Vionna Peng Deals with Body Image and Self-Acceptance in Middle School

http://www.kqed.org/.stream/anon/radio/tcrmag/2014/09/2014-09-19e-tcrmag.mp3

Vionna Peng is an eighth-grader who attends Jefferson Middle School in San Gabriel, northeast of Los Angeles. She found the secret to middle school wasn't in screen time or social media -- but in old-fashioned friendships.

Peng is the current speech and debate team captain. She proudly shows off a purple trophy in her room, "It was against 93 people and I won ninth, so that was pretty good," she says. There are other speech and debate accoutrements. "This is my pen; it says captain.This is my whistle that four of the team captains got. It's green, it has a green lanyard, and it's a standard black whistle. It's pretty cool. And then these are all my medals!" beams Peng.

Reflecting on how she felt in middle school before she found this activity, Peng says: "Before seventh grade, before I met my speech and debate family, I definitely felt really lonely, I think, because now we have social media, and everything just seems to go ballistic," she says.

Body image became an issue. "When you can't control something you're like, 'Oh well, I can control the calories, I can control how much weight I lose.' And I felt like, maybe if I just lost 3 more pounds by next week, I can sit with the cool kids at lunch. So it was just very never-ending pressure," says Peng.

But things got better when she found a connection with the school's speech and debate club. "Speech and debate is practically my whole life -- it revolves around everything. I met some of my closest friends there. You definitely build a family, you get so close to them that it seems like, 'Oh well, I know they're there for me, and I know that someone actually cares now.' "

Vionna Peng wrote an essay about body image and self-acceptance for her speech and debate club.

"As a child, I was cute, I’m not going to lie. And I didn't care about how my hair looked or about the clothes I wore. I was carefree. But as I grew older, I learned about society's idea of a perfect body, fat talk. I couldn't accept how I looked and was always striving to impress everyone, but mostly society's idea of perfection. I feel fat. It’s the worst thought to have while getting ready. That, or possibly, I hate that my thighs touch. It sucks that we live in a society where we are judged even if we do right or wrong.

"What I miss when I was younger was not necessarily caring. Like in middle school, you definitely get judged more.

"My entire middle-school experience is mixed. Because there's the good times, the bad times, the times where you want to cry. The times where you think this is the best time in my life.

"Where I am, I think I'm close to a teenager. There's still that part of me that likes to go out and have fun and act like I'm 9 again, but that's just who I am.

"The best part of middle school would be the self-discovery part. That's definitely fun and it's definitely when you find your group of friends that you will remember 'till high school and college. I think that's definitely one of my life goals, to make a group of friends that I'll remember for the rest of my life. And right now, I think I'm doing pretty good with it."