Who wears short shorts?

Girls are more emotional and corruptive when it comes to stress. In the popular Canadian magazine, Maclean’s, an article was published on May 10 2010 entitled “Inside the Dangerously Empty Lives of Teenage Girls” which about the dangerous life teenage girls are facing in the modern world. The article is a conversation between a Macleans representative and Dr. Sax, a family physician who also founded the National Association for Single Public Education. Dr. Leonard Sax has written numerous books, his most recent one about how teenagers are hiding their true feelings inside. The article describes 2 main ideas about the teenage world: Girls seem to be more worried about how they are received physically and socially than guys and that Girls take their stress away more dangerously then guys.

Dr. Sax, who has a daughter of his own, believes that teenage girls are physically and socially worried about how they are received more than guys. He states that “[girls…wake] up at two in the morning upset over the pizza [they] ate for dinner and think [they’re] fat even though [they’re] not” while the girl’s brother ‘eats a whole pizza for dinner and doesn’t bat an eye …. and is perfectly content with his online games and pornography [….] he’s happy!” In the media these days, teenage boys and girls are bombarded with images of these sexy, slim people and they think that to be admired and accepted they have to look like that. In order to achieve this sense of “beauty”, teenage girls (even girls as young as grade 2) are wearing “short skirts …. [to]….. put on a pretense of adult sexuality [not knowing that] the danger of putting on a show is that [they] lose touch with [their] own sexuality”. Dr. Sax was able to find studies that show that “12 and 13 year olds ... are providing sexual favors to 16 and 17 year old boys” but there is little evidence to support this theory. Though this may be true, very few schools show evidence that this is happening. He goes on to say that ‘girls are using their sexuality … in order to ... [raise]... their social status. Dr. Sax does however express an opinion that is very true. Most girls these days are [presenting themselves as a brand … polishing an image of themselves that’s all surface: how [they] look and what [they] did yesterday, not who [they] are and what [they] wanna be”. So many girls are trying to become something they are not and “it gets in the way of … figuring out who [they] are, what [they] want and what is [their] hearts desire”. While some of his points on this idea are true, most are unreliable and have no proof that they exist.

Later on in the article, Dr. Leonard Sax discusses how girls are more dangerously dealing with stress than guys. More and more these days, people are dealing with weight issues and this is the case especially in teenage girls. With people in the media like Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie, girls are constantly working toward achieving that figure. The way they get their, isn’t pretty. Most girls use anorexia (not eating or eating small amounts like an apple a day) as a way to get there. So when they finally get to their goal, that is their accomplishment, “[it] becomes her defining sense of self”. As parents and adults see anorexia as a dangerous disorder in which they can’t stop, the girls who do it see is as a “lifestyle choice” much like being a homosexual or abstinence. Dr. Sax states that “only 8% of boys and 14& of girls [are] cutting and burning themselves” but it is evident throughout schools across North America that the number is much higher. Boys and girls are not going to admit to cutting or harming themselves. Dr. Sax is 100% wrong when he expresses that “the girl who is very popular … is as likely, maybe even more likely … to be cutting themselves”. One thing he is right about is that a lot of girls “cut because its real, its not fake”.