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From: tuani@gv.net
Date: 16 Nov 2000
Time: 17:36:14
Body Fat Comments by Teachers, Parents and Role Models
When a teacher, parent or role model delivers opinions and advice about body fat, body size, body image, and nutrition without regard to its impact, especially to at-risk girls, there is a hazard of deeply influencing an adolescent to initiate or perpetuate a pattern of body and self hatred. Before the advent of puberty, girls tend to feel free in their bodies and lack body self-consciousness or shame. Socializing girls to invest so heavily in appearance contributes to serious emotional health problems during adolescence. Cultural preoccupation with female appearance has led to extreme negative body image among adolescent women (Offer et al, 1981). Because attractiveness is associated with personal worth, an unattractive body translates into low self-esteem. The connection between appearance and self-worth may be so deep that it contributes to feelings of shame, insecurity, ineffectiveness, and worthlessness throughout a woman's life (Freedman, 1984). In some cases, young women who have access to financial resources, seek out interventions such as cosmetic surgery and liposuction in an attempt to increase their self-esteem. (Freedman, 1984).
Preoccupation with female beauty also frequently causes serious physical health problems in girls and women. These may include but are not limited to: eating disorders, sexual acting-out and sexually transmissible diseases, unwanted pregnancy, body hatred and depression, repression of feelings, self silencing, complications from cosmetic surgery, intimate abuse (both emotional and physical), and addiction.
Moving from adolescence to young adulthood, women often undergo a series of crises surrounding their sexuality and attractiveness. Many have experienced sexual or social violence or harassment during this stage, which made them feel confused, powerless and negative about their bodies. They also started to lose confidence in the ways their bodies work.
It is well documented in the social science research that media messages promoting the "emaciated waif look" has caused many girls and women to spiral down into the dangerous world of eating disorders. While the images of childlike women in the media has obviously contributed to an increased obsession to be thin, there are other factors in a young adolescents life which add to their decreased self-esteem.
Pressures put on a girl by her teachers, role models and parents are difficult to withstand. If a girl entering adolescence still carries some baby fat, she or her educators may not realize that her residual body fat will be used wisely by her body during the maturation process into womanhood. This lack of knowledge may harm her, and cause her to think that this extra body fat is unattractive and undesirable. If teachers and parents are in tacit agreement that there is something wrong with their bodies, the children listen. They often internalize their respected adult's advice as a message that they are fundamentally flawed. For the vulnerable young woman, this easily translates into a message that they are unlovable, ugly, stupid, lazy, and bad.
It is imperative that as teachers, parents and role models, we educate ourselves about our own hidden beliefs and opinions that can create a climate of fat discrimination. Unexamined statements about body fat and their attendant dangers to teenagers need to be discussed. Educators need to include ongoing discussions about health, prevailing fat myths, body image, self-esteem, societal attitudes and ways to combat their power in their classrooms. Since so much attention is focused towards young women's bodies (12-19) in our culture, including the objectification and idolization of the adolescent waif as the norm, it is our responsibility as caretakers and educators of young impressionable girls to understand the complexities of the mixed messages young people receive daily and to actively counter the perpetually damaging messages of discrimination and prejudice in all forms.
Body image is an individual's experience of his/her body. It is the mental picture a person has of his/her body as well as the individual's associated thoughts, feelings, judgments, sensations, awareness and behavior. Body image is not a static concept. It is developed through interactions with people and the social world; it changes over ones life in constant response to the current feedback from the environment.
Body image is shaped by many factors including: * judgments or comments from others, * sexual and racial harassment, * stigmatization, * prevailing social values, * physical changes in the body during puberty, menopause, and pregnancy, * socialization, * an individual's self-esteem, * violence (verbal, physical or sexual abuse), and * actual conditions of the body (illness or disabilities).
The hard work of changing feelings and attitudes about the body is a more difficult, longer-term answer than focusing on changing the body's fat content, but one that is more likely to result in increased confidence in our young women. It is also a potentially permanent solution requiring the participation of everyone involved in educating our children. By examining underlying feelings about their bodies, exploring the cultural and individual roots of these feelings, and expanding notions of what is beautiful, women and girls can learn to accept their bodies. Through this process, many women and girls also find greater self-confidence, personal power and acceptance.
Health and educational professionals can use education and support to shift the attitudes, values and behavior of girls and women. For preadolescents and adolescents, activities that focus and have consistent messages of normal eating, active living, self-respect, appreciation of diversity, and skills for change can be used to dispel the myths about "overweight", and build resistance to the social pressures to diet.
Curricula are needed in school systems, for females and males, that include information giving, attitude changes and skill development. The education must be specific so that people not only have awareness and sensitivity but also believe they have the knowledge, ability or skills to carry out a new behavior. People need to know about strategies for enhancing self-care, self-expression and self-confidence in the development of healthy body image. Teachers and parents also need education in order to reinforce and support the in-school curriculum. Policies need to include an adoption of formal or informal rules by responsible governing bodies. Approaches may include development of policy for the acceptance of diversity of body sizes and shapes in schools, clubs or sports organizations. A policy condemning harassment based on appearance, size or shape might also be adopted by schools or workplaces. Policies to provide healthy foods in schools may assist in the process. Ongoing evaluation of these programs is essential.
It is also important to note the impact of fat discrimination on our young boys and men. What are the messages we are reinforcing in our sons? Are we aware of the consequence of apathy and collusion with the narrow standards of beauty imposed by our culture on our young men, and how this contributes to increased discrimination and unhealthy relationships.
It is only by confronting head-on the ingrained, well-taught prejudice we all carry about the larger people among us, that we will all be able to live in world which nurtures and supports us all.
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