Are you a parent who has a daughter who is suffering from body image issues? You might be a grandparent, aunty, uncle or friend of a young girl who is being bombarded with Insta images of the perfect face and body. You might be that girl wondering what NORMAL is, why, and why you dont look like that? Sadly, girls are often judged harshly. Studies clearly show that teens with low self-esteem are more likely to engage in high-risk behaviours such as drugs and alcohol, excessive dieting, unprotected sex, and disordered eating. As a plastic surgeon, Dr Pouria Moradi sees many women and girls who are going through these issues and who want to change something about their bodies or their appearance. This started him thinking about his conflicting roles as a father of daughters and a plastic surgeon, and how he could teach his daughters to be confident in their own skin. Normal encourages teens and their parents to examine the media images and social pressures that blur the lines between ideal and real. In this book, Dr Moradi give parents, family and friends a tool to help raise body-positive girls, providing them with facts about different bodies and whats "normal". He also provides information about what to expect should teens decide to change their appearance. The purpose of this book is to educate and empower young women to reclaim their self-esteem, to know that how they look is not their fault, that beauty is about confidence, not perfection. As Dr Moradi tells his daughters in this letter to them: "Try your best to tune out the negative noise and focus instead on taking healthy life choices, including education, nutrition, and exercise." Normal will help parents and young people make sure that if they decide to change their appearance, that decision is made from a positive and thought-through place, rather than from a desire to be something they are not.
