The other day my sister bought a magazine she was in love with and set down to read about all of the latest news in her tween world. As she was flipping through, I glanced over and noticed an article with the headline "How to make Taylor Lautner yours!"Upon further reading, I saw it was three glossy pages of Taylors interests, were he likes to eat, and ways to get him on a date.

I didn’t even bother reading any further because I knew what a waste of time it was, but it did get me thinking. This magazine probably sells millions of copies every month to young teen girls just like my sister, filling their heads with crazy notions of the possibility of dating a star, but also telling them how they need to look and dress. This is the most upsetting part, the fact that magazines all over the world are sending messages to teen girls that they need to dress a certain way and have a certain personality in order to have the perfect man, and a perfect life.

Magazines aren’t the only bad guys in the picture; our entire media system has been thrown off by the idea that targeting teen girls will sell more products. It is this theory that has really fed the fire as far as advertising. Now, every time you turn on the television, commercials are selling products that will “make guys crazy for you” if you buy it and use it. Pretty soon girls start to believe that they need to be like the models they see on TV, or they won’t be good enough for anyone anymore. So they go out and buy that razor or make-up and put more money into the company’s pocket, which causes them to target teenage girls more and more.

Another problem is the fashion choices presented to twelve and thirteen girls. They see a thin girl with short shorts, a low cut top and a man on her shoulder. This tells them that in order to have a guy and be happy like that girl, they to need to show as much skin as possible and have the perfect body. These unobtainable goals can cause very low self esteem, which can lead into eating disorders and depression later in there teen years.

It saddens me to think of all the teenage girls in our world who think they need to deny who they really is in order to be what they have been told are the “perfect girl”. We as a nation need to start making changes in our media, so that teen girls everywhere can begin to love the person they really are. No girl should ever be saddened when she looks in the mirror, or tricked by the assumption that there is such a thing as the perfect girl, and the perfect life. If we all ban together, one day we will have a nation with fewer eating disorders and depression, and that is a beautiful thing.