one book tell you what to do in every situation? Do you realize how many decisions you make in a day? Probably not; who keeps track of those things? But let me tell you, it is a lot. What to eat, what to wear, who to sit next to in the lunch room, what activities to get involved in, what to buy your friend for her birthday, what to watch on TV, which music to listen to, … phew! e list of decisions on any one day is exhausting; over a whole lifetime it would be beyond enor-mous. Besides, every girl is dierent. at is what makes us all so awesome. e decisions one girl may face will be dierent than those faced by another girl. And the answer that makes sense for one girl might not work for another. It’s your life, so it has to be your choice.e purpose of this book is simply to get you to open your eyes to the world around you, to understand how your world can aect the feelings you have for yourself, the feel-ings you have for others and the decisions you make. WHAT NO BOOK CAN DO

7YOUR POWERRight now, you have tons of inuences pres-suring and shaping your every decision and every thought. Some of these you might not recognize, many more you might not understand and most you can’t control. But you can control the way you react to them. Just as you can choose to make your-self feel bad by always concentrating on negative things, you can choose to make yourself feel better about yourself by learning how to focus on the positive things. ink about it. If you told a girl every day of her life that she was not good enough or pretty enough, or thin enough, then soon she would start to believe it. You would never do that to someone else, because you are not mean. Yet, many girls will do that to themselves — always telling themselves that they fall short in some way, actually choosing to make themselves feel bad. Why do we do this to ourselves? ere are lots of reasons, and hopefully you will nd some help in these pages to understand some of them, to help you discover why you think and say things to your-self that make you feel as though you are not as good as everyone else. And maybe you will begin to understand how you hold the power to change those negative feelings so that you see yourself as the truly amazing girl that you are. ink about it. If you told a girl every day of her life that she was not good enough or pretty enough, or thin enough, then soon she would start to believe it. You would never do that to someone else, because you are not mean. Yet, many girls will do that to themselves — always telling themselves that they fall short in some way, actually choosing to make themselves feel bad.If you say the choice is mine, why do you give so much advice?Before I printed this book, I showed it to someone who said that it may be too preachy because it gives a lot of advice. The reason I do this is simple — it’s because my daughter asked me to. My daughter, a young girl just like you, is also feeling all of the insecurities, anger, sadness and confusion that may be affecting you. So even though I talk with her a lot, I wanted to write something that she could refer to when she was feeling bad or sad or mad — a thought here or a story there — just something that may help her work through these issues. She is the one who asked, “You are going to give actual advice aren’t you? You aren’t just going to say that it is normal to feel this way? Girls need some actual suggestions on what to do!” So that is why there is so much advice in here, compiled from the thoughts and wisdom of many women. The suggestions are ours, but the choice is always yours. 7YOUR POWER

8JUST BE YOU, GIRLIf only my eyes were green, or my hair was blonde. If only I was taller or thinner (or, better yet, both). If only I were prettier. If only, I didn’t snort when I laugh or if I hadn’t accidently farted during that science class. en my life would be perfect. If only — two of life’s cruelest words. Don’t worry, you are not alone in wishing you could change just that one little thing about yourself. Young and old, women throughout the ages have wasted a lot of precious time and shed more than a few tears because of the dreaded if onlys. e list of if onlys can be endless. If only I didn’t wear glasses, if only I didn’t have so many pimples, if only I were smarter, if only I were someone else, if only, if only, if only … then everything would be great forever. ere are two problems with thinking this way.e rst is that not everything about you can be changed, no matter how much you wish it. Some things just have to be accepted. The longer you spend thinking about the if onlys, the longer it will be before you can begin accepting yourself for who you actually are.e second problem is that there is no end to the if onlys. Once you slay one, another pops up like the snakes on Medusa’s head. As soon as one thing works out just the way you want it, it is not long before you start to focus on a different obstacle, something else that is standing in your way to feeling truly good about yourself. Answer this question. When was the last time you felt truly amazing and condent about yourself with no if onlys lurking in the back of your mind? You are probably thinking about things you want to change about yourself right now while reading this — right at this very second? Seriously, stop it!Every moment of time you spend dumping on yourself is a moment that you have chosen to make yourself feel bad. ink about it. You have chosen to put your thoughts and energy into making your-self feel bad. Doesn’t that sound like an incredible waste of time? TWO REALLY BAD WORDS

