Troubled Teens Resources

“…We don’t talk much about is the way our culture encourages girls to compete with one another at the expense of developing true, meaningful relationships with other girls, and how that simple arrangement can contribute to the way girls mistreat each other, even within so called “friendships”. I’m not talking about competition in academics or athletics. I’m talking about competing against one another for status, popularity, and the attention of boys. We train our girls from an early age, marketing make-up and sexy clothing to girls beginning in grade school, stuffing teen magazines full of articles on how to “get the guy”. Certainly our girls are not missing the message here.

What would it be like if we lived in a world where girls spent their time, energy, and talents working together instead of working against each other? Just imagine what they could accomplish….
(Source)

Indeed, just what would healthy friendships and smart relationships mean for today’s teen girls? The writer correctly points out that today’s teenage girls view each other via competitive roles instead of viewing each other as friends and allies.

Increasingly, the role models for teen girls have deteriorated into that of a teenage vamp, instructing girls in sexual one-upmanship instead of pride in achievement. Instead of respecting and encouraging each other in academics and sports, they vie for superiority in the dating scene, often being cruel to those teen girls who do not achieve popularity with the opposite sex and who show little fashion savvy.

All-girl teen boarding schools and academies are often the option concerned parents choose when discouraged and fed up with the public school’s continuing inability to influence teenagers to pursue positive paths and role models.

Girls’ academies teach a different sort of value system that can’t be often found in public schools. A system where pride of achievement and the discipline of hard work is considered meritorious, not the latest pop star styles.

“Why does she want to dress like that? I don’t get it. She’s beautiful, she doesn’t have to parade around like some half naked celebrity.”

Well, yes she does if she listens to no one but her peer group and the media. If your teenage daughter seems to have acquired a taste for exhibitionism such as the parent is complaining about above, then you are among the millions of parents trying to rein in their teen girl’s fixation with dressing “sexy”.

With a culture fixated on the sexual antics of Paris Hilton and the tawdry objectification of young girls produced by Girls Gone Wild, parents of young teenage girls are compelled to create and maintain standards of simple modesty for their own teenage girls.

But everyone knows sexy sells. How can you encourage your teen daughters to see that they have more than sex to sell? How can your sales pitch overcome the message teenagers constantly are exposed to?

Self-image for both young men and women is key to the teenager’s comporting themselves with some dignity and pride. But the image needs to based on their gifts and skills and abilities, not their looks. It’s hard to fight against the avalanche of media images unless you can help a troubled teen girl find pride in her accomplishments and reward her, not for being pretty, but for being confident, for being smart or artistic or a great athlete.

The sexualiztion of adolescents has prompted thousands of parents to place their teen daughters in same sex teen boarding schools which emphasize achievements, not appearance, providing the maturing teen girl with a solid basis for her self-esteem instead of the fickle “fame” of fashion and looks.