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Concerns about physical appearance will affect almost everyone at some point, and are particularly common - and damaging - among teenagers. Unfortunately, due to their deeply personal nature, they can also be difficult to discuss. HANNA SCHENKEL looks at several documentaries that examine various issues related to body image, and which can be invaluable when raising such issues with students.
Not to have confidence in one's hody is to lose confidence in oneself.
- Simone de Beauvoir
Sex sells, or rather, sex appeal does - as long as customers don't think they have it. It's hardly new information that the global marketing and entertainment machine is devilishly attuned to telling consumers - particularly women - that they are physically lacking. Hollywood feeds us a daily diet of unnatural and unrealistic body ideals, often born of near-starvation regimens and the ruthless digital enhancement of its idols.
The price that these tactics demand goes far beyond the wallet, however, and young people are disproportionately affected. Research suggests approximately 75 per cent of girls in high school would like to be thinner,1 and 31 per cent of women between the ages of eighteen and twenty-three admit to having experimented with harmful behaviours such as fasting, deliberate vomiting and the misuse of laxatives in order to lose weight.2 Body issues and weight remain among the leading concerns of teenagers in high school.3 Prompting discussions about body image, especially female representation, in the media offers a valuable opportunity for teachers to help change the conversation and protect students from engaging in dangerous practices. The following documentaries may be particularly helpful when introducing topics surrounding body image issues in the secondary classroom.
EMBRACE
(Taryn Brumfitt, 2016)
In April 2013, Taryn Brumfitt posted an unusual before-andafter picture online. Her 'before' image shows her in a bikini at a bodybuilding competition - the result of fifteen weeks of intense training and dieting after giving birth. The 'after' image is of her naked, several kilos heavier. The concept of a woman feeling more comfortable in a heavier body was notorious enough to send the image viral, gaining over 3.6 million clicks on Facebook overnight.4
Brumfitt, the founder of the Body Image Movement,5 rose to instant international infamy, appearing on morning shows, on news...