Monday, August 2, 2010

Back to Basics: A Flower List Update

Do you have good self esteem?

0% said Yup! Why shouldn't I?
0% said No, I really don't think I'm great
0% said Are you kidding me? I'm ugly!
66% said It's a work in progress
and...
66% said Sometimes

I'm upset to see that none of you choose this first answer to this week's poll! I know a lot of people struggle with self-confidence but I hoped that at there would be at least one fully confident person out of the bunch! Since I'm a teenage girl, I hang out with a lot of teenage girls. Simple. What's not simple though, is their self esteem. I can't wrap my head around it. Why do they think they're THAT ugly? Why are they afraid to speak in class sometimes? Why do they obsess over straightening their hair, and why do they feel insecure without makeup? I know confidence is hard to gain (for some odd reason) and I feel it's not something that you can push onto someone. You can, but at a certain point they have to except it themselves, and not just blindly believe you. I was lucky enough to have someone push it on me at a younger age and understand it! I don't know what I would do without my cousin, Jaimee, who taught me and my cousins to love who we are when we were in 5th grade, and by 6th grade the message had stuck, and I started to see myself differently. Yes, I still have some moments where I'll second guess myself, and I'll do five extra mirror checks- but who doesn't sometimes?! I try pushing it onto my friends, but it's been so long I just think some of them learned to block me out by now. I just hope they learn soon! I could go on and on about my own personal experiences with myself and with my friends that deal with confidence, but I really want to talk about something I discovered recently.

This past Thursday, the 22nd to be exact, I was reading the latest blog posts in my reading list (click on my profile to see what blogs I follow!) and I came across a post entitled "Size!" that was published on the blog, Love and Mathematics. The first sentences say, "Size is all that matters! It really is!". I stopped for a second. I've talked to the author/creator/whatever! of this blog a bit, and she seems like a really nice, and interesting girl so when I read the first two sentences of the post, I was hoping she wasn't going down the path that you'd imagine after reading that. As I continued to read (http://almostsins.blogspot.com/ Click on the link if you'd like to read the post!) she explained that she was trying to loose weight because her Aunt in the USA was astonished that she was a size 14 (says a lot about our country...). I found that understandable: she's a size 14 which I guess is a little bigger than some depending on your age, and she felt like slimming down. Okay. I just hope my fellow blogger doesn't start what I like to call now 'bulimic blogging'. You see, at the end of her post she talks about another blogger who has lost weight and now seems to 'sparkle and shine'. At first, I thought that was understandable too, that she was getting good motivation from someone else. I clicked on this girl's profile to see if maybe she blogged about her weight loss, but instead of finding her own blog, I found a list of blogs she followed. I thought that maybe those talked about weight loss also so I clicked on them. Were they about weight loss? Sadly, I was right. All these girls are blogging about their binges, fasts, and struggles to their ideal weight. Reading these few posts on each blog I just want to curl up in a ball and cry or throw up from pure disgust. How could you do that to your body??? And how do people find entertainment from these blogs? Maybe they're not following for entertainment, maybe they're following for a glimpse at an anorexic girl's world, or even tips on binging and things like that, but all I do know is some of them have tons of followers. Am I doing something wrong?? Do I need to start making myself vomit to get more site hits? I shudder to think that. I'm really wondering if there's anything I can do to help these girls... I know my encouraging comments will just be ignored and laughed at, but I really wish I could contact them somehow, let their parents and friends and family know what they're doing. They need help!! If you're considering doing something like this I really hope you read some of the links I post below. I hope they'll turn you in the complete opposite direction.
(Some of these blogs might not seem bad at first, you just have to dig deep and read a lot of posts before you get anywhere, I think the last two really talk about their struggle for perfection more)

If you're reading them just to understand these girls lives, what they do, and why. Let me know what you think! Please leave a comment.







Thanks for reading. Leave any thoughts and be sure to vote in this week's poll, remember to check off either pointless, cool, or inspiring also! I also added some new Snapple cap Real Facts to our collection. Check it out! Click on the link on the side bar titled "Snapple Collection" under "Some fantastic flower list pages. Click and bloom!".
Song stuck in my head today: same as last post today! (: scroll down
Keep on keepin' on,
Madison

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