9YOUR POWERI don’t know what is wrong this year. I am jealous or angry or sad most of the time. My friends are changing, the boys in my school are changing, everything is changing.I have always hated my looks. I have always been taller and bigger than all of the other girls. I always thought that if I wasn’t so tall then everything would be good. Now most of the girls in my class are almost as tall as me, but I still hate my looks. The other girls are all so thin and pretty, and I will never be that thin. My mom says that I am just not built that way and that I am beautiful in my own right, but she doesn’t understand. It can be really embar-rassing to be different. Especially when the other girls swap clothes and stuff and I can’t because their clothes won’t fi t me. I would give anything if I could just look exactly like them.And there is other stuff this year too. I’ve always had lots of friends and been popular. But even that is changing this year. My best friend doesn’t even seem to notice if I am around anymore. I don’t know why things have changed so much between us. We always used to have a lot of fun, but now she “forgets” to invite me to things and it makes me feel worthless.I’m just tired of feeling sad all of the time. I can’t wait for this year to be done.— L 9YOUR POWERI don’t know what is wrong this year. I am jealous or angry or sad most of the time. My friends are changing, the boys in my school are changing, everything is changing.I have always hated my looks. I have always been taller and bigger than all of the other girls. I always

10JUST BE YOU, GIRL

11YOUR POWERIn order to think more positively about yourself, you have to begin by being honest about the negative messages you tell yourself. In other words, how mean are you — to yourself? at’s right — your messages. Not what anyone else says about you — only what you tell yourself. What someone else may say about you loses power if you don’t believe it yourself. Whether someone says something good or bad about you, it’s what you believe and say to yourself that aects how you feel about you. For example, if someone tells you that “you are the stupidest girl in the world” then you might choose to believe that you are stupid. You might even think you have proof that you are stupid because you don’t get “A”s on math tests like all your friends. So it is easy to believe what others say — to let them dene you and tell you how you should feel about yourself. at’s a lot of power you have just given away. You can keep that power for yourself. You don’t have to believe the negatives, the stereotypes or the media messages that tell you how you should be. You can believe the best about yourself. Let’s face it. None of us is perfect, but none of us is simple either. We can’t be dened by just one aspect of ourselves. You may not get “A”s in math, but you are sure to have knowledge in many other areas if you just open your eyes to yourself. And if you allow yourself to see the value in all these other things that you are, then the power that others have to dene you will diminish. Everyone has doubts about themselves. Everyone has insecurities. Whether it’s the shape of your eyes, the shade of your skin, the type of house you live in or one of a million other things, the problem comes when you allow someone, or something, to use those insecurities to make you feel bad about yourself. “You are going to fail in life because you are stupid.” If you allow yourself to believe these neg-atives, you will actually repeat them to yourself. “You’re right. I am stupid.” At this point, you are actually the one saying those mean things to your-self. Take a moment and think about it. You control what you think about yourself.Okay, okay. I know what you are saying right now. “Nice thought, but it is not that easy to control how I feel about myself. I just feel the way I feel!” You’re right, it is not that easy. Lots of things inu-ence how we feel about ourselves, and it’s not easy to always ignore them or rise above them. Don’t worry about that right now. For now, just concen-trate on how you actually feel about yourself. How hard are you on yourself? HOW MEAN ARE YOU?

