I pleadwith you young women to please be more accepting of yourselves,including your body shape and style, with a little less longing to look likesomeone else. We are all different. Some are tall, and some are short.Some are round, and some are thin. And almost everyone at some time orother wants to be something they are not! But as one adviser to teenagegirls said: “You can’t live your life worrying that the world is staring atyou. When you let people’s opinions make you self-conscious you giveaway your power. … The key to feeling [confident] is to always listen toyour inner self—[the real you.]” 8 And in the kingdom of God, the real youis “more precious than rubies.”
Frankly, the world has been brutal with you in this regard. You arebombarded in movies, television, fashion magazines, and advertisementswith the message that looks are everything! The pitch is, “If your looks aregood enough, your life will be glamorous and you will be happy andpopular.” That kind of pressure is immense in the teenage years, to saynothing of later womanhood. In too many cases too much is being doneto the human body to meet just such a fictional (to say nothing ofsuperficial) standard. As one Hollywood actress is reported to have saidrecently: “We’ve become obsessed with beauty and the fountain of youth.… I’m really saddened by the way women mutilate [themselves] in searchof that. I see women [including young women] … pulling this up andtucking that back. It’s like a slippery slope. [You can’t get off of it.] … It’sreally insane … what society is doing to women.”
Jeffrey Holland "To Young Women"
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