Yazmin G. of Manhattan receives friend requests on MySpace from all over New York and New Jersey. She is fifteen years old and a Sophmore in High School. Her 'about me' on her MySpace page is eye-catching only because words are replaced by pictures. Even if it had any words at all, people would still click straight to her photo albums. She's sure to receive pages and pages of comments shortly after posting a new picture. Most of her photos show her belly piercing, extra skin, and of course some back. The photo she posted in mid-February is typical: skinny jeans, a top ending above the stomach, displaying belly-button piercing.



Yazmin says she feels good about herself, but apparently her MySpace activity is most of the reason for that. 'If I like the picture I want to share it with the world,' she says about her revealing MySpace photos. 'I'm very photogenic. I like the attention and being a tease.' She seems unconcerned about the fact that younger kids look up to her, no matter how bad a role model she is. 'I party and bug out.' she admits. 'What teenager doesn't? Everyone has a bad side to them no matter what.'


Yazmin is just one of many teens who are influencing younger kids in a negative way, from how they dress to their attitude and behavior. Young girls get the idea that by taking pictures that reveal most of the skin they've got on them, then they will attract attention, and that the attention will be a good thing. They don't realize that they are looking like stereotypes. A dean at a High School in Manhattan, Danilo M. said, 'It depends on his or her values. I'm sure everyone has been raised in a positive way, but there's always a bad one who chooses to follow bad influences.'


It's not only with MySpace photos that teenagers are sending messages about what they're like, to each other, to their teachers and bosses and other adults, and, most importantly, to younger kids. They also send these messages by the way they dress. Jeans are a big problem. Females buy them a size smaller than they wear so their jeans hug their bodies even more. Males go to one of two extremes. Half of them buy their jeans too tight and in skinny jean style, where molds of 'packages' are visible towards the front. The other half buy a size bigger, so everything is much looser and baggier, often exposing their underwear. During the 2008 Presidential campaign, a reporter for MTV questioned Barack Obama about how young men wear their pants. 'Brothers should pull up their pants,' Obama said, according to The New York Times. 'You're walking by your mother, your grandmother, and your underwear is showing. What's wrong with that? Come on.'


Teenagers are dressing in ways that are very different from how their parents dressed. Virginia S., a fifty-two year-old lunch aide at a Public School in Manhattan, says more about the difference. 'Young girls are more developed, exposing more cleavage. Most pieces of clothing are tight and uncomfortable.' Today, for females tops that reveal enough to sun-tan are considered perfect for school. Males wear tees that fit like night gowns and get them more girls than a rose.


Most teenagers are unware they're role models for kids, but they are. Even though Yazmin doesn't think about it, her younger cousin thinks of her as somebody to imitate. 'I look up to her,' Yazmin's nine-year-old cousin, Valerie O. admits. 'I like how she dresses.'