12JUST BE YOU, GIRLWhat’s Your self-talk sound like?A good exercise is to keep track over the course of one day, how many time you say/think something negative to yourself. It might be an “if only” or it might be worded differently, but the result is the same. It is a message that makes you feel not particularly good about yourself.For example: If only I was like her.I am fat.If only I was allowed to wear what the other girls wear.I hate my hair. I wish it flowed long and straight.Be honest. This exercise is for no one but you. No one else will know what you are thinking. If you want, write down your messages as you go through the day. Once you see your list in writing you might be amazed at how many negative messages you allow yourself during a day. Why is this important? The actual specifics of the list are not important. That is, what you are actually upset about on any given day is not the thing. Today you may be upset because you think you are too fat. Tomorrow you might feel like a loser because you don’t have that new phone that all the kids have. The point is, when you allow yourself to view your life in negatives instead of positives there is no end to the negatives that you will see.You may be shocked at how unfair you are to yourself. I bet you will discover that you say things to yourself that you would never say or even think about someone else. Yet you have no problem being that hard on yourself.The important thing is to see for yourself exactly how many times you dump on yourself in one day. If you are honest with yourself, you will be surprised by the amount of time you spend each day making yourself feel bad; the amount of time you spend thinking about the if onlys.And consider this idea. There is only so much time in each day. You can only process so many thoughts and do so many things in any given time period. The more time you waste on negative energy, the less time you have for positive energy to flow through your day. This means you have less time to try new things, engage new people or just have fun. You are robbing yourself of positive time and experiences. Desiring change is not a bad thing. Wanting to achieve more is not a bad thing. Wanting to take better care of yourself, look nicer or get better grades are all great goals to have.It is how you frame your thoughts that’s important. Positive change comes from positive messages. Negative messages undermine your self-esteem and rarely result in positive long-term changes.

Giving Up the PowerOne in every five girls will avoid giving her opinion when she feels bad about the way she looks.113YOUR POWER

14JUST BE YOU, GIRLI was in about grade four the fi rst time I really became self-conscious about my body. A friend and I were having a sleepover at another friend’s house. So there were three of us. The mom at the friend’s house where we were sleeping had bought us all matching PJs. It was a nice thought, but she bought the PJs at a kid’s store and they only went up to a certain size. I was already tall by then and already fi lling out a bit. It hadn’t really bothered me before. I never even really thought about it. But when she gave us our PJs, mine didn’t fi t. I mean, not even passable. So there were my two friends with their new pink PJs and me wearing a pair borrowed from my friend’s mom. I felt like such a loser. — M

15YOUR POWER15YOUR POWERRemember when you were younger — not baby young (it’s hard to remember those times) — but little girl young. Remember when you would go to school in your PJs, or wear your most favorite princess dress to the park. Remember when you just did and wore what made you feel good. You didn’t care if anyone else wanted to wear one purple sock with one orange sock over green striped tights; you just went for it, because you liked it. You made your choices based on what made you feel good, not by com-paring yourself to others. You had no idea what being popularmeant. You didn’t see yourself as too short or too fat. You just hopped right into the sandbox, princess dress and all, and started laughing with everyone else.  ose were pretty good times. Don’t you miss those times a little?But then something changed. What was it? Well you got older. You started noticing the things around you. Suddenly, you began to notice the di erences between you and your friends. At about the same time, your body started chang-ing — a lot. Small di erences between you and your friends were becoming bigger di erences. On top of all that, your world started to expand. All of a sudden there were a lot more people in your life — teachers, coaches, class-mates, all of whom began to in uence the way you thought of yourself. And as if that was not enough, Dora the Explorerwas replaced with reality television, music videos, YouTube, teen movies, fashion mag-azines and a ton of other captivating images, all inviting you to a grow up and join in a brand new world.So here you are. You’re growing, your body is changing and you  nd yourself sur-rounded by an exciting, yet at times scary, new world. It’s a lot to take in — a fan-tastically huge amount of stu to take in — all in a very short period of time.  is may likely be one of the hardest periods of your life to steer through. So take a breath, and give yourself a break. It is going to be overwhelming at times. You are going to get confused at times. But understand this, you are not alone. Millions of young girls are going through the same thing you are at this very moment. But why have you all of a sudden become so much more self-conscious about yourself? Why are WHAT THE BLEEP HAPPENED?

