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Teen Extreme Makeovers
Helping Teenagers Find Their Real Selves By Laura Cone
Many experts believe building self-esteem is not as much about improving one's outer appearance as it is finding skills and talents. Toni Raiten-D'Antonio, a clinical social worker from Long Island, N.Y., says she has had serious talks with her two daughters, Elizabeth, 23, and Amy, 19, about finding their inner beauty. Raiten-D'Antonio is the author of The Velveteen Principles (Health Communications, 2004). She describes her book as a self-help, inspirational takeoff for adults on the classic children's book The Velveteen Rabbit, a toy that wants to understand what it means to become real.
Raiten-D'Antonio advises parents to ask their teenagers to examine why they feel they need an extreme body makeover. "I would ask my kid to look at what she believes this change would bring and how would it enrich her life," she says. "What would change in your life really if you had a different nose? And, ultimately, the things that matter don't change with plastic surgery."
She says her daughters struggled with the messages from society that encourage women to focus on the superficial and external aspects. "I have had ridiculous conversations with them where one of them thought she had the wrong-shaped belly button compared to what fashion models had, and she said to me, 'Is there such a thing as belly button-oplasty?' and she knew it was razy, and it was obvious I was never going to support her having anything done to her belly button," Raiten-D'Antonio says.
Teenagers are inundated with images in video games, music videos and television, which are often profit-driven images aimed at selling products. "The message in the media is you have to look a certain way, and there is a certain type of look that makes you successful – that makes you desirable," she says. "And kids are really susceptible to those messages, and they are reinforced in their peer groups, and the parents' job is to start very early in the life of a child, communicating to them what makes them magnificent specifically. If you have a child who is a talented athlete, that's what you focus on. If you have a child who has written a beautiful poem or is a particularly generous or kind person, that's what makes them successful and beautiful."
While it's important to make an effort to be well-groomed, Raiten-D'Antonio says parents can teach their children how to be "real." And it's a critical lesson as the allure grows stronger. Raiten-D'Antonio believes more teenagers are turning to plastic surgery because of the advancements in technology, affordability and media focus on extreme makeovers. "It's more affordable and it's more normalized," she says. "It used to be something that celebrities did in secret. Now, if you go to get your hair cut, the woman who shampoos my hair has brand new breasts. She is shampooing hair so we know she is not well-off, but the assets she has, however limited they are, they went to those breasts, because she really felt it would change the quality of her life and the way she feels about herself."
