This afternoon I was helping a high-school student that I mentor with her senior project. She was choosing her topic and doing research — and she chose body image. It’s a topic near and dear to my heart as someone who has struggled with it my entire life and as a trainer.
As we researched, I found that in 2003, over 223,000 teen girls had cosmetic surgery (breasts, noses, etc). It’s a frightening statistic on many levels, not the least of which is that at that age girls have not finished structurally developing, and it’s unclear what the long-term structural impact would be. The plastic surgery association has finally come out against teen surgeries (thankfully), but the fact that there are that many teens who feel that they need to have plastic surgery to feel good about themselves is disheartening.
Another really surprising statistic is that 40% of nine-year-olds have been on a diet. There is no way at that age that you put yourself on a diet. My mom had me counting calories at age 12, and I thought that was bad enough.
I’ll be curious to watch her go through writing this paper and see what other interesting findings she discovers.
About Jen Waak