you all of a sudden so unsure about what to wear and how to do your hair? Why do you just not feel as comfortable in your own skin anymore? Is it the changes your body is going through? Partly. ere is a lot going on with your body right now, and not all of it is happily anticipated. But puberty can often end up taking the blame for every thought or emotion a girl has at this age. And girls are often told not to worry about things at this stage of their life. Maybe you have heard that you will outgrow it, it is just your hormones, these feelings you are having won’t last or, worse yet, that they’re not real. While it is true that puberty can aect many of your feelings and that your body does experience signicant change right through to young adult-hood, it is more than just this. Many girls continue to be uncomfortable with themselves well beyond puberty, right through adulthood. If it were just puberty aecting a young woman’s self-condence, then the cosmetic, diet and plastic surgery industries wouldn’t be billion dollar businesses (and growing every year)!Having said that, however, the physical and hormonal changes you are going through at this stage in your life are major and shouldn’t be under-estimated by anyone, including yourself. It is very important for you that you understand all of these changes. Nothing is scarier than when you don’t understand what is happening to your body, espe-cially if it is not happening to all of your friends at the same time. is book is not a book about puberty. How-ever, there are lots of great books out there that can prepare you or answer your questions. Just be care-ful about where you get your information. I know the This is the day when I stopped feeling pretty. I am Japanese and my eyes are sort of almond shaped. When I was young, I was always told what a pretty little girl I was, so I always felt very pretty and never gave any special thought to my eyes. But one day when I was a bit older, maybe grade five, I was at my friend’s house and we were playing around with some makeup and she said something like, “You can’t wear eye shadow as good because your eyes are too small.” That was all it took.— M16JUST BE YOU, GIRL

17YOUR POWERIf it were just puberty aecting a young woman’s self-condence, then the cosmetic, diet and plastic surgery industries wouldn’t be billion dollar businesses (and growing every year)!Internet is quicker, easier and cheaper than going to a bookstore, but there are a lot of jokesters and less than intelligent strangers out there who may not be the best ones to turn to when needing to understand the ner points on menstruation. Plus, who knows what will come back when you input questions like, “How big will my breasts get?” or “How much hair growth is normal?” So, not to knock the Internet, but if you want to use it, make very sure the site you are referencing is credible or ask a trusted adult to help you nd the information you need. So, is puberty important? Yup. But there are also a lot of other factors inuencing you right now and they are just as import-ant. And just as you would take the time to learn about what’s going on with puberty, you need to learn, or at least really pay attention to, all of these other things in your life that can affect how you feel about yourself and the world around you.Consider this thought. If you lived alone on a deserted island your whole life (right from birth, before you could be inuenced by any out-side factors), how concerned would you be with the shape of your legs? Probably not very much. You would just be happy that you had two healthy legs that got you around the island. You wouldn’t think their shape should be any different than they were. Now consider this. What if you moved alone to the deserted island later in life, after being exposed to boys’ opinions, magazine covers and MTV videos? How concerned would you be with the shape of your legs then? I am guessing again, probably not very much. Because, alone on the island, you don’t have to compare yourself to anyone else. What you will be most grateful for is that you have two healthy legs to get you around and up the coconut trees.

18JUST BE YOU, GIRLBut you don’t live on a deserted island. You live in the real world, surrounded by lots and lots of people with lots and lots of opinions. Opinions about everything from what music is best, to who is the greatest dancer, to what shape a girl’s legs should be. This makes life interesting. There are so many different images and ideas to explore. This can be a great thing. But it can also be a dangerous thing.You see, everything and everyone you come in contact with influences you in some way. Some-times you don’t even realize it is happening. It is so subtle that you don’t realize that over time your thoughts about yourself or others have changed because of what you have been exposed to. Some of these inuences can be very positive — the coach who encourages you to try out for the When I was in grade six, the girl that stood out most in the class was Jessica. To me, she was the “perfect girl.” She always seemed so happy and everyone liked her. Life just looked easy for her. I guess I was a little jealous of that. So I got it in my head that I wanted to be more like her or, better yet, exactly like her. I just assumed back then that to be like someone, you just had to look like them.So when school got out that year, I vowed to spend my whole summer getting to be as much like Jessica as possible. She had long curly dark hair and was small, like china-doll small. So I started to grow my hair as long as possible and I spent forever every morning curling it so it would look like hers. And then once I had spent forever curling it, I didn’t want to go into our pool because it would ruin all my hard work. I didn’t want to do anything that would ruin it. I basically just sat around a lot that summer. I also refused to eat anything more than necessary, trying to shrink my body to the smallest size possible. This was really hard since my parents allowed way more treats in the summer than during the normal year (I really missed my s’mores). Anyway, finally the first day of grade seven arrived and I couldn’t wait for everyone to see the brand new me! I took extra-long that morn-ing, making sure that I looked “just right.” I’m not exactly sure what I expected to happen, but I didn’t expect what happened next. I will never forget coming around the side of the school and running right into a group of my friends all hugging in that “so great to be back together” way. And there in the middle was Jessica. I couldn’t believe my eyes. China-doll Jessica had grown four inches, filled out and had cut her long hair into a short pixie with an added pink streak running through it. I didn’t look at all like Jessica anymore. And on top of it all, my new looks didn’t instantly give me Jessica’s life, like I had hoped. I still had my same life and Jessica was still Jessica — still always pretty happy. It took me a long time to figure out that was just Jessica. It was just the person she was. I wish I had figured that out before I wasted a whole hot summer without swimming or s’mores!— T29% of girls won’t go to the beach, pool or sauna because they feel badly about the way they look.2

