Girls' body confidence - what do you think could improve it?

[KateMumsnet]

Hello everyone!

Lynne Featherstone, the Minister for Equalities, is chairing a Roundtable on Body Confidence at the House of Commons. She wants to get up to speed on the work that various independent groups are doing in this area, in order to champion them within government and get as much support for their work as possible.

One of the topics under consideration is sexualisation, and following our Let Girls Be Girls campaign we've been asked to come up with some proposals. We're going to push for the government to get behind our Lads' Mags campaign - but we also thought it was a good moment to ask for your thoughts more generally about body confidence issues and what, if anything, you'd like to see policy-makers doing.

So do please fire away - what else do you think could be done generally to improve the body confidence of young girls?

Yes - Schools should offer a range of P.E. activities - not just team sports. Some people prefer to exercise on their own e.g. gym/swimming.

Music videos are also totally unrealistic these days and full of half-naked, writhing 'pornified' women. I was struck recently, whilst watching the video for 'Last Christmas' how 'normal'-looking the women in it were compared to music videos now.

yy to getting children (especially girls) to celebrate their body for what it can do and how it can make them feel rather than how it looks.

I hated sport as a kid and all of our PE at school was focused on team sports. I have only worked out that I enjoy exercise (in my 40s). We need more opportunities for activity and exercise in schools - yoga, dance and the such like.

Use every opportunity to redress the tide of manipulated imagery - for both genders. Media studies classes, PHSE (or whatever its called these days) - whenever and wherever possible - show kids what real people look like.

Self-esteem and self-confidence are vital for young girls to withstand the barrage of doctored imagery and cultural expectations.

Young boys need support to combat the objectification of women and girls are objects - words and actions count so there must be no tolerance of inappropriate language or behaviour.

Any activity which enable girls and boys to work towards a common foal where the contribution of all can be valued and recognised. School residential, summer camp activities, outward bounding type things could be used to build partnerships.

My daughters are both under 5 - the thought of all of this to come worries me so much.

There should be workshops in schools showing how models and celebs are all airbrushed so girls realise that this is not a real and achievable look.

We should have all sorts of inspirational women talking to school audiences about their lives as an antidote to the media celeb culture.

Kids should have the chance to get involved in charity projects that let them develop and use new skills and interact with different elements of the community - eg working with charity shops / community gardening projects / cooking projects.

Agree with so much of what DuchessofAvon said. Use of the outdoor classroom! Get the focus OFF physical prowess, though, and competition. So dull, and there's always a loser. Yes, sports days are great for those who only excel at PE, but also include physical activity for other reasons. Climbing, orienteering, bushcraft, camping...

I agree the media rubbish does need to be addressed, but there's so much more to life than what somebody looks like. How about what we say and do?

How about a Mumsnet-type online magazine for teens? Where are their role models? Can't see anything else for teens in the media other than idiotic, monosyllabic Barbie dolls (and more young people who want to be like them.) There was a great series on a BBC channel within the last couple of years for young people interested in public speaking (Dianne Abbott one of the judges.) If reality programmes are so popular, how about some that actually provide y/p with something to admire?

Duchess puts it very well...yong boys DO need support with regards to the objectification of women and young girls equally need support with understanding their rights re. their bodies.

stop allowing loads of stuff about diets being on tv in the daytime, its not for girls to see.
Make sure all models are above a size 8, and fgs make trousers with adjustable waists all the time! Its not difficult but when you have to buy smaller or bigger clothes just because the waist isnt the right size can have an impact.

Our society equates beauty with goodness and truth and ugliness with bad or evil. One only has to look at Panto for instance to the above in action and at art on our galleries.

Filling our magazines with hairy scarred unattractive woman would not work either. We need balance.

I think we just need to stop focusing so much on womens' bodies altogether. Whether its supposedly positive ("look at X's gorgeous curves") or negative ("is that a bit of cellulite we spy?") it still promotes the idea that for a woman body image is all that matters. More focus on other aspects of a person's being and the idea that there is so much more to someone's identity than the size and shape of their body.

