Pressured to Be Perfect

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Jasmine Encarnacion English 101 James Wyman 3 September 2012 Pressured To Be Perfect Love and hope are louder than the pressure to be perfect. In Today’s society, perfection and self-harm go hand and hand; teenagers these days are under more pressure to be perfect than ever. With all the stick thin models on television, and the competition to get into prestigious colleges getting tougher, more and more teens crack under the pressure. Many turn to harmful vices to relieve themselves of the stress. Drugs, alcohol, eating disorders, self-injury; all self-harm devices teenagers take part in to escape the pressure to be perfect. We all strive for that one goal, never realizing that it’s unobtainable. We never see the destruction we cause in the process of reaching that goal; we only see the imperfections that must be destroyed in order to obtain that flawlessness. 46% of all teenagers in the United States engage in some form of self-injury. Everyone has their own reasons, mine was because of the hatred I had for myself, I didn’t like one part of my body, and I thought I was stupid. I thought I was worthless, less than nothing, I didn’t think I deserved to live but I didn’t think I deserved to die either. I thought that I deserved to be stuck living my life, everyday dealing with the pressure to be perfect, and the pressure to be the best. I grew up with the impression that I had to be perfect to bring honor to my family. If I wasn’t perfect, I was a failure and a disgrace to my family. My family never said anything to implement this in my head, but I guess the implication of perfection being ideal planted the idea in my brain and made me want to attain it. If I ever slipped up even a little, if I got a B on an essay, or gained any weight, I called myself a “disappointment”, “weak”, “ignorant”, and “stupid”; So I’d lock myself in the bathroom and punish myself.
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