volleyball team, the teacher who opens your eyes to art, the new friend who shares your love of running. But some of these inuences can make you feel bad about yourself, lose your condence and become angry. Although you might not do it on purpose, as your world expands, you start to measure yourself against all the other people you see, all the images that bombard you daily, all of the opinions you come in contact with. And it can seem impossible to measure up and exhausting just trying to keep on top of it all. Somewhere along the line, little by little, you might start to become sad and angry at yourself. You may try to x all the things you think are wrong with you. But you can’t because there are always more things depending on what the latest opinion is. And you get angry at the things you can’t x and you blame your God or Mother Nature or your parents or someone, anyone, for all those things that are wrong with you. Pretty soon (and you may not even be aware of this), you spend more of your time telling yourself what is wrong with you then what is right with you. And that is not the way it should be.Once you start living your life to someone else’s ideal, then you are lost. You will forever be focusing on the negative. Do not let the world around you control you. Understand how your world inuences you so that you can choose to embrace the positive, reject the preposterous and focus on what you are. You are a truly remarkable girl!19YOUR POWER

20JUST BE YOU, GIRL

21YOUR POWERWhat makes you unhappy? This is just a random sampling of the answers I received when I asked girls what makes them unhappy. is is not a scientic survey. Although each and every girl was beautiful (as defined by me) and healthy, nearly all the girls I asked tended to focus on external traits of beauty as dening their happiness/unhappiness. Now to be fair, the girls I spoke with were mostly from com-fortable, middle- class backgrounds. Asking this ques-tion to young girls in a war-torn country or to those living in poverty or in abusive situations would surely yield different answers. But the truth is, unless facing extreme hardship, many girls (and women) tend to list their looks as one of their top preoccupations. In extreme cases, a person’s unhappiness with their physical appearance can be due to a mental illness known as Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD). Although BDD is extreme, the struggle many young girls have with their looks can lead to low self-esteem. Self-esteem reects a person’s overall self-appraisal of their worth. It is defined as condence and satisfaction in oneself.4MEASURING UPI’m fat.I’m ugly.My breasts are too big.My breasts are too small.I’m too tall. I’m too short. My hair is thin.My arms are hairy.My nose is too big.I don’t look like the other girls in my class.My thighs are too fat.I hate my pimples.e hair on my legs is dark and thick.My feet are big.My sister is prettier than me.I’m not allowed to wear what all my friends wear.Nearly 1 in 3 girls, grades 6-8, often wish they were someone else.3

Body dysmorphic disorder is a type of chronic mental illness in which you can’t stop thinking about a flaw with your appearance — a flaw that is either minor or imagined. But to you, your appearance seems so shameful that you don’t want to be seen by anyone. Body dysmorphic disorder has sometimes been called “imagined ugliness.” When you have body dysmorphic disorder, you intensely obsess over your appearance and body image, often for many hours a day. You may seek out numerous cosmetic procedures to try to “fix” your perceived flaws, but never will be satisfied. Body dysmorphic disorder is also known as dysmorphophobia, the fear of having a deformity.522JUST BE YOU, GIRL

