Peer Pressure

“Hell is a teenage girl” are the words that start the film to Jennifer’s Body written by the critically acclaimed Diablo Cody, quite a dramatic over-the-top five letter sentence to start a movie with you may be thinking. Yet one in ten young adults between the ages of one and fifteen have a mental health disorder. These alarming statics suggests that the teenage years aren’t exactly the easiest of years. 


“What shall I wear? Is this in fashion? Why aren’t my legs thin enough for these jeans? Should I really be a size 10? Does this dress make my hips stick out?”  These are just some of the various questions plaguing a teenage girls mind on a daily basis, these troubling thoughts can often be caused my peer pressure. 


With all these messages bombarding an already impressionable young teenage mind, it’s no wonder many teenagers become hyper-focused on crash dieting, which leads to an unhealthy relationship with food.  Food becomes the enemy, per se, which can lead to devastating and destructive eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa (intense fear of weight gain), bulemia (binging and purging), overeating, etc.

Peer pressure occurs when a group of people or just one person can make an individual feel uncomfortable, leading them to make decisions that they may not otherwise decide to make if they did not have influences in their life. This usually has a huge affect on the way a person thinks, their appearance, the way they dress, speak, or for the point of my project the way someone eats or even exercises. Girls often experience this pressure and decide to change their lifestyle to conform to certain attitudes, looks, or behaviours to feel part of the norm. 

I have found that when peer pressure involves the way a person eats, this can result in drastic consequences. When a person feels an intense urge to change their eating habits to fit it, they may develop habits that can turn a healthy body into a poor bill of health. This is seen when individuals attempt to diet in order to fit into an image that they have dubbed as ideal. 

Peer pressure in this way can cause people to binge eat, develop bulimia, experience fear over food, anorexia, encourage exercise for excessive amounts of time, and just general disordered unhealthy eating habits around food. 

Although I am certainly not a registered therapists or anything like that in any shape or form, but  I have learnt from experience and living the school years that don't just follow the crowd even if it's the easiest thing to do. 
Don't just do what others are doing because you feel pressured to, do what is best for you. Be your own person and don't let others make your 
decisions for you.  
Sometimes you are really good friends with someone who is making bad choices and you're not, so what do you do if they won't stop? Do you join them?  Do you ignore what they're doing? The choice is yours to make, but choose wisely because the decision you make could change your life forever...