I think boys need help too- not just with the objectification of girl's bodies but with the increasing scrutiny they are coming under. The male beauty industry is growing and with it the pressure on young men to conform to a physical ideal.

for their mums to tell them they are great, that they are beautiful and special and generally instill confidence in them.

i don't think i ever received one compliment from my mum growing up :( and have had body and confidence issues all my life and i am sure its because of it. and since having dc i tell them all the time how great they are and always will do.

I don't want trousers with adjustable waists "all the time" as I find that design uncomfortable to wear.

Being discriminated against due to being a size 8 is unacceptable. Poor body image isn't just on one end of the scale and inferring I should be larger than my natural body size is just as damaging as inferring others should be slimmer than theirs.

By all means pave the way for the gist of these ideas (perhaps by setting quotas even) but don't deprive people of options for the sake of trying to achieve them for others.

I feel one of the most important things is that the message needs to be a permanent foundation promoted by schools, the NHS, ASA etc., not just one that applies during a one-off campaign or a few weeks/months of activities.

I don't think anyone suggests that size 8 people should be larger Mumi....just that it should not be held up as the ideal...what does anger me is larger women being described as "real"..as though anyone who is slimmer is somehow fake.

However...I also believe issues such as adjustable waistbands are focusing perhaps too much on the minutae of the troubles.

'for their mums to tell them they are great, that they are beautiful and special and generally instill confidence in them.'

My menopausal Mum seemed to be jealous of her two teenaged daughters and was always making snidey comments. My sister was too thin and wore too much make up and I was too fat and didn't wear enough! Thankfully my father was very proud of his daughters and gave us much praise - both for being clever and for looking good.

I did my best with my 2 DDs to give them a sense of their own worth and their father naturally thinks they are wonderful. They have both developed into women happy in their own skins, with a 'this is me - like it or lump it' attitude.

Having said that, I do remember that as a teenager the thing that gave me most confidence was the queue of young men anxious to 'date' me, who obviously found me attractive. I think that peer group approval or disapproval will always outway parental guidance at the teenage stage. The parents work in building self esteem needs to take place when children are much younger.

Ban the airbrushing of advertising images, or at least make sure they are labelled as such Girls and women of all ages are subjected to this in the media, it is unfair and unrealistic, and creates negative self image, which can lead to problems with depression, anorexia/bulimia etc.

Why is there no legislation which compels advertisers to state if the photos used have been airbrushed or digitally altered?

After all, the following legislations are supposedly to protect us from getting hoodwinked into thinking something is not what it is.......

fag packets have to carry health warnings,

alcohol advertisements have to state age limits and advice to drink responsibly,

food packets have to state things like "serving suggestion only"

financial advisers/banks/loan sharks companies have to state all their "small print".

We did an interesting experiment at school, Im not sure if it's relivent but goes along the them of boys and girls working hard together for one goal.
We were donated 2 Piglets and some Chickens and we as a class had to raise them and do all of their caring until they were slaughtered then we had to cook them and organise a 'fun day' for charity.
As someone who has always been body concious and big on looks I certainly didn't care what the boys thought of me when I was in my wellies and old coat snuggling up to Piglets, we all cried together when they were slaughtered, all pulled together during snow to ge tthe stys clean and the pigs fed.
We went through the stress of organizing a fun day then the jubilation of pulling it off. We also learned animal skills, got excersise and fresh air, learned organizational skills, budgeting and cooking. It was ace.

Apologies if I'm repeating other posters' comments, but here goes:

The crucial thing IMO (so crucial that I don't have words for it) is for girls to see their mothers (and other female role models) not obsessing about their own bodies. Mothers need to show girls that bodies are fabulous - but in a strong, fit, healthy kind of way, not as in a 'does my bum look big in this?' way. If you absolutely have to be on a diet, don't make a fuss about it: daughters will copy you.

The same applies to looks in general. If mothers spend half an hour every morning putting on make-up and generally changing their looks, their girls will grow up believing that this is necessary and normal. I don't for a second advocate all mothers growing beards and wearing dungarees - but they need to feel happy about the way they look before they can pass the same message on to their daughters. This, I think, would counteract a lot of advertising.

I also believe very strongly that mothers who buy celeb magazines and leave them lying around for their daughters to read are doing them a big disservice. If you want to read Heat, keep it as your guilty secret. I wouldn't let that kind of magazine in the house with my girls. I think the ones that bang on about celebrities' looks/weight are far more dangerous than the likes of Nuts (though I wouldn't have that in the house either!)

