Adolescents, possibly as young as 11, are taking to the web and asking the world to weigh in on their appearance. From supportive messages to the plain pervy, the responses run the gamut. Comments provoked by these videos offer an interesting cross-section of the American psyche–and it's all painfully punctuated by images of America’s youth searching for approval.
In a video titled “Am I ugly or pretty? Please Let me know!” one young YouTube user says: “Hey guys, this is my first video…but before I post any more videos making a fool of myself, and I know there’s hundreds of videos like this…I just wanna know, am I pretty or ugly? Cuz at school I get called ugly all the time.”
I watched one of the videos, and it broke my heart. I believe it was the one that sparked this phenomenon, posted in September 2010, and I've embedded it at the end of this post. It wasn't just because the young woman wanted to know whether she was beautiful or not. That's unfortunately fairly commonplace among teens and pre-teens. It was that there are two possible reasons a girl would take this question to YouTube: either she so desires affirmation that she was willing to go to anyone who will give it, or she really believes she isn't beautiful, and she's bought into that belief so much she's willing to subject herself to ridicule to reaffirm what she believes about herself.
A couple of thoughts, first as a youth pastor and then as a dad:
As a youth pastor: I see this sort of thing, and I wonder, "What in the world can we do?" The teaching side of my brain wonders if there's some amazing series, curriculum, or Bible study that will fix this issue. But I know that's just a very small part of the solution, because it's not for a lack of information that these young women, who are loved by God and "fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139:14) ask the world whether they're ugly on YouTube. I know there are things we can do, but it just seems so little, because the root causes that make a girl put a video on YouTube asking if she's pretty or ugly have been firmly planted long, long ago.
As a dad: It scares me. It scares me because I have worked with literally thousands of teenagers, and it seems that just about every teenage girl struggles with their self-image. I tell my two girls each and every day that they are beautiful (because they are) and that God created them perfectly (because he did). But doubts rack my mind. Am I doing enough? The oldest is four; have I messed up her life and self-image already? Am I doing her harm by telling her so much how beautiful she is? Most days, I'm pretty confident that I'm a good dad, but when I see things like the CNN blog post and the "Am I Ugly" videos, I get scared.
Here's the video that broke my heart:
What do you think of the "I am ugly" videos? Have they ever come up in your youth group or conversations with teenagers?
