It ends up bouncing from one group to the next like a teenager suffering from role diffusion or role switching. Gender role plays into ego-identity like drawing a winning card in poker but without proper ego-identity it does not. If an adolescent becomes confused with these choices he or she may suffer in the ability to develop properly both emotionally and sexually.
Even though physical and mental developments occur separately, they form a close relationship during adolescence. According to authors Currie and Williams body image has a huge impact on how adolescents develop self-esteem. They collected showing a direct correlation between early physical developments to improved self-esteem. They suggest no mediation for this data. They opposite was true too according to their data, less development showed less self-esteem (Currie and Williams).
The suggested mediation for this correlation between body image and self-esteem during adolescence is the media and pop culture. In the 21st century, it is no longer acceptable to be ugly or fat. Everyone should be beautiful and skinny according to the media. The body image of a young adult seems to dictate self-esteem. The problem here of course is that not everyone is capable of perfection. Yet other qualities of the human being are negligible even though they are what helped mankind survive the test of time. Traits like learning quickly, being responsible, and loving unconditionally are all second best traits to outer beauty portrayed by today's media and pop culture. This detrimental world view is accepted by most American adolescents. It is the source of the...
This hinders adolescent's judgments, development, and passage into adulthood significantly ("Body Image: A Pep").
There is a resolution to this trend of misguided adolescents. This involves completely altering the media view of beauty. It also involves following precautions with teens like pep talks, explaining the worth of a person in terms other than external beauty and allowing time for teens to display worth in positive ways not involving beauty. There are many reasons why there may be more issues with body image in today's society than any other time in history. The data points to a construed comprehension of true beauty with one that means perfect bodies and does not involve inner beauty whatsoever. This is causing the problems in proper development from adolescence to adult and detrimental self-esteem issues related to body image.
Work Cited
About.com:Teen Advice. Body Image: A Pep Talk. 29 November 2009. http://teenadvice.about.com/library/weekly/aa060300a.htm
Child Development Institute. 2009. Adolescent Stages of Development. 29 November 2009. http://www.childdevelopmentinfo.com/development/teens_stages.shtml
CliffsNotes.com. Development in Adolescence. 29 Nov 2009.
http://www.cliffsnotes.com/WileyCDA/CliffsReviewTopic/topicArticleId-25438,articleId-25383.html.
Williams, J., & Currie, C. (2000). "Self-Esteem and Physical Development in Early Adolescence: Pubertal Timing and Body Image." Journal of Early Adolescence, 20(2), 129. Retrieved from Academic Search Complete database.
