Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone. Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone. Silence the pianos and with muffled drum bring out the coffin, let the mourners come. Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead scribbling on the sky the message "He Is Dead". Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves, Let the traffic policemen wear black cotten gloves. He was my North, my South, my East and West, my working week and my Sunday rest, my noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last forever; I was wrong. The stars are not wanted now; put out every one, pack up the moon and dismantle the sun. Pour away the ocean and sweep up the woods; for nothing now can ever come to any good. -Funeral Blues, A poem by W.H. Auden

Thursday, May 20, 2010

Empty Glasses and Empty Souls

Whatever happened to the pin-up good looks that, not so long ago, were considered to be divinely attractive? And what about sleepovers with girlfriends who didn’t care that you like M&M’s on your pizza and don’t secretly judge the fact that you’re still a virgin? In today’s society, girls are scrutinized on every scale imaginable: how thin they are, how many friends they have, the grades they earn, and the boyfriends they sleep with. Dr. Sax, a family physician, a PhD psychologist and a medical doctor, addresses the issue of damaged teenage girls in the May 10, 2010 MacLean’s article “Inside The Dangerously Empty Lives of Teenage Girls” that girls “haven’t been living, they’ve been performing.” According to Dr. Sax, girls in today’s society are “trying to create a public persona, polishing an image of themselves that’s all surface” and are hungry for a sense of self sufficiency. Also, girls may appear to be doing well "on paper" but they number of teenager girls intentionally harming themselves is increasing. Dr.Sax also discusses how parents today "have this 1980s mindset" on raising their children, that is if you leave them alone and allow them to make the right choices and feel independent, they will trust you more. Well, if Sax said it, it must be true. He has a PhD after all.

Every girl does it. Every girl won't admit she does it. Every girl looks into the mirror and asks herself, "How do I look"? Dr.Sax is exceptionally correct when he stated that all girls are "obsessed with surface". Perhaps saying that all girls have this obsession is a bit of a generalization, however there are rare exceptions to this rule, and these exceptions are few and far between. Teenage girls are not the only generation which suffers from this obsession with perfected beauty. Every women has the fear that she will be overlooked or seen as unattractive. And yet, it is mainly the teenage population which appears pristine and polished on the outside "but inside, her sense of self is undernourished". Dr. Sax stated that girls seem to have a "pretty impoverished sense of self", and he is correct, he just lacks the ability to extend his opinion to other generations of women.

"61 per cent of university undergraduates are women". This may appear to be an impressive statistic on paper, but that is merely the issue with teenage girls. They are only doing well on the surface. But what happens when the paper is brought to close to a flame? It simple burns. This is what happens when teenage girls are faced with a struggle. Teenage girls are not as indestructible as they appear. Dr. Sax stated that the truth behind girls is told in literature. The simple fact that "more than one in five girls is cutting herself and/or burning herself" is simply devastating. Dr. Sax's statistic that "more than one in four high-school girls is binge drinking" adds lighter fluid to the already roaring fire that is the teenage girls soul. But who do girls truly have to fall back on? Certainly not their friends and family, after all it is those friends and family that instilled the lack of trust in them to begin with.

What is it exactly that parents are doing wrong? According to Dr. Sax, it is simply that their "’80s mindset is wildly inappropriate in the 21st century". Parents cannot just assume that if their let there children be and let them do what ever they please that they are going to make the right choices. In order for children to grow up with some semblance of moral values, parents must intervene. The tricky thing about parenthood is that it is a balancing act. Dr. Sax told MacLean's magazine that parents should "know what [their daughter's] doing with her email, what kinds of pictures she’s sending and receiving on her cellphone, and her friends need to know that you are keeping tabs". This outlook is a bit extreme and may cause the child to lash out in more intense ways. A good parent knows how to add just the right amount of slack and the right amount of strict.

Dr. Sax's interview with MacLean's magazine is proved to be an insightful enlightenment to parents and adult about what is actually going on inside a teenage girls mind. However, even with his impressive resume and in depth suggestions, Dr.Sax has some information which seen as a bit exaggerated. However exaggerated or not, one thing is clear, teenager girls everywhere need to learn to take off their masks.
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