263: Is My Teen Too Focused on Her Looks?

about.

“Rina, I think a lot of people feel like they just don't know how to connect to their”

kid anymore. I'm Rina 9 and welcome to ASLisa, the psychology of raising tweens and teens, and on Dr. Lisa Demore, we bring you science back strategies for managing anxiety, discipline, intense emotions, and more. We decode tough parenting issues with tips you can use right now.

So subscribe to ASLisa, the psychology of raising tweens and teens, and join our YouTube community today. Just Google, Ask Lisa podcast, we're here to help you untangle family life. Episode 263 is my team to focus on her looks.

I'm always obsessed with moisturizers this time of year, and I'm starting to use oils on

my face. It's been a cold winter, Lisa, a very cold winter. Speaking for Cleveland, I feel like I sort of feel like I need an amoliant holster. I need a belt that has my chapstick and my aquifer, so I feel so dry all the time, and it's not my favorite.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's interesting.

“I'm also curious about how we present ourselves in front of our kids when it comes”

to like make up, and all that this stuff. And the letter we got today is talking about looks, and so I want to dig deep into this. I'm going to go ahead and read this to you, Lisa, and I want to get your take dear Dr. Lisa. I'm writing with growing concern about my almost 14-year-old daughter over the past several months.

She seems entirely consumed by her appearance. She spends hours in front of the mirror constantly taking selfies, some of them even look somewhat suggestive, and the sheer volume has become alarming. It feels like this is an obsession with how she looks, and it's taken over her life. She gets a lot of positive reinforcement for her appearance.

She and I are often told how beautiful she is.

We've always tried to instill the values of kindness, intelligence, and the importance

of contributing to the world, while we know it's normal for teens to care about their looks. This seems extreme. She's given up reading, writing, things she used to enjoy, and I worry she's equating her self-worth solely with her appearance.

She's very active with her sports hobbies, is a great student in friend, and she is a very social and wonderful kid. As her parents were really struggling. We don't know how concerned we should be about this fixation, whether it's part of typical teenage behavior or a sign of something deeper.

Most of all. We don't know how to help her pull back and regain some balance. We want her to feel good about herself, but not to lose side of the things that matter most. How can we guide her through this?

“Should we be worried that this could have lasting effects?”

Thank you for any advice you can offer. So, Lisa, how common is this? I hear it. I hear it. I think that there's a lot of elements in this letter that I think a lot of families would

resonate to kids do become preoccupied with their appearance, especially in adolescence. I remember spending a lot of time looking in the mirror, worrying about this little pimple or whatever it was. That piece is really typical. I'm worried about their appearance, invested in their appearance, spend more time on their

appearance. I think if we sort of think about what's in the normal range, we fully expect that in adolescence. This letter seems to be talking about something that's more than that, right? This kid is spending a lot of time and interesting in this letter, it's also clear, getting a lot of reinforcement for how she looks.

I was so struck by the line of people telling her and us how beautiful she is.

That's not always the story and that sort of takes this up another level in terms of what

to do about how invested this kid is in her appearance right now, especially when she's getting all this feedback that other people are too. We did this episode earlier. It was, do I tell my daughter? She's beautiful and it kind of feels like a continuation of that conversation where parents

are struggling with, how do you tell when they've crossed the line and it's too much in valuation with your looks? Is there anything a marker or anything that you can help us when you've got to reinit that feedback? It is such an interesting question, I'm so glad we did that earlier episode because we

care about girls and young women being seen as whole and valued and valuable people, separate from their appearance, that's a course of value, you hold, I hold. Yet you've got a daughter, I'll look at my girls, oh my gosh, you look so cute, right?

a tension that loving parents navigate about taking pleasure in just the adorableness of our

very young children and sharing that with them. Yet at the same time not wanting to reinforce the idea that like it's all about your looks and your appearance is what really matters. I do think to your question of how to make sure it doesn't go over our line, I'm not going to say we should not ever talk about appearance and we should not admire our kids appearance,

we should spend no time on our own appearance, like I'm not going to say that.

“I do think it's important that there be a healthy balance between enjoying and taking”

pleasure and taking good care of oneself, like I mean, I love putting on makeup, like I love getting, like, kind of put together and remembering that it's really what's on

the inside that counts, right, like that's the tension we're always wanting to navigate.

Is there ever any, like, I feel like our mother's generation, you would never walk out in like sweatpants and not have combed your hair or like make up odd or like my mother is always like, you're going out like that, wearing my sweats in a baseball gap, but is there anything we need to keep in mind and how we talk about our looks, you know, in the way that we've talked about food or eating?

