Growing Body Dysmorphia Issues Among Females and accepting body image in children

Extract

[...] Call to Action A united effort is required for any longstanding impact on social perceptions and fighting body image problems. First of all, it should start with parents, educators, and community leaders being made aware and raising the consciousness of others regarding the negative effects of unrealistic beauty standards set forth by social media. Workshops or seminars on body positivity and self-acceptance can spread this information and mobilize parents to act in their homes. These schools have to play a giant role in developing lessons around media literacy and body positivity that bring about critical thinking among children in the information they are being exposed to through these sites. [...]

[...] Analysis of the Solution - Potential Costs Among the costs, both tangible and intangible, associated with the development of a solution for parents to foster children's self-acceptance are investments in resources supporting this approach. Therefore, this may take the form of investing in buying children's books that create an attitude of positivity towards their bodies, enrolling in mindful parenting classes, or even signing up for resources supporting diversity and inclusivity. While there may be some among these resources carrying some tag value in monetary terms, the investment put in them for the sake of children in order to help them form attitudes about themselves and the world is quite huge. [...]

[...] Today, in the digitized world, the most challenging thing is to control or put limits on the exposure of a child to these pervasive beauty ideals being put across by social media. Social media is part and parcel of life, and children would not fail to notice the enticement it offers. This places parents in a really tough dilemma of how best to mitigate the impacts of these standards that have been placed everywhere on the self-image and body image of their children. [...]

[...] In societies in which such standards hold significant influence, every call to self-acceptance may appear misplaced in the face of strong beliefs held and passed by parents and families. Idealistic and sensitive cultural terrains, notions of beauty, identity, worth, and social status are all very Herculean jobs to negotiate. They might be uncomfortable with self-acceptance teaching as the messages in this teaching may be interpreted to devalue traditional culture or alienate their child from the community. Managing this concern includes nuanced conversations that respect diversity in culture yet nudge toward inclusive notions of beauty and self-worth. [...]

[...] Such simple yet powerful practices have the potential to impact a child's well-being and future trajectory profoundly. Parents also play a critical role in determining their children's experiences online with regard to perceptions of body image. When parents lead their children to social media that advocates for variation in body size and good values, then it creates a healthy environment for self-perception. Discussing how the illusion of the majority of these images is helped through editing can empower children to distinguish between the manipulated and real. [...]