Sophia Network

Prince's Trust - shame on you

News this week that Kelly Osborne has been signed up as a self-esteem ambassador for St Tropez tanning products in collaboration with the Prince's Trust rings plenty of alarm bells. Research commissioned by St Tropez reveals (although it's hardly a revelation) that body image is a major concern for many young people.

So they wheel in Kelly, who has recently lost lots of weight and whose picture has clearly been airbrushed, to say 'It really saddens me that so many young people suffer from low self esteem and feel unhappy with their appearance. I think that at times we can be very hard on ourselves, which is certainly something I have experienced in my own life... Dancing With The Stars and having my first ever St. Tropez spray tan was a huge confidence booster for me - it helped me to get fit and allowed me to look and feel beautiful from the outside, in. More over it also helped me to see that I can achieve anything I put my mind to, which was a huge accomplishment for me - I've never really been able to finish something I've started, and to do so feels amazing.'

Knowing that you look good inevitably gives you a boost, but to suggest that young people should build their sense of self-esteem on their outward appearance and getting a spray-tan is damaging and misleading. Young women are under so much pressure to look immaculate and to aspire to unhealthy body weight that this attempted tie-in with tanning and self-esteem feels pernicious and all wrong. As Liz Etherton wrote in her article on self-esteem for us, 'It is believed that the average young person is exposed to over 1500 advertising images a day. Most of these have an underlying negative message about who they are: ‘buy this because you are not good looking enough, popular enough, cool enough’. Our young people are being assaulted daily by subtle (and not so subtle) criticism of their body image – is it any wonder their view of who they are is being undermined?'

Linking up with the Prince's Trust gives St Tropez some credibility so I can see why they've done it, but I'm surprised the Prince's Trust wanted to put their name to this. Surely they know that self-esteem needs to be based on something much more solid than your outward appearance? Addressing the fact that young people aren't happy with their bodies is important but to suggest that having a spray tan is part of a genuine solution is madness. I expected much more of them - shame on you Prince's Trust.

Call for a kitemark to identify airbrushed images

To coincide with Eating Disorders Awareness Week, the Royal College of Psychiatrists is calling for a new editorial code to be created to stop the media glamorising eating disorders and promoting unhealthy body images. They want to see more diverse bodies in the media instead and an emphasis on helping people to feel positive about their bodies.

Citing research that shows that the media plays a role in the development and maintenance of eating disorders, they highlight three areas where its influence can be toxic:

• Visual imagery - the promotion of very thin bodies as ideal, and the use of airbrushed images that imply physical perfection is attainable
• Magazine content - the prevalence of articles about dieting, body-image and plastic surgery as a means to enhance self-esteem; unbalanced articles about diets that ignore the dangers of extreme dieting; articles and images that normalise body criticism by pointing out celebrities' faults.
• Portrayal of eating disorders - media coverage that glamorises eating disorders and portray them as personal weakness rather than serious mental illnesses.

They make the following recommendations:

• More diverse use of models throughout the media in terms of weight, shape age, ethnicity and disability
• A ban on using underweight models
• A kitemark that raises awareness of the extent of digital manipulation of magazine images.
• A forum to be set up by the government to develop an editorial ethical code covering these issues
• The promotion of media literacy within schools to help young people deconstruct media images.

Their report is supported by beat, the eating disorder charity who celebrate 21 years of campaigning this year, and who have just launched their manifesto highlighting the issues they believe the next government needs to respond to in order to beat eating disorders. Of course, it's not just girls who suffer from eating disorders. Beat's Youtube channel has a video about David Samuels who has overcome anorexia.

Teenage girls - unhealthy eaters

The first year of the new National Diet and Nutrition Survey (NDNS) by the Food Standards Agency has found that teenage girls have the most unhealthy diet in the country according to this report in the Guardian.

The FSA said it was concerned that teenage girls between 11 and 18 are failing to eat enough foods essential for growth and good health. They tend to eat food high in saturated fat and sugar, with fizzy drinks being particularly popular, but they aren't getting enough nutrients such as iron and calcium. In addition, in spite of recommending that children don't drink alcohol at all, the report found that 4% of boys aged 13-15 and 12% of girls of the same age said they usually drank once a week or more.

The fact that teenage girls are eating so unhealthily is interesting because they are more likely to be reading about diets and weight control in magazines. A study reported in Pediatrics magazine in the States three years ago found that 'frequent reading of magazine articles about dieting/weight loss strongly predicted unhealthy weight-control behaviours in adolescent girls, but not boys, 5 years later.'

