In today’s society, many teen girls are finding themselves falling deeper and deeper into the idea that perfection is obtainable. Teen girls are hounded by pop culture that they should be an image of perfection. Most girls know there is no such thing, but some still try to create it. Perfect has no size, yet the pressure really weighs down on girls who think it does.

According to the Pew Research Center, 56% of teens are on social media several times a day, where they see the opinions of others, and read what their peers have to say. Although this could be beneficial to a teen’s social life and self-concept, it is also a burden to teen girls who see what their body image “should” look like. With so many boys tweeting and instagramming what they think the perfect girl should look like, girls are left thinking “Well, I don’t look like that, what’s wrong with me?” Boys may not realize, but when they label a girl as “winning” they are helping society set a false standard for perfection.

Social media isn’t the only thing having a significant impact on what girls think about themselves. Beauty magazines are also giving some girls a complex. When young women don’t see models on the front cover of “Seventeen” or “Teen Vogue” with the same body type as them, they get discouraged. As stated by Girls, Inc., a website to improve girls self-esteem, 70% of teen girls feel like they can’t measure up, or aren’t good enough, after seeing women who are considered beautiful. According to The National Report on Self Esteem, 98% of girls feel a great deal of pressure from outside sources to look a certain way. This creates an immense issue in the way girls live, and the way they feel about themselves.

Also, teens often feel intimidated and pressured by their friends. They notice their female peers getting complimented along with being looked at as beautiful, yet they stand in the corner, with no one seeing them the same way. They also compare themselves to their friends and other females seen in public or on social media. Other females have a more substantial effect on their peers than most would think.

Beauty is defined in innumerable places throughout today’s world. With that, multiple girls feel as though they must follow a certain path to what must be “perfection.” In 2015, we need to break that path, and create a new one, showing everyone that they’re beautiful; everyone needs to be their own beautiful, and have confidence in themselves. The females in movies and on magazines don’t set a standard, because everyone, with their own beauty, is the new standard.