Whew, I love that. Well, okay, so it's just first of all just to think about what you're saying, like, one of the things I love about today's adolescent girls is like, they do seem to have a lot more

comfort with showing the world various sides of themselves, right, like showing up at school,

“right, true, you know, totally, like make upless and low-key and then, you know, for whatever”

reason on another day, like totally putting themselves together and I'm watching this in my own house, right, like that my kid will someday be like, you know, they're getting this version and then in another day I can tell she's enjoyed spending some time on her look or outfit or wearing, you know, jewelry or something, that to me feels, I don't feel like that's the adolescent I remember, like I remember feeling like much more on stage

all the time as a teenager than I feel like certainly the kids in my life and I'm around or do you feel like you're seeing that too where there's more latitude for kids on those or girls maybe. I do and I feel like what, you know, I remember being a middle school and putting eyeliner and mascara and I can see a little bit of that in my daughter's age group, but, you know, it just seems different now, but it does feel like a parent's is everything

and how you present yourself because of this era's social media. It can be, right, and

“then kids can work really hard on it and I think that that's, you know, it's interesting”

like this letter also brings up like she's taking these selfies, right, and spending a lot of time on this selfie is going to ask you about the, yeah, so, you know, what, what do you think about these suggestive selfies, like what's your take on that? Well, it is interesting, right, because it like, it feels like it goes from being one thing then to another thing, right? So there's the kid who's looking into the mirror, enjoying, taking, you know, enjoying

whatever, makeup, looking at her appearance and getting a lot of feedback that she's in a attractive kid. Then there's the kid who's taking suggestive selfies in the mirror and, you know, then there may be also the be the kid who's posting those selfies, right? Like, we can sort of think about these at different levels. The suggestive selfies, those are tough. Do we have an age on this kid? Does it say in the letter how old she is? Yes, she's 14, so you got to think probably

like middle school, beginning of high school, possibly, right, probably eighth and ninth grade, somewhere in there. Yeah, yep. So, Reena, here's something that I have encountered over the years around like suggestive stuff and I'm actually going to take it back pre-social media. Like, I remember 20 years ago in my practice, caring for a family, I actually did it was parent guidance I was doing with a single mom with a 12 year old daughter and the mom came in one day pretty worried

because she'd happened to walk by her daughter's room and could see her daughter looking in the mirror and like doing these sexy poses into the mirror. So, this is like before any of this is being, you know, trafficked by social media, right? Like, it completely, you know, pre-social media era. And kind of seeing her daughter, like doing this kind of adult suggestive posing, you know, with her face and her body and the mom being pretty freaked out by this.

And we ended up having a good conversation about how what it means to the kid is not what it means to the adult. And I think we have to try to keep that in mind. Like, as adults, we look at this

yourself in this way that like we bring the fullness of like adult understanding of sexuality to it,

“kids cannot and do not understand how this stuff comes off. Now, we just need to start there”

because I where where we don't want this to go wrong is for the adult to be like, oh my God, you look like, uh, and then fill in the blank, right? Some, you know, sexualized term that's not flattering at all. Um, because that will strike kids as like, I don't know what you're talking about. Like, I saw this thing and I'm just imitating it and I'm doing a good job imitating it. Like, they don't really have the full awareness of how we read this as adults and we don't want to assume they do.

So I just want to like pause on that for a minute because I know it's so alarming and jarring for adults to even see a kid acting in a suggestive way or putting out a suggestive portrayal of themselves. That that's a great point to underlying that our life experiences aren't their life experiences

“at this point. So they're not seeing it from the same lens that we are through experience.”

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“like you know how I feel about phones and what I do. I do. And I think I think this is such a good”

example of why, right? Like if she's in her room using her phone to take and maybe post suggestive selfies, there's nothing that really makes that strange because she's in the privacy of her room. Right? And in the privacy of her kids room and I think back to this pre-social media example I have in the privacy of the room, kids will do all sorts of things, right? Which I guess is why you have a privacy of your room? I think that the odds of her spending a huge amount of time taking suggestive

selfies if she has to do it in the kitchen or the living room, they go way down. And so again, right? Like if phones aren't in bedrooms and if that's a rule of families ready to make and feels they can make or can make preemptively before the phone ever goes in the room. I think this is another example of where it shuts down all sorts of things that we're probably better off without. And so whether or not the kids posting them, just to have that kind of time to take those

kinds of photos goes way down if the phone can't be in the room. Okay? Well, you know, high school a middle school can be very difficult years to navigate. If this is giving her a little bit of self-confidence, maybe not the suggested part, but okay, who cares? Is this really something that we have to worry about could have lasting effects? So the thing I'm thinking about, Rina,

tributaries and the lake. So the way I think about self-esteem, it's like a lake that needs to be

filled, like it needs stuff in it. And what we want for kids are lots and lots of tributaries, lots of things that bring a source of pride and self-esteem, right? So doing well academically, you're at least feeling good about your academics and, you know, having friends and being of service and being a good teammate. Okay, it's not preventable and not necessarily terrible if part of what a person of any age takes pride in is, I like the way I look and I get some feedback

