Saturday, March 3, 2012

A Troubling New Trend


     

                                                         A Troubling New Trend 


    Trending now on YouTube is a slightly disturbing new topic among many young girls these days. Am I ugly? Type these words into YouTube and you will be shocked by the number of videos that pop up with girls asking the world of YouTube if the they think they are ugly. Why is it that today girls need to hear from strangers whether or not they are ugly? The article posted by yahoo states that “It seems perfectly natural that we value others opinions of us. We want to hear the feedback.” The big question here is are we too obsessed with the opinions of others? Today with social networks like twitter and facebook we can post pictures and statues of our lives showcasing it to our friends or even the public. Today I find that many people try to play up how wonderful their lives are or try to get as much feedback as possible on their pictures to reassure themselves. I think it’s a scary thing to thing about that are youth are begging for attention from strangers on whether or not they thing they are pretty. These girls have taken facebook and twitter to a whole new level by just straight up asking if people online if think they are pretty rather than waiting for facebook likes or retweets which is completely ridiculous either way. We all know how cruel the internet can be, we have heard of the brutal bullying that has in many cases lead to the deaths of many young people. Asking this question is just asking for problems whether it be cruel comments or even bullying in school. Classmates see these videos and pick fun of them in school and in other setting where their peers can easily be a part of the bullying. Again the internet opens up a whole new world of bullying to the young people who post themselves on a public site especially when asking the world for their opinion.
  New York based psychiatrist Francisco Gonzales Franco said that on a basic level that these videos are a "a masochistic way to diminish their anxiety." He goes on to say that these girls feel incomplete and they want to confirm their fear that they are ugly. Franco says that if they get their confirmation that they will stop seeking for confirmation. 

 Girls need to be searching for reassurance from friends and family not strangers. I think that someone’s family background plays a large role in problems like these because where are the parents here? Parents should be constantly reassuring their child that they are beautiful and their child should not seek answers from complete strangers.
  This sadly is not the only open forum in which girls have asked the question “Am I ugly?” Sites such as formspring allow people to make anonymous replies to a question asked by the user.  Again this opens the door for more cyber bulling problems that can lead to serious and even fatal consequences. Cyber bullying is a serious issue among today’s youth and these sites are just opening up a whole new world for them. It is disheartening to see how many your people are so insecure and need the feedback from others. I think that parents need to make a stronger effort to be a part of their child’s life and what is going on in their world. 

10 comments:

  1. I honestly never knew little girls go on social sites asking strangers if they are ugly or not. I don't see the purpose of this, and I would like to know who in fact started this trend and when did it get so popular.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I had to go look at this to actually see what these girl were actually thinking. The sad part is I read the commits and people were telling these young girls they were fat, ugly etc... The sad thing this is going to go bad before it gets any better, I hate to say it but these girl have low self-esteem. the possibility of these girls committing suicide is very high if the proper feedback isnt given to them.This is truly sad and I wonder if their parents in fact know their little girls are out selling themselves to the media like this. I hope these youtube post are soon taken down.

    ReplyDelete
  3. This is an atrocious trend that leads to many problems. Like you mentioned, we already have a problem in our society with cyber bullying and have seen how this has resulted in numerous suicides. The fact that young girls are using these websites to ask if they are pretty or not is ridiculous and obviously not resulting in any good. This blog reminds me of that one case where the mother made a fake account and harassed a young girl until she killed herself. Young girls using these websites to talk to or meet boys is also an emerging problem in our society.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Before reading your post, I never knew that this was an issue. This worries me because I have a high school age sister already prone to the ignorant and unforgiving opinions of her peers. I completely agree with you when you say that "Girls need to be searching for reassurance from friends and family not strangers." I did a youtube search on this and what I found was disturbing. From the ones I saw, it was obvious that the girls were insecure. For the most part, the comments I saw were positive. However, the few negative comments I did see were extremely harsh. I hope this is a youtube trend that will not continue.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I think you have a very interesting post. I never knew this was an issue but I can surely see how it is. I was not aware of the YouTube videos however I have noticed on facebook a lot of girls posting next to nude photos of themselves and it seems like it is only to attract the members of the opposite sex to feel better about themselves. A good friends of mine prefers her part time job at Hooters over her full time job as a department store manager because she likes the attention she received there. Girls are almost programed to feel they need to look and act a certain way to get attention from boys, I've seen very smart girls act like morons to get a boys attention. This is scary to think about and it is sad to think girls have resorted to strangers on the internet to feel pretty.

    ReplyDelete
  6. All I can say is wow!! I think it is so extremely disturbing and unfortunate that young women need other people to validate their beauty. i feel like internet and its networks can be fun and useful and yet scary and dangerous. Situations like this make it super easy for predators to seek out those vulnerable children and from there so much can go wrong. Kids should be looking to family and friends, as mentioned in the blog, because no stranger can tell them if they are beautiful and no picture can capture a person’s real beauty. Parents should be monitoring their children’s use and the things they do on the internet.

    ReplyDelete
  7. This is disturbing not only for how it could end up for these girls but also for what it says about where society is going. Two things that concern me are that people will comment on these videos in the meanest possible way which suggests that there is no common decency anymore. The second thing is that these girls are relient on such affirmation or degradation. Society is becoming too interdependant.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Definitely a concern. I worry about how these girls are making themselves vulnerable emotionally but also physically. By posting this on the internet, it could be an open invitation for a predator to tell them what they want to hear. Furthermore, a video like this could resurface when they go into the job market. Not a good thing no matter how you look at it. Disturbing.

    ReplyDelete
  9. After reading this post, I found this disturbing. I never did understand why girl and even women these days ask the question "do you think I am ugly". My niece asked me this one day, and I had told her she was beautiful and where she heard that. She said girls at my school ask other girls and boys if they are ugly. This made me sick, becasue these girls are like 10 to 12. This is a issue that needs to be stopped. This is what pedophiles and child molesters feed off of. These are the types of girls that a predator hunts for because they can make they believe they care about them.

    ReplyDelete
  10. I didn’t know this was a popular thing to do. I can’t imagine going on websites and asking what people think of me. It is really sad to see little kids have this constant need for attention. I think the harsh comments will only make them depressed and more than likely get an eating disorder. People today need reassurance on themselves to make them feel good, which is fine in all, but to go out and ask for it is really surprising to me. These kids are making themselves vulnerable to people they don’t know and are probably not thinking of all the consequences that could happen.

    ReplyDelete