Beatrice, 13, is one of the young people that took part in our research report Somebody Like Me. Below she tells us about what she thinks about body confidence and her experience with body image anxiety in her own words.
Sometimes I care about my looks, but not always. When I go to school I never care about what I look like because I’m there to study but at the weekends, I care a little bit more about what I look like.
I don’t feel that you have to look good to be in school, but if you’re going somewhere at the weekend, it’s always nice to dress up for the occasion as you only have it once in a couple of weeks maybe.
I used to get bullied at school because of my hair colour. My hair was quite dark and the kids called me names ‘like ginger minger’. They’ve made comments every day and it was really annoying, so now I dye my hair.
Boys talk about girls’ looks and bodies all they time. They’ll say things like ‘oh yeah she’s so fit’, or ‘oh no, she’s so fat I don’t like her’.
I think some girls might look at themselves twice and wish they looked like someone on Instagram.
Most of the popular girls at school are really pretty and thin, but they are always such mean people.
I’ve been bullied by loads of the popular girls and the popular boys in school and I just feel like they’ve got nothing better to do with their lives.
People at school always bully people based on how they look. I had my hair in a messy bun one day and one girl at school mocked me for it the whole day. It was really upsetting and I started crying with every comment that I got.
I think we’re all just people and what you look like shouldn’t be such a big deal.