Reddit mentions of Packaging Girlhood: Rescuing Our Daughters from Marketers' Schemes

I am sorry that you feel so bad about your appearance, and I completely agree with your opinions on the beauty industry. You can deal with your issues and be happy. As someone else has said, throw away all of those magazines. You don't need to be poisoning your mind with that garbage!

In the meantime, maybe you might be able to look into something that interests you. Develop hobbies, read good books, travel (as much as you can!), go hiking, start running/walking, etc. You are a good writer- maybe you could start writing items you find of interest to you. If you spend a lot of your time focused on your looks, you should find ways to use that energy in a more positive way.

Have you seen the movie Fight Club? It might be something worth watching if you've never seen it before. That might put things in perspective for you a bit. I find watching it very liberating.

Also, since you are a good writer, maybe you could try writing in a journal to help work through your body issues. I have found that writing is very theraputic for me. It is a way to release all of the negative thoughts you have & put them in perspective. Perhaps you might find that beneficial.

There are many books written on this subject. Here are some links to books that you might want to read.

Packaging Girlhood: Rescuing our daughters from marketer's schemes

The Body Myth: Adult Women and the Pressure to be Perfect

Do I look fat in this?

The Good Body

Hope some of this helps! Best wishes on your road to learning to love yourself as you are!

I think I get what you're saying...and I'm not sure we disagree entirely. I think teaching kids how to market themselves assertively and communicate effectively is a proactive decision of the parents that teaches critical thinking and evaluation. Commercial TV is more about Junior passively absorbing intense psychological messages of self worth and inherent value based on product trends.

Teaching them how to make an intelligent argument for why they wants something is exactly what I do with mine, and my older kids are MUCH more skilled at it now that they've had several years without commercials screaming at them every 10 minutes of every show they watch. My younger kids really have no concept of commercials in the traditional sense, other than what we watch intentionally to talk about the concepts, and product promos in the shows they watch.

My job involves a LOT of branding and copy agonizing, I completely understand the value of that, and it's something I talk about with my kids regularly for that reason. But again - that's teaching them skills to use with the world around them, which is totally different than allowing them to be subjected to highly skilled professional marketing solely designed to teach kids to NEED the latest/greatest rocketblaster/chocolatecocoabombs. One is an outbound skill, the other is an inbound value.

I'm probably not articulating it very well, just got home and am tossing this note out before making dinner. But here are two books you might be interested in that really brought it all together -

Packaging Girlhood: Rescuing Our Daughters from Marketers' Schemes (no affiliate link)

Packaging Boyhood: Saving Our Sons from Superheroes, Slackers, and Other Media Stereotypes (Also no affiliate link)