about it even that I am a good-looking person. Like that's not the end of the world. Okay, here's where to your question about lasting damage. Here's where it can really be a problem. One is if it's the

major tributary, right? If the investment in one's appearance starts to take up so much time and energy,

which this letter indicates, it's sort of like bordering on that. It's taking away some other tributaries because the kid's not reading, the kid's not writing. If it starts to crowd out other tributaries, that's a problem. Like kids need lots of tributaries and there looks okay fine, can be part of it, but it shouldn't be the whole thing. The other thing I will say, Rina, and I don't know if you know women like this, I think it's changing as people alter themselves

so much in appearances, so like dealt with so differently these days. But one of the things we've long recognized when we talk about things like narcissism is that people who are narcissistic need admiration, they need the oxygen of being admired. And one of the things I learned in my training

“and I have watched in real life is sometimes you'll have an extremely beautiful woman and the”

world is giving her all this feedback that she's so gorgeous and she develops her sense of value and worth around that. And frankly it goes fine as long as she's pretty and then as she starts to age and the world doesn't give that kind of feedback. If that is her sole source of oxygen for feeling good, she's in trouble. So that's like the, that's the worst case scenario want to prevent this down the line. But I've seen it, I've seen that happen, where it looks fade, man,

they do. They all have to. Yeah. But it's hard to imagine that at the age of 14 when you have been gifted with great looks, right? And it's hard to see down that turn. But to your point least, I mean it's so true. How, how at this point though, can they regain some balance? Is it too late? Definitely not too late. Definitely not too late. So the way I would think about this like, okay, you know me and metaphors. Like I can come up with 17 and a minute. Okay. So the way I would think

about this is something I wrote about actually an under pressure. We're like trying out all my books today. Yeah. About. Yeah. I mean it's fun. I mean this is a beauty of like having gotten to think about a lot of these things for a long time, right? Like I've gotten to this still my thoughts. In my book under pressure, which is about stress and anxiety in girls, I put out this metaphor of talking with kids, and this can be true of all kids, not just girls, about their container versus

their contents. Okay. So this kid has a really good looking container, right? Not going to falter for that.

“It is really important that that be balanced with a focus on her contents, right? The focus on”

who she is inside, the kind of person she is, the skills she's developing the way she contributes to the world. And what I like about the container contents metaphor is that it gives us a language

for talking with kids that's not critical. This is not like, oh my god, it's not looking

yourself in the mirror, like go, you know, shovel the driveway. It gives us a way of saying things like kiddo, you got a cute container. Like, and I think this is also a great moment to say, and lucky you, that that just happened, right? You actually don't get a whole lot of credit for that, right? Like that is, you know, the hand you were dealt. But what really matters is your contents. The things you control, the things you build, the things you make, the choices you make about how to

be in the world. You know, containers, great, they come, they go, they change over time. It's your contents that you control, and it's your contents that I want you to focus on. So what do you think of that? Hmm. I think, sometimes it's hard for kids to sort of grasp that, right, and understand it in the moment. I feel like I'm talking at them, but not with them, right, to where it'll get through to them.

“I think you're right. I think she might be like, past the eyeliner, right?”

She might be like, oh my god, like, right. You know, or she may even think,

even be like, middle-aged lady, don't you wish what I had, right? Like, we don't

you wish you had what I had. Like, she may feel like, you know, you're diminishing my beauty, because, you know, you're on the later end of, you know, what our culture celebrates.

“So I think you're right. I think words will only go so far. I don't think there were not saying,”

right? I think you can still sort of say your piece. But it gets to something else, which is make this kid busy. Help this kid be busy. Right pointy amount of time, right, that she can spend in front of the mirror. Great point, such a great point. Have you ever tried composing and thought, okay, wait, there has got to be a better way. It turns out there is one. Meet Mill. Mill is an odorless effortless, fully automated food recyclers. It can process up to 10 pounds of food scraps

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Shopify.com/asklisa. So as we pull back and look at looks, you know, I feel like there are many different versions of this. And like, how you look at your muscles or how you show up on social media. So how do you get us into the headspace of when we think they've become a little bit too

“obsessive of their appearance regardless of what it is? Because I think social media does sort of”

make you pick a personality and sort of stick with it or display it. How do you, I think parents

always worry, what is the point of worry? And how can you retool things quickly?

