Puberty and Physical Health & Family, (Friends) and Peers metareflection
When you start to go through puberty and your body changes, an awareness of your body starts to coalese and a certain "body image" starts to develop. In other words, the way you feel about yourself is actualized. In terms of an adolescent's physical health, body image is one of the greatest negative health issues that adolescents face; it is one of the contributing factors to the over-valuation of an "ideal" body image that is yearned for, fantasized about, and talked over in a certain adolescent friend group. If you are obsessed with the way you look and care about looking good all the time, then you will attract others that share that same value. One of the most influencing factors on an adolescent's health is her/his friend and peer group. These two systems create a "culture" that the adolescent is embedded within that influences and is influenced by other systems within the adolescent's life. Friends and peers are an important system for the teen, for it is here that the values, beliefs and opinions that the adolescent develops as her own, such as her body image, are shared.
For example, a group of boys who are interested in World of Warcraft and video-games will most likely not be too concerned with their physical appearance and not care about body image because adolescents have a tendency to choose their friends according to their interests and similarities. In contrast, a group of 'gym rats' who work out 5 times a week and check themselves out in the mirror as they pass will most likely be concerned with their body image and all have that in common.
As a teacher, to break this compulsion for the unhealthy concern of the way you look and have it be reinforced in your friend group, I would try to make my classroom a place where people look beyond the skin or surface level to really get to know someone from the inside. I think it is important to teach adolescents the importance of teaching good values, such as "dont judge a book by its cover".
One thing I would do as a teacher is when allowing my students to work in groups, I would set up these peer groups on my own. I would place partners together that wouldn't ordinarily choose to be together. In this way, new friendships can be developed, ones that aren't based on the external such as body image. In these ways, deeper and more significant friendships will be created based on more positive qualities and new similarities. Another thing I would do is pair up boys with girls so that the two genders can talk to one another and develop a understanding of the opposite gender as a person, and not just a hot bod. It is important for boys and girls to interact on a friend level when in school so that they come to value each other as people and not just as sleeping partners.
