The complete set of 198 Hints are available in paperback from the CYC-Net Press store.
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Appearance is everything?Great hubbub around the bathroom mirror. The three girls are frantically adjusting eye shadow, too much, too little, making despairing sounds about how awful they look, how terrified they are, asking each others’ opinions, scraping everything off and starting again ... and eventually squeezing out of the front door, time-bombs of apprehension.
We worry about their seeming anxiety and their need for reassurance – but only because we momentarily forget our own teen years. Nothing new about pre-party panic or pre-date dread. We all, male and female, spent an inordinate time primping and grooming before unleashing ourselves on the world. And all of this agitation around the mirror is not a problem. Why?
Because function is everything. Because these three kids went from the mirror to the party or prom. Whatever their misgivings about their looks and their dress, they are getting on with their lives – attending the social occasions and taking trouble with their appearance.
It is when apprehension and uneasiness dominate or restrict normal function – as with the youngster who can't get out of the front door on party night or who can't get out of bed on a school morning – that we may have something to worry about. Like it or not, we may from time to time have to deal with youth who despair of their body shape or have such self-doubt that they cannot get on with their lives.
Rejoice for the three girls we started with; always be on watch for the others who we may think are only acting as adolescents ... but who are stuck, not really being adolescents, growers, adults-in-the-becoming.
Function is everything.