Okay, this is important. You brought up boys. I will actually tell you, yes, I worry about girls, I worry about girls who are spending too much time, you know, trying to cultivate a appearance that the culture of the world is going to admire. Things are going on with boys that have not been going on in the past. And a lot of it is around appearance. And a lot of it is around muscularity and losing body fat. And like you say, a lot of it is driven by social media. So just as sort of

play this out a little bit. So we've got this girl version of this, you know, cute kids spending a lot of time putting on makeup and looking in the mirror and taking suggestive photos. The boy version that I am hearing is guy spending a lot of time at the gym, a lot of time worrying about what they eat and a lot of time also looking in the mirror, looking at their bodies, taking photos of their bodies. Sometimes posting those photos of their bodies. So this is not like

a girl problem, right? The idea that the culture could tell you you're supposed to look a certain way and then you're going to spend a lot of time on this because your teenager and this is something that you can be very vulnerable to. This is sort of equal opportunity. So two year question of like, when should you worry, how do you know? I mean, I really think if you feel at all, like your kids worries about their appearance are getting in the way of them growing

in other ways, right? Like when we think about health and young people, what we want to see is progressive development across the board. We want to see them taking better care of themselves

guess one version of this, though, the boys piece and also the girls piece of times kids of all

gender like they can start to take very bad care of themselves in the name of what they think is, you know, appearance. But we want to see them also developing a students and we want to see them developing in their friendships and we want to see them developing in their ability to, you know, be a views to their community and their family. So if you feel like a way to minute, like these other tributaries, these other ways that they can grow and should be feeling good about themselves

are being compromised because so much of their energy is caught up in how they look, then it's time to worry and then to my point about, you know, this girl, then it's hard to actually be like, you know what? I need you to be, you know, helping out of the church or I need you to be, you know, here's the activities that your school has this season. You don't have to, you know, you can choose which ones you want, but you're doing at least one or two of these, right? Like requiring kids to

be useful in the world, to do things in the world, to build skills in the world, for two reasons, one, to crowd out how much time they can spend worrying about their looks and two to build other tributaries for self-esteem because, you know, even if they're good looking like whatever it's

gonna fit. I love those other tributaries. That's just such an analogy that always works all the time.

I love that one. Love it. Before we go and ask you, what if the suggestive selfies if she's actually

“going ahead and posting them? Is there anything parents should be concerned about with that?”

Yeah, we don't love that, right? I mean, if I, or you, saw that, like I think we might be a little uneasy about it, I think that's a conversation that needs to be had. I think that it may be very normed, right? Any kid is doing this, whether it's a girl posting suggestive selfies, or frankly, a boy posting a photo of his six pack that he took a photo of in the mirror in his bathroom, right? Like, it may be very, very normed for them to do it. But every mind to be

have actually read it is the four hours that we're talking about with regard to like, kids not scrolling while studying. I think if we don't want kids doing this, we have to go back to the four hours of, like, how you change behavior and teenagers. So, number one, start with respect. So, we might say, look, I know you're seeing a lot of kids doing this. I get why it feels like it's an okay thing to do. So, that's respect. Then, rationale, that's the rationale for why we don't

want them to do that. Okay, that may be very specific to your family. That may be specific to something, you know, you might say, this isn't really how we present ourselves or this doesn't feel okay. Like, you need a rationale that you can justify and explain to your kid. And so, then you can make a rule. Like, I don't want you to put in a photos that are about displaying your body or

“displaying your appearance. Like, if you want to put up photos of your game fine, but ones that are”

entirely focused on, like, a look at me aren't I cute or fit? Like, that's not how we roll. And then, four, number four, are, expect some resistance. Like, the kids, you know, going to be grumpy about it. That's fine. As long as they can comply to the rule, they can be grumpy about the rule. So, I think that may be a way to wait into this question of kids posting photos that adults just kind of, that don't sit right with us. Yeah, I know you

talk about healthy tension, but this is a tension that I feel. I do not like. No, it's not that fun. It's silly. So, what do you have for us for parenting to go? So, I remember everything about them part of the letter where the parent mentions that the parents also getting feedback on this child being very attractive. And, um, and I, it reminds me of something I came up with when my daughters were little, um, and I just want people to have it, should have be handy. So,

when my daughters were little, sometimes when we be at an about people, like, oh my god,

she's so cute or oh my god, she's so adorable, right? And I was always kind of torn, right?

Because, like, I thought so too. And also, I don't want to write in front of my kid be like, "Why, yes, she is!" You know, like, I didn't know what to say. And so, then finally, when I struck a planting, and she's great on the inside too. It's how I started responding. So, I just want to offer that to families because it felt like it kind of threaded the needle of not wanting to make the moment weird, but also not wanting to double down on this being the most important thing

“about my kid. So, for what it's worth, that's how I ended up solving that problem. That's a great”

way to solve it because you also remind people of what really matters, and sometimes we need a little reminding on that. It's a really great advice. Um, well, thank you, Lisa. And next week, we have a bit of a special, we're going to have the best of episodes, all the hidden gems

breakups, and conflict. I'll see you next week. Thanks for joining us. Be sure to subscribe to

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“therapy, or other types of professional advice, or intervention. If you have concerns about”

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additional resources, check out Lisa's website at Dr. LisaDemore.com