A recent article in the Grants Pass Daily Courier reminded me of a growing problem in our culture, namely the cognitive dissonance that many experience between their desired reality and real reality; and, more importantly, the way that people deal with that dissonance.

The article in question, entitled "What Makes Someone Good Looking?" (sic), dealt with the fact that many, especially teenagers, lack self-esteem as a result of their failure to live up to society's ideal of beauty. It noted that Planned Parenthood, the Coalition for Kids, and Vista had created a cooperative project to instruct teenagers that, among other things, their feelings of self-esteem should not be related to their body image, and, more specifically, "It's Your Body, You Can Have It Back" (sic).

The message of this article, and I presume of the aforementioned cooperative project, is that "It's ok to be who you are, regardless of societal ideals, and that it is a mistake for you to aspire to, and attempt to conform to, these ideals."

What is startling about this is that many of the same people telling our kids that how their physical body looks is not important are also telling them to:

• dress for success, and
• maintain a healthy (i.e., low) body weight.

Talk about compartmentalization! On one hand, the adherents of "self esteem -- reality be damned" tell children that the size and shape of their bodies (i.e., their appearance") is not important. On the other, they tell them that the coverings that they drape over their body (i.e., their appearance) is very important. And on the third hand, they teach that preventive health care is good and, not-at-all-incidentally, that preventive health care includes low body weight as an important component.

Instead of attempting to artificially prop up the self-esteem of children by giving them horribly mixed messages and denying or discounting reality, our intellectual leaders should be helping children improve their understanding of how things really are, and value (and perhaps even change) themselves accordingly.

Here's how things really are:

• Success in our society depends very much on appearance.
  • Tall-ness and thin-ness within broad ranges are positively correlated with both social success and success in most fields of endeavor.
  • The appearance of success (e.g., being dressed in expensive and stylish clothing) is positively correlated with actual success.

• Good health is positively correlated with low weight.
Conversely, increased weight is positively correlated with increased rates of heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and a variety of other deadly diseases, and negatively correlated with longevity.

Here's what I suggest that we do for our children in this matter:

• Teach them that our culture, and most other cultures, place enormous value on appearances.
• Provide them with, and make sure they understand, facts and figures about the relationship of appearance to social and economic success.
• Provide them with, and make sure they understand, facts about the health-related risks associated with excess weight.
• Explain to them that if a person were immune to the expectations and values of the culture of which he is a part, his self-esteem could be derived entirely from his own personal value system. But most (possibly all) people are not so immune, so for at least most people, their self-esteem will be largely, if not completely, based on the values of the society in which they find themselves. Therefore, children, for most (possibly all) of you, the extent to which your values and those of society are congruent will have a substantial impact on your own self-esteem. You ignore or discount society's values at your own risk.
• As a member of society, each of you children has the potential to effect change in society's values. One of the changes towards which you may wish to work is the reduction of the extent to which society values a person based on his conformance to standards of appearance.

If we teach our children the truth about society, themselves, and the relationship between the two, they will be better able to succeed in our culture and to later work to change that culture from one that values facade and conformity to one that values substance and results. If, on the other hand, we continue to teach our children to rationalize and discount the feelings that they experience as a result of their membership in society, their adaptive mechanisms will remain stunted, and society will (continue to) not evolve.