92 online
 
Most Popular Choices
Share on Facebook 3 Printer Friendly Page More Sharing Summarizing
OpEdNews Op Eds   

Do Our Daughters Really Need Breast Implants? We Can't All Be Pamela Anderson.

By Dawn Worthy  Posted by Rob Kall (about the submitter)       (Page 1 of 1 pages)   1 comment
Author 1
Editor-in-Chief

Rob Kall
Follow Me on Twitter     Message Rob Kall
Cultures tend to encourage conformity. They fail to see the growth of society and population health is attained through diversity of mind and body. Family trees with limited branches don't thrive. (See the Hapsburgs) Our daughters must learn to sculpt their minds and appreciate their bodies.

When did it happen? When did common sense die? In all fairness, I have been on the business end of the statement, "You have book smarts but no common sense," more times than I want to remember. So when I can see that common sense is dead, it died a horrible, gruesome and spectacular death. Today, I offer you an autopsy.

We spend an inordinate amount of time, money and pain on the "makeover." Why? We are told that we do it to improve ourselves. Is that really true? Aren't many of the things that are supposed to "improve" lives things that just distract us from the real issue?

Recently, I have become aware of parents financing breast augmentations for their teenage daughters. Come on now. What teenage brain is developed enough to correctly identify when the source of their problem is cup size? Parents that support this idea often consider themselves as indulgent parents. They consider themselves as their child's friend. This is actually two issues: at what point did we stop telling our children that it is who they are that is important and who in their right mind thinks it is more important to be a friend to your child than a parent?

It has been the way of the world that teenage years are the trial ground for personality testing, ethics testing and personal style development. The moral of The Lord of the Flies is unabated children are a reflection of raw human nature. Parenting is about making sure that they reach maturity and cultivating critical thinking skills. In theory, we teach our children to be the most complete "them" they can be without encroaching upon boundaries of others. I have heard that children learn what they live. If this is true, then what parents are apparently teaching their children appears to be that there are 12 acceptable people in the world and they need to pick one of them and let the pretending begin.

Human beings are gregarious. We prove this in study after study. We need the esteem of our peers. Some of us appear to want the adoration of the world and are quite disheartened if there are any dissenters. The need for acceptance, esteem, must be balanced by the need for self-acceptance, self-esteem. Our daughters see how the world seems to fawn over Pamela Anderson's breasts and, despite the public nature of her private life, our daughters fail to see that these same breasts did not resolve the most intimate relationship issues that she faced.

By allowing the issue to be about a girl's breast not being the "right" size, we side step the primary issue which is they are what they are. A girl is not her breasts nor do they define any aspect of her other than themselves as breasts. How can adults who cannot do this for themselves find it within them to do so for their daughters? They achieve this feat by behaving like parents.

I remember several occasions when I was a teenager that my own mother reminded me, "I am not your friend, I am your mother!" I recall thinking to myself that it was certainly true because no friend would treat me the way she did. We were both quite correct. Teenage friends are unlikely to tell you the truth when it is to their disadvantage to do so. Teenage friendships can be tenuous because they are fleeting often based on the consensus of several minds wildly in flux. Friends are selected by criteria and change or growth can mean the end of the relationship. Parents promote growth and stay for the good, the bad and the 2 am phone call to come pick you up because your friend took off without you phone call.

These are the same minds that too often confuse the dependence of infancy for love. The girl, who fails to find her own self-esteem and is dissatisfied with her perception of the esteem of others, seeks to create a person who will fill this need. The result is too often teen pregnancy. How quickly does the girl who thought she would have a baby so someone would love exclusively her discover the egocentric world her in which her baby lives? The teenage mind no matter how bright, no matter how precocious is still an immature mind subjugated by the ebb and flow of estrogen and testosterone.

Sometimes the truth hurts. Life is always hard. "Everybody" is never going to like you. And, Elvis really is dead. What corrupts the innocence of childhood is the fact of life. We are all compelled to move forward from the fantasy to the reality. When the teenage mind recognizes this shift occurring and attempts to rationalize it, you end up with things like wearing pale white makeup, jet black hair and the monotone recital of death dirges formatted as haikus. The guidance of an adult mind, the parental mind, can make that journey from the fantasy of childhood to wonder of reality. The world that we live in has more magic than any concocted or naïve version of it could ever have.

In short, (I know, it's a little late for that) consider the lily. Then, let's consider our daughters and let them know the true beauty and wonder that they are " just as they are.

Dawn Worthy dawn@freshfromthefarm.us owns Indianapolis based company Fresh From the Farm http://www.auntannsgardensoap.com with her son, Elias Worthy, at 6 years old, the youngest member of the regional MENSA. They use thought provoking articles and Aunt Ann's Garden Soap, a line of natural vegan botanical soaps to share a little green living with others.
Rate It | View Ratings

Rob Kall Social Media Pages: Facebook Page       Twitter page url on login Profile not filled in       Linkedin page url on login Profile not filled in       Instagram page url on login Profile not filled in

Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect, connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.

Check out his platform at RobKall.com

He is the author of The Bottom-up Revolution; Mastering the Emerging World of Connectivity

He's given talks and workshops to Fortune 500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful people on his Bottom Up Radio Show, and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and opinion sites, OpEdNews.com

more detailed bio:

Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness (more...)
 

Go To Commenting
The views expressed herein are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.
Follow Me on Twitter     Writers Guidelines

 
Contact EditorContact Editor
Support OpEdNews

OpEdNews depends upon can't survive without your help.

If you value this article and the work of OpEdNews, please either Donate or Purchase a premium membership.

STAY IN THE KNOW
If you've enjoyed this, sign up for our daily or weekly newsletter to get lots of great progressive content.
Daily Weekly     OpEd News Newsletter
Name
Email
   (Opens new browser window)
 

Most Popular Articles by this Author:     (View All Most Popular Articles by this Author)

A Conspiracy Conspiracy Theory

Debunking Hillary's Specious Winning the Popular Vote Claim

Terrifying Video: "I Don't Need a Warrant, Ma'am, Under Federal Law"

Ray McGovern Discusses Brutal Arrest at Secretary Clinton's Internet Freedom Speech

Hillary's Disingenuous Claim That She's Won 2.5 Million More Votes is Bogus. Here's why

Cindy Sheehan Bugged in Denver

To View Comments or Join the Conversation:

Tell A Friend