When I saw and read the article in Us Magazine this month about Jennifer Love Hewitt on losing 18 LBS in ten weeks, my first thought was “I thought weight didn’t matter”.

I know she states in the article that she didn’t lose the weight because of the rude and mean comments, so my questions to her is why go on the cover of Us Magazine and make it such a HUGE deal that you lost 18 LBS, why make it so public?

Lose the weight, be happy, and run your marathon. Don’t make such a production out of losing weight, it sends the wrong message to our teens. Every time a teen see a cover like this one on a popular magazine, it screams “if you looked like I did you need to lose weight.

80% of women feel badly about their bodies, and most women and teens have an immediate reaction to seeing someone on the cover of a magazine showing off their body. The reaction is usually I’m not good enough.

80% of women report that images of women on TV, fashion magazines, and advertising make them feel insecure about their looks.

So I don’t know if Jennifer Love Hewitt thought she was doing our youth a favor, she might want to rethink it. Any image of a women that is showing her slim body with a smiling face, and heavier body with an unhappy face is sending a message that thin is better.

The media is bombarding our youth on all levels, mostly about our bodies not being thin enough.

Talk to your teen about how this makes her feel, and let her know that she is great the way she is and that most of the images in magazines aren’t real. What’s real is the essence of who we are.

Here is a video about how the media is affecting our teenage girls and yes us too. Let me know what you think about it.

I just spent the weekend in Newport Beach with my boyfriend and his 2 twin Fourteen-year-old boys. Boys sure are fun, and what I realized is that they are not too different from girls, at least not at 14. They care what they look like, their hair, their cloths and they don’t want their Dad or their Dad’s girlfriend touching them in public.
So image is important and it starts at a young age, probably around 12 years-old, and goes on until we are; well, until we figure out that what’s on the outside isn’t the most important thing in the world.

So what can we do to encourage our teens to have more self-confidence? First and foremost is set a good example. If we are walking around talking about how we don’t like our bodies, or our hair looks like crap, and our cloths are out of style, you can bet that our teens will notice and follow suit.

If you do anything to help your teen, it’s don’t talk negatively about yourself and also don’t talk negatively about them. If you are slamming them they will get good at slamming themselves. Also, talk to them about why they don’t like certain things about themselves and help them understand how they might be able to change their perception or attitudes about the those things. We all want to feel good about ourselves; the best gift we can give our teenager is positive reinforcement.

The best thing we can do for ourselves is also positive reinforcement.