Adolescence and Adulthood - Essay Example

Adolescence and Adulthood Provide an example from your childhood where you discovered your own role and personality traits. It was when I had just stepped into adolescence from childhood that my body started to show many changes. My voice became grave and I started to grow fragile hairs on my chin, lower cheeks and on the area between the upper lip and the nose. This and several other changes like this were quite expected because these changes do appear in the onset of puberty in males. Though, one of the changes was quite displeasing and I wondered if it so happened with every male child my age.

I began to grow my chest and the areola peaked up until they began to peep out through my T shirts. The condition was extremely embarrassing and it made me suffer a lot, particularly in the school when I used to be among my friends. They would point fingers at me and call me “fag”. They did not realize that I had not voluntarily grown my breast and that there was nothing I could do to make it look any better. In order to escape the embarrassment, I would put on three vests under my T shirt, so that the overall look would be quite flabby and the nipples would not be able to define themselves as a separate entity among other body features.

In addition to that, I would try not to make too much public appearance. I stopped going out to the playground in the breaks, and would spend the whole day sitting in my chair. I became very shy, nervous, and conscious about the way I looked. 2. What peer pressure did you face? Having acquired gynecomastia, I had to face a lot of peer pressure. They made fun of me. They used to point fingers at my chest and would often, squeeze my nipple while walking past me. The move used to be so quick that they would be gone before I could even figure out who did that.

Some of my class fellows said I was personally responsible for my condition because I did not do exercise. They thought it was a consequence of my obesity, though I otherwise did not look obese at all. I was quite smart and my weight was just as much as any boy my age would have. In these circumstances, my class fellows said that only part of me was obese and that was my chest. That obviously sounded worse than being totally obese because that seemed like questioning my identity as a male. Those were the worst years of my life and the friends had only made it worse.

I could not discuss this condition with my parents either because I did not feel at ease talking about this to anybody. It was a shameful physical disorder that had surfaced along with many other pubic changes. At that time, I had no information about this condition and did not know anybody other than me who would be suffering from similar chest disorder. I felt locked up in a room and was suffocating in the web that I had constructed around me to exclude myself socially. 3. How did you respond to the peer pressure?

The conditions were terribly wrong and I knew I had to do something about it because I could not survive for long in the conditions that had developed. I was the victim of mockery in my social circle and did not feel comfortable discussing it with anybody. The urge to come out of this was searing in me and I finally resolved to do something about it. I made use of internet. I browsed the search engines for information upon condition in which male adolescents develop large breasts. That was when I came to know that the condition is called as gynecomastia; gyne meaning women like and mastia meaning breasts.

What I learned was quite consoling and relieving of the stress that had enslaved me for months. I came to know that this condition shows up in as many as 40 per cent of the boys as they enter puberty, and it is quite normal to develop breasts as they are temporary and go away as the body matures up. Although in a vast majority of cases, the man boobs as they are called go away with time, yet if they don’t, they can be made to go away through surgery that has literally no side effects. But the physician in the video I saw in the youtube suggested not to go for surgery unless the condition has stayed for quite some time and unless the chances for its natural improvement are minimal.

As I had just acquired the condition, so I thought to wait and see for some years. However, my anxiety had worn off after I had learned about this condition. Now I was able to talk to my friends about this, and felt confident discussing it with others. Slowly, my social relations started to improve and I was once again able to enjoy life.