What do you say to an eight-year-old girl?

You meet a friend with her eight-year-old daughter when you're out shopping, or at church, or over at her house for lunch. You don't know the little girl very well, so what's the first thing you say to her? I had a very interesting conversation with Mark Green at LICC the other day, and he observed that adults tend, in that context, to comment on the girl's appearance: 'You look very pretty today,' or 'That's a lovely dress'. And if that's the only thing we commend them for, or always the first thing that we notice, aren't we giving a rather damaging message that mirrors what they pick up from the rest of our culture - that what matters is the way these little girls look, that if they want approval or attention then they need to look pretty?

That conversation has made me think a lot. Particularly when I met my six-year-old niece last weekend at my sister's birthday lunch. I don't see my niece that often, and my first instinct was to say how lovely she looked because she was dressed up for the party. And then I realised that that was what all of us were saying to her, but none of us were commenting on what her brother was wearing! So I ended up talking to her about school, and the writing she was doing and who her friends were as well as telling her that I liked her funky boots. 

Children and teenagers need good interaction with adults outside of their family. I think there can be a nervousness around child/adult interactions, where people aren't sure what's appropriate and I don't want to add to that! So perhaps a comment on a little girls' dress or a teenage girl's hair is better than nothing. But can't we do better than that? Give me some suggestions for starting conversations with girls and young women that aren't focused on their looks, and perhaps we can all be more aware and better equipped for the future.

Teach your children how to read images

When this picture of model Lizzie Miller was used to illustrate an article on body image in Glamour magazine, the editor received hundreds of emails in support from readers who were so pleased to see a picture of a normal woman in a magazine. Lizzie Miller is 20 years old, 5ft 11 and weighs 12.5 stone. She's a UK size 16 to 18 which is average for a woman but is considered too large to be a 'plus-size' model. How mad is that.

This article in the Guardian details just how much magazine images are changed by photo retouchers before publication, removing anything that is regarded as an 'imperfection' and presenting us with flawless photos. There's an interesting quote from Gail Dines, professor of sociology and women's studies at Wheelock College, Boston about how we need to equip young people to deconstruct these images. ' "I've been studying this for 20 years and yet when I open a magazine I start thinking 'I should go on a diet.' We are not stupid, but we are cultural beings and we take our cues from culture. Young girls are not reading the New York Times and seeing images of Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi – their entire media diet consists of airbrushed images of models and celebrities and it has a profound impact." Dines believes children should be taught how to "read" images. "We live in an image culture now, but people are not taught how to deconstruct images. It's like living in a print culture and not being taught how to read." '

Your opinions needed!

Sheila Bridge, author of Who Stole Your Sex Life, is doing some research into body image. She would like to hear from women of all ages, so why not get the girls in your youth group to fill in her survey and then use that as a discussion starter.

And the editorial group of the Grove Books Youth Series are planning  to produce a book drawing together the wisdom which youth workers have discovered over the years in youth work, the wisdom which it would be helpful for others to know at the start of their career in youth work whether paid or voluntary. Please send your top two or three tips for people starting out in youth work/ministry, plus some basic information about yourself, to Linda Hopkins by the first week of June. They hope to compile a top ten tips from all the replies. Fourteen Youth Grove Booklets have been published, including some by Sophia members: Self-esteem and young people by  Liz Etherton, Effective ministry to teenagers by Ruth Hassall and Ian McDonald, and Sustaining your spirituality by Sally Nash

Extreme male beauty

I watched Extreme Male Beauty on Channel 4 last night. It's pretty typical of a makeover/beauty show but as the title reveals it's all about men and the lengths they will go to in the pursuit of physical perfection. So there was one guy injecting steroids to achieve that muscle-bound look, another having cosmetic surgery to remove his man boobs having lost a lot of weight after gastric-band surgery, and lots of discussion in changing rooms about how guys feel about their bodies. It was quite eye-opening but I'll admit that I felt uncomfortable when a group of women were invited in to comment on the physique of five different guys standing on boxes in their pants because of the sense of objectification; I don't think you'd see the reverse on TV today where men stand around and discuss women in their underwear.

Women's relationship to the fashion-beauty industry and to our bodies is complex. On the one hand there is a lot of pleasure to be had from clothes and beauty routines. On the other there's much to critique: the fact that only a narrow definition of beauty is celebrated; the feeling that many women are left with that their bodies are deficient and must be altered to be thinner, smoother, younger. So I like this quote from philosopher Jennifer Saul, 'The fact that men too are increasingly subject to the sorts of pressure that women have traditionally faced should not be cheering to anyone. If men are now becoming self-policing subjects, this signals not a desirable gender equity but a very sad state of affairs.' What do you think?

