For Schwartz,
16, the worry is that her own body may threaten her future success. ``I am fat.
I am ugly. I am worthless,'' she writes. ``I need to lose weight. I won't eat
ice cream any more. I won't eat cake. I won't eat between meals. I won't eat
lunch.'' What does it
say about our society that a young person could be made to feel so bad about
herself? Why is there such pressure for bodies to fit the same mold? Schwartz
identifies one contributing factor: ``Everyone we look up to is either
underweight or grossly muscular,'' she complains. Aside from the
pressure of growing up, the awesome power and speed of technological development
can be spooky to many teenagers. There are shiny new gadgets to be had
everywhere they look. They soon begin to see, however, that having all the
newest electronic toys - the super computers, the pagers, the cell phones -
doesn't satiate the compelling hunger for happiness within. Many of the
letters we received complain of the fast pace of life and the powerful
technological culture that fuels the rat race. These young writers feel that the
pressure is taking a psychological toll. ……………….. These are the
stories teenagers of the new millennium tell when you ask them to. Some are
growing up alienated and angry, finding few outlets to explore their feelings.
And others fantasize about violent ways of taking control of their own lives. ``Crying alone
in your room every night changes nothing, but you already know that,'' writes
Krystal Ann Kraus, 21. ``All those little cuts you've made to let a little of
how messed up you feel come out makes it feel a little better.'' Kraus knows all
about cries for help that go unheard by parents and teachers, compelling
teenagers to contemplate creative ways, such as drug use, to ease the agony of
modern life. ``Your parents
are too angry at their own lives. Your teachers are too angry at the government.
No one seems around to notice that you are depressed all the time,'' she
laments. ``Smoke some weed, go to sleep? That's all you can really do and it
keeps you from having hours of nothing to do but think about your problems.'' If Straus feels
the stress of being misunderstood and ignored by adults, Amy Sullivan, 15, seeks
peer acceptance to compensate for the emptiness and the feelings of depression.
But even here, among peers, Sullivan finds no peace or satisfaction. ``I have been
what you would call popular and I hated every minute of it,'' complains the teen
from Pickering. ``I became popular by hanging out with the right people but I
couldn't stand it. Now, I don't envy those that are popular, I envy those that
are truly happy - the people who wake up every morning and can honestly say
there's no other person in the world that they would prefer to be.'' Sullivan, a
student at Dunbarton High School, found that being popular with other teenagers
carries a steep price. ``I hate it when people care - care so much about being popular that they begin to do cruel things to their bodies. I hate it when I walk into a bathroom and hear girls putting themselves down because they don't look like the models.'' |
