One of the most popular recent books about the lives of teen-age girls, Reviving Ophelia, dealt with the problem of self-esteem. The author of that book, Mary Pipher, traced many of the problems that teen-age girls have to a lack of self-esteem, noting that suicide, eating disorders, depression, teen pregnancy, and other problems have their origins in self-image. The intent in this paper is to explore that issue of self-esteem, learning how low self-esteem develops and how it impacts the individual.
Before we start looking at how self-esteem develops and what it does, it would be helpful to define self-esteem. What is it? Gloria Steinem looked at the concept in some detail, noting that it is not a new concept nor a specifically Western concept either. She noted that there are words for it in many different languages, including Arabic, Hebrew, Russian, Swahili, and Chinese. The Chinese used the combined pictographs for self and esteem or respect (Steinem 31).
Steinem herself started with the definition in the Oxford English Dictionary, noting that the dictionary cites uses of "self-esteem" from the 1600s. She indicated that there are actually references to the concept which extend much further back to the Greek philosophers. For them, oikeiosis, or self-love and self-acceptance, was the greatest goal, while self-alienation was the greatest evil (Steinem 31).
In thinking about self-esteem, then, the most important issue seems to be the individual's positive feeling about his or her self. It involves appreciation, respect, acceptance, contentedness, or love for oneself. This is sometimes difficult to come by, particularly for adolescent girls.
There has been an ongoing development in our understanding of the relationship between adolescent behavior and adolescent self-esteem. Kizziar and Hagerdorn early noted that young people who had low self-esteem and a poor sense of self-worth were more likely to be dependent o...