here at Cardinal Newman so the topic of
my TED talk is adolescent girls
suffering from lack of confidence and
low self-esteem so basically all of us
are really insecure like you’re not
alone all of us can sometimes don’t feel
confident feel self-conscious and
basically this talk is just to tell you
like it’s all going to be okay like
again you’re not alone ok so my guiding
questions how can women inspire young
girls to build confidence in themselves
what are the outcomes if these if these
problems aren’t resolved my rationale no
girl at any age should feel bad about
themselves with their appearance society
doesn’t realize the things are going
through inside and basically no one
should judge anyone like by their cover
everyone has like something dealing like
they always have a problem inside and I
think nowadays people just don’t like
realize that and they just kind of our
selfish and just don’t really understand
like people’s backgrounds or where they
come from and like what their issues are
really really are so I read a book and
it was called brave enough getting over
our fears flaws and failures to live
bold and free by Nicole you nice when I
was reading it some quotes that stood
out to me the definition of courage is
mental or moral strength to venture
persevere and withstand danger fear or
difficulty courage is the will to move
past fear and get out of our way to
become the women God made us to be so
some statistics in the Dove self-esteem
project only four percent of women
worldwide consider themselves beautiful
the study also reveals that for
nine percent girls need words of
encouragement from their moms to branch
out and unfortunately a lot of girls
don’t have that kind of support from
their mom and that’s also I’ll get into
this later but that’s what my CVSL is
around eight out of ten ten year old
girls in the US have been on a diet only
they’re only ten like I that’s just too
young of an age to be that
self-conscious and having to force your
body to be something like just that you
see on the TV or ads forty two percent
of first through third grade girls want
to be thinner thirty-seven percent of
those girls have already dieted eighty
percent of women say that the images of
women on TV and in movies magazines and
ads makes them feel insecure seven and
ten girls believe they aren’t good
enough or don’t measure up in some ways
including their looks performances in
school and relationships eighty percent
of ten-year-olds have dieted young girls
are more afraid of becoming fat than the
are of nuclear war cancer or losing
the top wish among all girls is for
their parents to communicate better with
them which includes more frequent and
more open conversation as well as
discussions about what’s happening in
their lives seventy-five percent of
girls with low self-esteem reported
engaging in negative activities like
cutting bullying smoking drinking or
disordered eating this compares to
twenty five percent of girls with high
self-esteem my CB SL is called girl
power I go to the village charter school
here in Santa Rosa I go every week
during my 7th period and basically I
just go and talk to like a bunch of a
little group of girls and we just do fun
activities that really have a meaning to
them and that they can apply to
themselves outside of class one week we
did affirmations and I had them write
their names on a piece of paper and put
it on their backs and then they each had
to say something nice about themselves
and then after they were done I had them
write in their journals what they felt
how they felt after and I’ve been doing
this I started it in September and I’ve
honestly seen such a huge change in the
girls in their confidence like they
could not talk to me for a good two
months and now that we’ve gotten really
comfortable with each other they’re
starting to feel really confident and
they really are just truly feeling
beautiful about themselves I mean in the
beginning they had a lot of issues in
their class like they were just like
really insecure and now with all these
activities I’ve been giving them they’ve
just really grown okay so the girl on
the blonde her name is Ali we used to be
really good friends when I lived in San
Francisco we kind of grew apart but then
we started to keep in touch about two
years ago and then last year she faced a
lot of struggles in high school she had
a lot of insecurities about herself and
honestly like she’s
she’s gorgeous and I just would have
never thought she would feel like this
bad about herself and she just had a lot
of drama at her school and there’s a lot
of bullying and on the night of
Halloween she turned her car on in the
garage and killed herself I never got to
see her one last time I wish I could
just tell her it’s going to be okay
you’re so beautiful inside and out but
it was too late and honestly this was
such an eye open I opener for me because
she was just one of my really good
friends and now she’s gone and after
that I made a promise to myself that I’m
gonna dedicate my CBS L to her and
anyone else who feels so insecure about
themselves that they have to end their
life I would never want to see one of my
friends do that ever again it is
traumatizing so after my CVSL in this
TED talk my prediction is that I will
find ways to help and support young
girls going through the struggle of
feeling that they aren’t good enough I
hope that during the process of my CBS L
project I can understand what and why
girls feel this way at such a young age
I want to put a positive effect on
everyone here I want everyone to just
take a moment and don’t judge each other
because you never know what people are
dealing with inside I hope that after my
CBS L the girls can do the same to
others as I did to them by setting good
examples and giving each other positive
affirmations and that way it can become
I was actually okay and so yeah once
again I just really wanted to make this
a huge I just wanted to have it be a
wake-up call to everyone here because
after Ali I just I would never want to
deal with that again and like with anyone here at this school and yeah