“You’re not fat Mummy,” Belle said to me once, “you’re just very, very, very chubby.”
It was her way of being kind, of trying to boost my self-esteem, but I’m not sure she quite got it. Still, she’s right, I am a bit chubby. I’m not sure about very, very, very though.
I try to be as positive as possible about my body, no matter how I might actually be feeling. I sell my squidgy tummy as an excellent pillow, and my rather large bottom as a secret defensive weapon in netball matches. I know how easily influenced girls are by their mothers, and how what feels like a harmless comment to you can stick with them as they grow up. It’s hard though, especially when Belle has such an opposite body type to me – the soft tummy and large bottom can’t be bigged up too much (literally and metaphorically) to a child with a naturally twig like build and a bottom the size of a ten pence piece. View Post
What do you see when you look in the mirror? What I see varies a lot. Sometimes I look in the mirror and see a big wobbly heffalump. Other days I feel more positive.
When I went to record a clip for the What I See project I was in a particularly positive mood, as you can see from my video here. It was because I was in London – going to London always makes me feel all excited and full of potential. Plus it wasn’t that long after I got my funky new glasses and I was feeling pretty awesome, like one of those modern social media types. If I was a man I would definitely have a curly moustache. View Post
“This could have been you,” laughed Boyfriend this morning, reading the news on his phone, “you’ve got a massive bottom.”
He was reading a story in the Daily Mail about Elsie Scheel, the 24-year-old who in 1912 was officially declared ‘the most nearly perfect physical specimen of womanhood.’
Pear-shaped Elsie, who believed that other girls her age did ‘too much of the wrong sort of things, too many dances and not enough bracing tramps’, measured 35-30-40. She was a little taller and heavier than me, but proportions wise, it didn’t sound too far off. I do have a big bottom.
“I’m going to get the tape measure,” I said.
And what do you know, those are my exact measurements. Good childbearing hips and all that.
Elsie put her good health down to ‘common sense’ and ‘sane living. I have eaten only what I wanted and when I wanted it.’
Are you happy with your wobbly bits? At peace with your wonky nose? Or do you cling to the dream that if only you were a few pounds lighter, a little bit taller, that all would be well with the world?
I wish I could say that I didn’t care about body image, that I was totally happy and accepting of my body, but it would be a fib. Like the majority of women, I too hanker after thinner thighs and tighter triceps. Not enough to actually do anything about it of course, but that’s really not the point, as the issue is clearly not a physical one.
The most worrying thing is the increasingly young age at which body image becomes an issue for girls and young women, as I talked about recently. I say recently… I just looked it up and the post I wrote about conversations overheard on a school bus is nearly two years old! Blimey, unnoticed aging clearly an issue for me here.
There has been a trend recently in the media to try and redress the balance, and change the way we feel about our body image, but to be honest I’m a little cynical. Take the Dove Real Beauty campaign for instance. Now perhaps it’s just me, but aren’t all of these women actually rather attractive? Some of them may be larger than traditional models, but none of them are fat, they’re all well proportioned with smooth skin and pretty faces:
Not exactly munters are they?
Dove’s latest idea for improving our body image and raising levels of confidence among girls is the Dove Self Esteem Programme, a series of workshops being held in schools throughout the UK, with the aim of reaching a million 11-18 year old girls by the end of 2012. My cynical side says ‘what a great market for them to tap into’ but at the same time I can’t help but think that one million girls feeling even just a little bit better abut themselves has to be a good thing right?
Again, not exactly munters…
Worryingly, it really is this young that body image starts to become an issue. Dove found that over half of the girls they surveyed thought they were ‘average’, ‘ordinary’, ‘plain’ or ‘unattractive’, and the stats I found when researching my post on pornography are even more shocking:
Over half of all women around the world say they first became aware of the need to be physically attractive between 6 and 17 years of age.
66% of teenage girls would consider plastic surgery and 20% would do it right now.
Polls suggest that 63% of young women aspire to be glamour models or lap dancers.
One in three people believe a woman is responsible for violence committed against her if she is wearing ‘revealing clothing’.
Have you seen the Dove ad about all the little girls giving up their hobbies because of their body image? It’s pretty scary stuff:
Further research by Dove celebrates the fact that over a third of girls cite their mothers as their role models. Great, you might think, it’s good that girls have someone real to emulate, but then you look down the rest of the list, and it’s the usual suspects – Cheryl Cole, Jessie J, Rhinanna… And we all know how I feel about Rhianna as a role model. Where are the political figures? The writers? The scientists? Why are young girls so focussed on role models famous purely on the basis of their looks?
Which leads me to my key question – do campaigns like the Dove Real Beauty campaign, or their self-esteem workshops really do anything to tackle issues around body image, or is it a much deeper rooted problem? Are programmes like these just a drop in the multi-million pound ocean that is the beauty industry, or are Dove trailblazers, leading the way for others?
Answers on the back of an anti-wrinkle cream box please.
You can visit the Dove facebook page for more information on their initiatives to improve body image among young women.
I saw this story in the Daily Mail today (I was looking for work reasons, not for pleasure), and just had to comment….
When I saw it, it was one of the lead stories on the home page. It showed a picture of two attractive women, one fat and one thin. By fat I mean perfectly normal UK size, not a size ten, but not some sort of fifty stone ‘the woman who hasn’t left her bed for ten years’ channel five documentary type fat. It was basically two ordinary women.
The headline next to it read “one is a virgin, one has had 50 lovers. Can you guess which is which? You may be surprised by the answer…”
As a mother to two daughters, I’m extremely conscious of the way women and young girls are portrayed in the media and how this influences how they feel about their own bodies. There has been a lot in the press lately about the use of airbrushing and younger and younger girls wanting to wear make-up, but what can we do about it? How can we make our daughters feel good about themselves without closing them off from the real world?
Wednesday is my day for volunteering at Belle’s school. I sit on a coach with 50 small children and we all get taken to the nearest swimming pool. My job is to look after the girls in the changing rooms, supervise the switchover between the year threes and the year fours, and make sure everyone goes home with the right pants on. It is an intense couple of hours.
