Last year, Lynne Featherstone MP and I launched the Campaign for Body Confidence. Since then, we have been raising the profile of the urgent need to address increasing body dissatisfaction in the UK. Everyone should be able, whatever their size, shape, age or skin colour, to feel good about their body.
The bombardment of super-skinny flawless models advertising everything from face cream to cars is puts an overwhelming pressure on women, men and children to conform to impossible and unrealistic beauty ‘ideals’. This is damaging our sense of wellbeing and leading to increasing unhappiness, anxiety, low self-esteem, depression and eating disorders in women, particularly amongst young people and children – and men. Everyone is feeling the strain, with 1 in 4 Brits currently depressed about their bodies, and 47% girls claiming that the most negative part of being female is the pressure to look good.
All around us, beauty is increasingly being equated with flawless perfection, as men and women strive for the ‘ideal’ body they see in magazines. These narrow ideals are being sculpted through media images of impossibly beautiful people, with no diversity of body sizes and shapes.
So what would we like to see? To start, more honesty and transparency in advertising: following one of our Real Women campaigns in 2009, 700 people complained to the ASA about an anti-wrinkle cream ad featuring Twiggy, where her own wrinkles had been airbrushed out. A diversity of body shapes and sizes in magazines, advertising, broadcast and on the catwalk is urgently needed – something our campaign partners All Walks Beyond the Catwalk have successfully been promoting. We must move away from our appearance-obsessed culture and give children positive examples of using their bodies, as well as bolstering their resilience and self-esteem with media literacy and body confidence lessons in schools.
The growing body of scientific evidence also reinforces the urgent need to address this problem. I recently presented a portfolio of studies to the Advertising Standards Authority on the impact of media images on body image and behaviours. 172 of these studies detailed within it overwhelmingly showed that children and adults suffered negative effects from exposure to idealised media images. Many showed that over the long term, viewing these images lead to severe body image pressures. Its conclusions were rejected by the ASA, but we are continuing to put pressure on the advertising industry to change its practices.
With the newly formed All-Party Parliamentary Group on Body Image and action from our campaign partners on all fronts to push forward the body confidence agenda, we are making inroads into our looks-obsessed culture. It’s time to move toward a more realistic portrayal of bodies in the media, because men, women and children deserve to enjoy life without the distress of feeling inadequate compared to the retouched, resized and idealised pictures they see.
If you’d like to find out more, visit our website at www.campaignforbodyconfidence.org.uk, and to find out more about our latest goings-on and opportunities to get involved, send ‘subscribe’ in the body of an email to [email protected]
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13 Comments
I’m happy to see Jo pushing on this issue. Much as our culture of conspicuous luxury consumption leads people into debt they cannot afford for plasma TVs and fast cars, our culture of artificially perfect body image leads people into unhealthy lifestyles, including dangerous crash dieting, and mental health issues.
Part and parcel of this, however, must be reform of our medical profession’s attitude towards body size. There’s overwhelming scientific evidence that, except for the far extreme, there is little correlation between weight, body size and fitness – and it’s poor fitness which causes health problems rather than weight per se. Yet GPs are still using the utterly discredited Body Mass Index scale, and refusing medical care to people simply on the basis of what the scales say.
Fortunately, movements like Health At Every Size are gaining traction. But while the medical profession continues to promote being thin as medically desirable, despite evidence to the contrary, the negative effects outlined by Jo will continue for people whose bodies just don’t work like that.
I am at a loss as to how the upsurge in the demand for cosmetic surgery and the “ideal” body image has come about. After all, it was the Feminist movement that got rid of the Miss World contest taking place in the UK. And in the eighties, young women were going around dressed in dungarees and Doc Martin boots. It was the feminist movement that accused men of using and portraying women as sex objects. And now it seems that is exactly what women want to be!
