Body judgments begin… almost at birth!
One of the reasons I went to graduate school was because I wanted to gain a better understanding of why women and girls develop disordered eating behaviors, what makes them worse, and most importantly, how to prevent them. And more and more research is telling us what many of the media experts at About-Face and its readers already know – positive body image and positive self-perception are the answer.
The more accepting I am of my body, the less likely I am to feel like this!
A few recent studies that have been published in the past few weeks highlight these issues well. One new study out of UCLA has again proven that strong self-perception is key to the prevention of risky behaviors in teen girls.
The results of this study showed that overweight girls who had high body satisfaction and who were happy with their size and shape were less likely to engage in a range of unhealthy and disordered eating behaviors like fasting, skipping meals, and self-induced vomiting. And extra-importantly, the study also showed that these girls had lower rates of anxiety and depression, which are so disturbingly common among girls with developing eating disorders.
And the best thing about the study’s results was the discussion that these public health experts, dieticians, and professors had, in which they emphasized that for effective, healthy weight-loss interventions for teens who may need to lose weight for real medical reasons (preventing the onset of diabetes or hypertension and increasing cardiovascular health, for example), these programs need to be rooted in positive self-esteem and the enhancement of self-image. When you feel better about yourself, you want to keep taking care of yourself. You are also more likely to want to share yourself with others, and creating positive social networks increases the likelihood that people will have supporters pushing them to stay healthy. Continue reading
Geico’s new commercial makes it even more normal for popular girls to not eat
“It’s funny because it’s true,” is a common adage following the telling of many jokes. The familiarity of the characters in the latest Geico commercial, teenage girls, are likely to incite a lot of snickering for this very reason. Of course, despite these laughs that Geico hopes for (and likely will get), I’m worried about the message the commercial really sends.
In this particular spot, Geico abandons its familiar gecko spokesman in favor of a trio of three girls, portrayed as the “popular” crowd, who follow around a man who has decided that the best way for him to save money (given how expensive his car insurance is) is to not eat. And what’s the best way to stop yourself from eating? Why, shame, of course!
“Fat-Bottomed Girls” by Kim Selling in honor of National Eating Disorders Awareness Week
Guess what!? We’re now in National Eating Disorder Awareness (NEDA) Week, the aim of which is to ultimately prevent eating disorders and body image issues while reducing the stigma surrounding eating disorders and improving access to treatment.
To celebrate, we want to show you a woman who really loves her body, and showing you how she talks. (A word of caution: the video contains several F-bombs and some sexual descriptions.)
We now present “Fat-Bottomed Girls” by Kim Selling:
Last year, we published Katie McCorkell’s poem “How to Help Someone With an Eating Disorder” on the About-Face blog.
For more information about NEDA, visit their web site or call the free, confidential Helpline, Monday-Friday, 8:30 am to 4:30 pm, Pacific Standard Time: 1-800-931-2237.
Kim Selling is an occasional writer, sometime poet, and unfailingly proud Californian. She graduated from the University of Washington last year, and is now floating around Seattle until she hits something solid.
Sugar in the Raw delivers a sweet insult
Calorie-free sweeteners might sound great, but many of them are actually chemically altered, and all of them are contributing to the collective cultural goal to eventually subsist on, well…nothing. Given that, it came as no big surprise to me that one of these companies, Sugar in the Raw, has a new commercial that takes a swing at what they seem to think are women’s normal eating behaviors. Take a look:
Where to begin. The man is (woefully, cluelessly) shopping for a woman in his life, perhaps his wife. At the start, he takes minor comfort in recognizing the kind of sugar that she usually sprinkles on her morning grapefruit, thinking his search is over.
But no! He then is gripped with a burning question – is she in fact eating sugar this week?! Continue reading
The Biggest Loser tempts disordered eating
Laying out the "temptations."
We’ve written about the weight-loss reality television show The Biggest Loser before here on the About-Face blog, whether it’s the scariness of trainer Jillian Michaels or the reports of previous contestants developing eating disorders after the show.
Recently, About-Face received an email from a concerned The Biggest Loser watcher in Australia. She was disturbed by a recent segment from the show in which contestants were told to consume more calories of one type of sugary dessert than the others, in order to avoid elimination from the show.
This particular challenge is called “Temptation,” a challenge in various countries’ versions of The Biggest Loser in which contestants must eat some or all of a certain food in order to gain advantages in the competition, such as immunity from elimination. Each time, different high-calorie foods are presented to them, tempting them to eat as much as possible. Continue reading
New children’s book celebrates the joys of diet and weight loss
What, you mean you can't tell this book is about exercise?
No child should be reading a book that has the word “diet” in the title, especially when that book conflates weight loss with attractiveness and personal happiness—hell, no adult should be reading that book, but I can’t tell you what to do with your life.
But alas, this world is full of things that shouldn’t be. Maggie Goes on a Diet is a new book for 6-12 year olds about a 14-year-old girl who—you guessed it!—goes on a diet, loses a bunch of weight, and thus finds happiness. This book has been raising a lot of ire (check out the tags on Amazon.com), and for good reason.
The book’s description says that Maggie starts to eat healthily and becomes a soccer star (both of which are great things for kids to do). So does the cover show her eating fruit, preparing food, exercising, or playing soccer? Nope!
That’d be putting way too much focus on activities rather than bodies, so instead the cover shows a fat little girl staring into a mirror holding up a dress that doesn’t fit her, dreaming about her thinner reflection. (Side note: I used to do that all the time at the height of my disordered eating. Coincidence? Doubt it.) Continue reading
Millie Brown: Is vomiting rainbows glamorous, dangerous, or just gross?
Brown says her vomit art leaves her with a sense of "self-inflicted purity."
The everlasting and continual question: What is art?
The boundaries of this question are only pushed further by controversial London artist Millie Brown, also known as the Vomit Painter. Her newest and most famous work “Nexus Vomitus” is for sale and valued at $2,400.
Millie began her vomit technique in 2006, when her art collective !WOWOW! was asked to be a part of an exhibition in Berlin. Millie, unsure of her craft at the time, only brought brightly colored soymilk and an empty canvas and decided to ingest the medium and regurgitate it on the spot.
Yoplait stirs up eating disordered thoughts in pulled ad
A woman has a moral/ethical/weight dilemma in Yoplait's recently revoked ad.
“Ohhh. Cheesecake.”
So begins a gross and disturbing peek into the female psyche, as imagined by the people of Yoplait.
“Okay. What if I just had a small slice? I was good today, I deserve it! Or, I could have a medium slice and some celery sticks and they would cancel each other out, right? Or…okay, I could have one large slice, and jog in place as I eat it…”
Hardy har har, get it? Women are crazy! Crazy, calorie-counting, food fetishists, riddled with anxiety and guilt! It’s funny ’cause it’s true!
Yeah, no.
Not only does this ad shame women for being such silly gluttons (even the ad’s would-be chaste dieter exclaims, “Mmm, raspberry cheesecake. I’ve been thinking about this all day!”), but it stirs up a slew of eating disorder triggers. Continue reading
A poem honoring National Eating Disorder Awareness Week
The slogan for this year's Eating Disorder Awareness Week is "It's time to talk about it."
I wrote this poem because popular media coverage of eating disorders normalizes the behaviors and results without addressing the serious medical consequences and disturbed cognitions underlying a disorder.
For more information visit http://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/index.php or call the free, confidential Helpline, Monday-Friday, 8:30 am to 4:30 pm, Pacific Standard Time: 1-800-931-2237. Continue reading