Da Silva V. Tavares

Adolescence is a time of discovery, choices and adapting to new concepts. At this time, dealing with current aesthetic demands becomes a real challenge. In the eternal media game in which we live, the expression ’You can lose kilos in a few days’ tends to demarcate the meaning given to excess weight, and corroborates the false feeling of autonomy/control, passed on by extremely seductive and opinion-forming adverts. Involved in a problem of social and aesthetic devaluation, young people see the meaning and significance of weight gain and excess as a stage for psychological suffering, and the displacement of ambivalent feelings by a single look at the controversial ideal or idealised image. In this sense, children’s bodies take on a great deal of responsibility in this scenario of transformation that was once natural, but is now accelerated and mutilated, seeking to follow trends in order to fit in with other people’s desires. However, adolescents, whose expected bodily changes translate emotional experiences as significant, find in obesity a support for their fragility, demanding fragments of a story to be understood.