DiscoverYour Daughter

Here’s a disturbing statistic: A whopping 90 percent of 8- to 12-year-old girls surveyed by Discovery Girls magazine worry that they don’t look “good enough.” Where does all this insecurity about their looks come from? No doubt there are other contributing factors, but it’s safe to assume that the advertising industry can take a lot of the credit. During her childhood and adolescence, a girl will see tens of thousands of media images, many of which portray an unrealistic image of women and girls. You can see the negative effects of advertising everywhere. Clothing advertisements in magazines, Internet ads, television commercials, and even ads she might encounter on her cell phone—all of these mediums send messages to her about how she should look.

As her parent, you know that your daughter is uniquely talented, smart, and beautiful inside and out, and it can be painful to realize that she might not see herself in that same light. How do you help your impressionable tween daughter see—and really believe!—that she’s truly beautiful the way she is?

Here are the three most common types of potentially harmful advertising your daughter will encounter, and what you can do to help your daughter see through the negative messages.

Negative Effects of Advertising

Unrealistic images give girls unrealistic ideas about beauty.
We all know that a lot of work goes into a model before the photo shoot begins—including makeup artistry, hair extensions, and costuming. But that’s only the beginning. Today, computer programs can do anything from removing a blemish to reshaping a chin or waistline to much, much more. As an adult, you know that the images you see in magazines aren’t accurate portrayals of real women—and yet it can still be hard not to feel like they represent an ideal you’re supposed to live up to. Imagine how much harder it is for tween girls, who are still in the process of figuring out who they are. It’s only natural for girls to want to compare themselves to their friends and nearly every other girl they see—including the images in the media.

Most normal girls will never be able to even come close to the images they see in a fashion magazine. The average size of the idealized woman—that is, models—is 13 to 19 percent below a healthy weight and is unachievable for most women. Add airbrushed skin, thick glossy hair, and perfectly symmetrical features—all helped along with photo editing—and these images can be devastating to a young girl’s self-esteem. Seeing one “perfect” picture after another can give a girl unrealistic expectations about how she should look and make her feel like she’s not good enough.

Sex sells.
The saying “sex sells” may be old, but it has taken on a new life today. Advertising now is extremely sexual in nature, which teaches girls to act more like sexual objects than little girls. Plus, boys who grow up seeing girls portrayed as sexual objects perceive this to be normal. The result is that this kind of advertising can make your tween feel like she has to look and act sexy before she even reaches high school. She may even feel pressured to have sex before she’s really ready.

Ads glorify an unhealthy lifestyle.
Take a look at almost any fast-food restaurant commercial and you’ll see a beautiful, thin, healthy-looking person eating a 2,000 calorie fast-food meal. An adult might logically think, There’s no way she eats that in real life. But your daughter may find it harder to see through the ad’s deceptive message. She just knows that she wants to be like the model in the commercial—and if the model can eat fast food and still look that great, your daughter might feel like she should be able to do the same. Similarly, take a look at commercials for video games or junk food—many send the message that being sedentary and eating junk food will offer you a healthy, happy life.

In real life, however, we know the opposite is true. Poor health choices can develop into long-term habits that hurt children throughout their lives. Advertising that glorifies a sedentary lifestyle and eating junk food mutes the consequences of those choices.

Youth and Advertising: How You Can Help

As a parent, you can help your daughter see through the falsehood of advertising, so she won’t continually compare herself to what she sees in the media. Here are three things you can do to help your daughter to see through the hype.

Replace negative advertising with positive advertising.
Although you can’t keep your daughter sheltered from all negative advertising, you can limit the number of fashion magazines and other offenders in your home. If you’re not sure where to start, check out About-face.org, a web site dedicated to combating negative and distorted images of women. It offers a list of the top 10 offenders of body images in the advertising world.

Instead of magazines that foster unhealthy images of women, choose age-appropriate subscriptions to healthy magazines for tween girls, such as Discovery Girls magazine. This is a better option than a magazine that’s too mature for your daughter.

Expose the lies!
Help your daughter see through misleading advertising by telling her the truth. It’s impossible to shield your daughter from all forms of advertising—it’s nearly everywhere! But you can begin to shift the way your daughter thinks about the messages she sees. How? The solution can be as simple as starting a dialogue and then keeping the lines of communication open.

Make a point of reading magazines and watching TV together so you can look for opportunities to talk to your daughter about ads that show unrealistic images of women. Ask her to tell you how she feels about the ads. Does she think the model looks like that in real life? Or does she think the image was altered? Then, offer your own thoughts, reinforcing the message that although the picture might look cute in a magazine ad, it’s unhealthy and unattractive to be too thin in real life.

Also, don’t buy into the lies yourself. Consider how your daughter might feel if she sees that her mom or dad is influenced by advertising while telling her not to be. For more about how your self-esteem influences your daughter, see “How Your Body Image Affects Your Daughter’s Self-Esteem.”

Help your daughter love her own body.
Why not take the focus off advertising altogether, and place emphasis on helping your daughter love her own body? In the Discovery Girls survey, 82 percent of girls said they wish their families would do more to help them eat healthy and get more exercise. You can help your daughter eat healthy, get active, feel better about her body, and spend time with her at the same time! Focus on having fun and getting fit—not on losing weight or achieving some unattainable ideal of beauty. Just get active together—go for an evening stroll, take a dance lesson, or join a softball league as a family, and prepare healthy meals (with your kids’ help!) the whole family can enjoy. Make a commitment to a healthy lifestyle and you’ll begin to see your whole family have improved self-esteem.

Youth and advertising is not an ideal combination. Advertising can present unique challenges for parents who want to instill confidence and self-esteem in their daughters. Since you can’t avoid advertising altogether (last time we checked, locking her in an ivory tower was not an option), work instead at stopping the negative effects of advertising by keeping an open line of communication and teaching your daughter to be self-confident and embrace who she is.