Body Image
Body Changes: Talking girl to girl

How is your body changing as you grow up? Kemba, Katti, and Rachel admit that during puberty they sometimes felt awkward about their appearance.

"You're kind of going into a new phase of your life," Kemba says. "You're not a little girl anymore. You look at yourself in a different way, and you start caring about what you look like."

Suddenly, you find you're comparing your appearance with models in magazines, or with features of your friends.

"Oh, I wish my hair looked like hers," Katti says, to give an example of how her mind works. "Why aren't I as skinny as she is? Why aren't I as tall as she is?"

Feeling self-conscious is natural when you reach puberty. "If your hips start getting wider and someone's looking at you," Kemba says, "you're always thinking, why are they looking at me?"

But in the midst of change, getting perspective is possible. "Everyone feels that," Katti says. "I've had friends that have been so thin they obsess over it: Oh, I've got to gain weight! And I've had friends that were so big, they're like: I've got to lose weight! I just know it doesn't matter what size you are, if you are healthy."

These girls have learned to accept themselves. "I don't let it bring me down," Rachel says. "I can't because this is how I was created. You gotta accept that we're all created a different way."

"It was hard at first," Katti says, "but it's OK, now. I am proud of the way I look." In this case, she chose to listen to an older, wiser adult. "My mother always told me, 'There are women at the gym right now, and they want to look the way you look. They want to have muscles the way you have muscles.' I just had to keep telling myself: You know, it really is true."