Agree with Oracle, really important for young girls not to see their mothers complaining and about their own bodies.
I agree with another poster who said why all the focus on the body in the first place? Shouldn't we be moving away from obsessing over our bodies and focussing on boosting confidence in other ways?
Children aren't idiots, telling them they are marvellous and beautiful, when actually they're not, isn't going to achieve anything. Giving them opportunities to excel and achieve by actions and deeds, such as finding something they are good at or getting them to help others less fortunate than them, will build more confidence than constant praise for not actually doing anything.

Limit tv, research shows the more tv children watch the more they are likely they are to be gender biased.
Positive discrimination so that women and girls have a broader range of female role models. What percentage of BBC presenters are female? And the ones that are are all infinitely more attractive than their male counterparts.
Educate girls about gender issues, such as horizontal and vertical segregation of women in the workplace. As well as explaining to them the implications of wearing pink etc.
I agree that celeb magazines are poisonous and rot your brains.

Focus on a healthy and active lifestyle, explain about the damage that is done to the body by extreme diets and a good education, exposing the way women's bodies are portrayed by the media etc and why this is so wrong, unhealthy and has such a negative impact on body image.

I think more non-competitive sports and activities should be encouraged at school etc, orienteering, yoga/pilates, fun stuff like table tennis, instead of running around a field to see who is the quickest... Finding out what sports youngsters want to do, something they will continue to do for the rest of their lives.

A good understanding of nutrition and good cookery lessons would help too.

Can we please have this issue, along with the issue of sexual bullying and sexual harrassment, dealt with in schools as part of the PHSE/ Seal/ other curriculum?

At the moment, sexual bullying in schools is rife - boys are free to sneer at and criticise girls about their bodies and because there are generally no specific policies on this, racial slurs will be reported, but sexual slurs won't be. So can we please take sexism as seriously as racism as school, because boys are being allowed to walk all over teenage girls and sneer at them about not meeting a porn-defined beauty standard and no-one in officialdom is dealing with this. This has got to be having an effect on the confidence and educational achievement of girls in school.

Oh yes and PLEASE abandon this nonsense of promoting only team sport in schools.

1. We've tried it and it has led to a nation of lard-arses

1. It will put even more girls off sport than at present.

Offer girls real options for sport, the wider the variety the more likely they are to find one they like. Offering only competitive sport, is offering the opportunity for humiliation for many of them. That's exactly the right way to ensure that many of them are turned off sport for the next 20 years. And with it, the opportunity to feel the real empowerment exercise offers women (as opposed to all the fake empowerment of lapdancing etc.)

When I think of young girls and 'Body Confidence' I remember loving tennis but being relegated to ball-girl. Loving netball but being thrown out of the club because I didn't make it onto the team. That was the 70's but same thing happened to DD decades later.

Might as well give up?

Well thank god for DANCE! It saved me - I couldn't do a backwards roll or catch a ball (still feel the humiliation ) but I could execute a mean triple-time-step (and to this day I feel I've benefited from dance training - never any back problems, can still touch my toes, etc)

There are dance competitions but happily the focus remains on enjoyment and entertainment.

A bit of dance, yoga, pilates, self-defence/martial arts would surely contribute to 'body confidence' for girls in schools.

TOTALLY agree about making kids look at pages and pages and pages of normal, boring, hairy, lumpy fannies and willies. cannot remember what mag ran those when i was at uni but even at the age of 20 it was a blessed RELIEF to find out how 'different' everybody looked. and that was in the 80s, fgs. seriously, i shared a flat with medics and even they were going 'coo, look at that one...'

and i would completely BAN cheerleading as a sport. what sexist bullshit that is.

I think sexual bullying needs to be addressed in schools. When I was at school 9 years ago I overheard a teacher telling another teacher I was and I quote 'any red blooded males wet dream' that messed me up for a while, this was after me being called into the office becuase I complained about being dragged into the male changing rooms and having my shirt ripped off...

If I heard of my DDS school doing cheerleading I'd be in there like a shot. It's not a sport.

Titsalina...I am with you 100%