Журнал психологии и психотерапии
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Promoting a Positive Self-Image in Elementary School Girls

Natasha Skinner*

Purpose: The media bombards elementary school girls with images of what society defines as a beautiful woman. This paper addresses those images, as well as how young girls are influenced by their message. Additionally, this paper articulates how particular aspects of society, such as beauty magazines, peer pressure, and cultural influences, affect young girls’ definition of beauty. The consequences of these influences include poor self-image, low self-esteem, self-harming behaviors, and eating disorders. Furthermore, these behaviours, in turn, can impede girls’ development and educational process. In the final stages, this paper addresses why an elementary school counselor should consider this issue and how it could be approached. To aid them, an application is created with sample lesson plans.

Approach: This paper utilizes literature reviews to give examples of how various media aspects, peers, parents and culture contribute along with society to the poor self-image of young girls. The literature reviews present assorted illustrations of the dire cost of the aforementioned aspects have on the self-image of young girls. Along with the literature reviews, two theoretical frameworks are employed as interventions in aiding young girls in combating the causes of having a poor self-image.

Findings: The results determined that the various media aspects in society imbue young girls as young as age ten with what the media believes and portrays as the ideal body type about what beauty should be. Research showed that when young girls didn’t feel that their bodies conformed to the media’s view of beauty they developed poor self-image issues and other negative behaviors.