Eating disorders

February 23 to 28 is Eating Disorders Awareness Week and Damaris have published a discussion starter on their website made with the BBC for the charity Beat. It uses the voice and experiences of a teenager who has had anorexia. You can download it here, and you can find out more about Beat on their website.

Enough of size zero!

Surprise, surprise - female consumers are fed up with young, white and super-skinny models being used in adverts and prefer models who mirror their own age, size and background according to research by Cambridge University reported here. Dove have made a point of using different size and shape models, as in the image here, but few other brands have followed their lead. Consumer demand has brought change in other areas of life; I wonder if it will make much difference here.

Faking it

Women's Forum Australia have published research on the effect that women's lifestyle magazines have on their readers. They asked: What really goes on when young women pick up a glossy women's lifestyle magazine? What have psychologists, sociologists and other researchers found out about how they affect women's health and wellbeing? What messages are really being sent through these magazines? How do advertising images affect us? What do magazines have to do with eating disorders? And the research is published in the style of a glossy magazine!

You can read more about Faking It here, and download sample pages. If you work on this issue with young girls, it may be worth sending off for a copy as I'm sure the ideas and research will be translatable from the Australian context. First seen on Danielle Strickland's blog.

You can be too thin

The media in France has joined the UK, Spain and Italy in signing an agreement that they will no longer use images of models who are abnormally thin because they are thought to encourage anorexia and bulimia in young women. The agreement is voluntary but it is hoped that peer pressure within the media and public distaste will mean that it is adhered to. French MPs have since proposed a ground-breaking law against the promotion of anorexia, making it illegal to publicly incite excessive thinness. The bill would ban any form of media, including websites, magazines and advertisers from promoting extreme thinness or encouraging severe weight loss. The law will go before the French senate next month. More here.

Anorexi Bulimi Kontakt is a Swedish support agency for those facing anorexia and bulimia in Sweden. They have produced an excellent and hard-hitting film about anorexia which you can download here.

Miss Bimbo

Since its launch last month in Britain, 200,000 girls aged between 9 and 16 have been playing the Miss Bimbo beauty contest game online. They are given a naked virtual character to start with, and then compete against others to earn 'bimbo' dollars to buy sexy outfits and to go clubbing. The ultimate aim of the game is to 'become the most famous, beautiful, sought after bimbo across the globe', and along the way completing missions such as finding a place to live, a job 'to pay for your needs and all the clothes a Bimbo could possibly want', keeping your character at her target weight through diet pills, shopping for the latest fashions, becoming a popular socialite, dating a 'famous hottie' and even resorting to plastic surgery to achieve your goal.

Naturally parents' groups have condemned the game and its creator, Nicolas Jacquart, a 23-year-old web designer from Tooting. According to the Guardian, Jacquart says, 'It is not a bad influence for children. They learn to take care of their bimbos. The missions and goals are morally sound and teach children about the real world. If they eat too much chocolate... it is bad for their bimbo's bodies and their happiness levels compared to if they eat fruit and vegetables, which reinforces positive healthy eating messages.'

So that makes it all right then? It's ok to idolise body image, to judge people by appearances, to focus on the superficial as long as you learn that carrots are better for you than chocolate. Teenagers are not stupid, but you have to wonder what effect games like this have on their self image, their aspirations and their values.

Resources on body image

Many young women compare themselves unfavourably to pictures of celebrities in magazines, forgetting that those images have had hours of retouching to portray someone's ideal of perfection. Swedish ad agency Forsman and Bodenfors created a campaign called Girlpower for the ministry of health and social affairs to highlight the truth behind the images. You can see their interactive Retouch campaign here which could be useful for using with young women.

There are similar images from Greg Apodaca, a digital retoucher, here and here. The difference between the before and after shots is quite dramatic. I must confess that I found myself thinking 'she's not very pretty', when I saw the before shot because I'm so used to seeing the airbrushed images. But then I had to remind myself of what I might look like that close-up!

The Dove Campaign for Real Beautyis also worth looking at in terms of resources to use on body image. I love the strapline of their Onslaught film - talk to your daughter before the beauty industry does. As it's a global campaign it's worth looking at Dove websites from other countries. For example the Canadian website has an award winning film called Evolution which shows the transformation a model goes through.Remember, though, that this is all about advertising and the ultimate aim is to sell you more soap. Other products made by Dove's parent company have very unhelpful gender stereotypes in their adverts.