23YOUR POWERWhen you feel good about yourself and your accomplishments, you have good self-esteem. When your self-esteem is healthy, you have a stron-ger respect for yourself and are more condent and happier with life — all good things! e opposite is true as your self-esteem decreases. Self-esteem is tied to what’s important to you. For example, if the most important thing to you is to become a doctor, then your self-esteem will rise as you do well in school and get accepted into med-ical school and eventually graduate. You have worked hard and achieved your goal and you feel proud of it. Way to go!On the other hand, you don’t have to achieve a concrete goal to build a strong self-esteem. Some-times a person is proud of the fact that they will take risks and try new things. Some of the things they try work out and some don’t. e satisfaction and self-respect comes from the trying.People don’t often feel good about themselves all the time and that’s okay. We all go through some hard times where we may lose confidence in ourselves, but an overall positive self-image and self-respect is necessary to a strong, positive and happy life.Self-Esteem Matters75% of girls with low self-esteem reported engaging in harmful activities like disordered eating, cutting, bullying, smoking or drinking when feeling badly about themselves.6

24JUST BE YOU, GIRLBut when you don’t respect yourself and all that you have to o er, it can make life very di cult and you can su er both mentally and physically. You may become depressed, angry, anxious, withdrawn. You may have trouble eating, sleeping or making good choices for yourself. So, self-esteem, the respect that you give yourself, has very real consequences for your life.No one instinctively knows that they are too tall or too short. You didn’t know it in the sand-box and you wouldn’t know it if you lived alone on a deserted island. You judge yourself through comparison to others, because of the images you see daily and because of what people tell you. A cruel remark by a boy, coupled with supermodel images, and all of a sudden you don’t measure up. I know that feeling good about your appearance at this age is important. It is important to most females no matter what their age. We all want to feel good about the way we look. No one is suggest-ing that you should not care about your appearance. It is all in how you balance it with your acceptance of yourself. You want to concentrate on feeling good about your look, not obsessing about copying some-one else’s or, worse yet, trying to measure up to some fantasy of perfection. If you are always looking to others to approve of you based on how you look, then you will always fall short. If your self-esteem and self-worth are tied to nothing but your appearance, then you are set-ting yourself up for a very di cult life. It is because there is no perfect look.  ere is no one right way to look. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, which means that di erent people are attracted to di er-ent things. So if you are trying to please everyone, it just won’t work — you can’t be all things to all people.  ere will always be someone there to crit-icize something or point out some perceived short-coming. Plus, the truth is, you have to work with what Mother Nature gave you. Sometimes you might be able to tweak it a bit, but not always. You might not want to be taller than all the other girls, but it is not likely that you are going to be able to change your height.  at is just a fact. So instead of spending countless hours and tears trying to measure up to someone else’s stan-dard, you can choose to concentrate on de ning and feeling good about your own look, so it is only your approval that you seek when you look in the mirror.Why Are We Talking about All This? • Because when you ask a young girl what she thinks of herself, you are more likely to get a negative answer about some physical quality she doesn’t like than you are to get a positive answer about what she is good at or has accomplished.• Because we live in a culture obsessed with physical beauty, defi ned by very narrow criteria.• Because, through media messages, we lie to our girls constantly, telling them they can and should physically improve themselves instead of focusing on all the great things that they are right now. • Because young girls are set up to fail, trying to obtain a perfection of beauty that doesn’t exist.• Because young girls all over the world are struggling with poor self-esteem and poor body-image issues.

25YOUR POWERIn grade four I was singled out by the boys in my class for being “different.” For me, being “different” means my skin color was not white. My mom is Guyanese and my dad is French Canadian. I was asked why I was neither “white” nor “black.” I told them I was proud to be French-Canadian/Guyanese, and I was proud of my parents, and it had nothing to do with my skin color. Not knowing how to accept me, they decided to call me Chihuahua. That name stayed with me until my mom intervened.— MIf your self-esteem and self-worth are tied to nothing but your appearance, then you are setting yourself up for a very dicult life. 25YOUR POWER