However, regarding fitness and health, if National Insurance contributions were banded at 15%; 12%; 10% and 8% with 15% being the standard rate. The 12% rate for those who take part in three 5 kilometre road races per year; 10% rate for those who complete the jogs in 35 minutes or under and 8% for those who completed the jog/race in 23 minutes or less. Those who qualified for the 8% contribution would be the correct bodyweight/ dress size for their height. It is impossible to be overweight and move that quickly at the same time.
This is using the “visible hand of capitalism” to make it in a persons’ self-interest to reduce their taxation and their weight at the same time.
I wish this campaign every success.
This article not only highlights the important issue of body image, it also highlights how the advertising industry exploits this.
The very idea that you ought to consider buying a particular product because it is meant to make you sexy is absurd in most cases. Yet the advertising industry will always find spurious and manipulative reasons why you should buy that product.
Presumably it works because they keep on doing it?
I agree wholeheartedly with Lynne Featherstone and yourself in this campaign. I would hope that it receives broader support from the Liberal Demoocrats, as it is certain to be well received by a sizeable part of the British public. What I notice, though, is that there do not appear to be specific proposals for changes to statute, industry guidelines or the like.
Oh for goodness sake – how on earth would you use “statute” to protect women from being oppressed by adverts for face cream? Can’t we get a sense of proportion about this?
Jo is a courageous campaigner (witness her question in yesterday’s hacking debate) but this Mumsnet nanny state stuff is a poor use of a Liberal’s time.
“Real women” are worried about health, jobs, education, childcare. As a size 12, 44 year-old I wish I had enough time on my hands to feel threatened by a retouched picture of Kate Middleton on the front of a magazine. Fortunately I have a life.
@Ruth not every action of government is carried out with the intention to benefit you personally.
@Ruth
Yes, Jo Swinson is a courageous campaigner, she is also an excellent communicator, and in my view, a potential future Lib Dem party leader. Perhaps you are right that statute is not needed, but, as we now clearly currently see with the press, setting standards for themselves is something that industries can do very badly. I see nothing “illiberal” about requiring the advertising, fashion, cosmetics, film and media industries to present realistic images for young women to aspire to, nor requiring them to present a positive image of older women or different physical characterics. That you do not feel threatened by a retouched picture of Kate Middleton, does not stop other less well adjusted children, teenagers or women from developing unrealistic ideas of how women should look and potentially engaging in harmful diets, undergoing unnecessary cosmetic surgery, suffering anxiety or depression. Real people should indeed be worried about health, jobs, education and childcare, but government ought to have the capacity to deal with a large number of other issues, too. (Incidentally, I would suggest that this campaign relates to health, education and childcare.)
No of course not, but I fail to see how any of this would protect the young and the vulnerable either.
Jo has done a great job highlighting this important issue. It’s often by taking up seemingly niche issues that MPs can make the most difference to peoples lives. I wrote about this last month here: http://stephenwilliamsmp.wordpress.com/2011/06/09/body-image-matters-for-men-too/
Sadly I feel all this is about our party (where women are so painfully under-represented) being seen to tick the “women” box.
I wish our female MPs would empower women and mothers in a serious way – perhaps by restoring the health in pregnancy grant which they allowed the coalition to abolish without a squeak or not forcing single mums back to work without affordable childcare.
@ Geoffrey Payne “Presumably it works because they keep on doing it?”
It’s worked since time immemorial, that’s why they keep doing it.
Image has been used as a mighty tool since the dawn of time and there’s nothing we can do about that.
The ‘wrong’ bit is that the graphic wizardry in use these days make for fraudulent imagery.
We need to tackle this dishonesty, whatever it portrays. Whether it be Twiggy’s wrinkles or a shot of Nigella’s sensuous apple pie, a prominent “DOCTORED PHOTO” stamp would quickly disabuse readers of any notion that they too can aspire to be domestic goddesses with flawless complexions.
Enhancing pictures is straight out of the manual for snake-oil salesmen and that’s what we need to stop.
Umm, I hesitate to be drawn on this, but I think there are some problems with the direction of the campaign.
Firstly, it is more about imagery rather than substance. And secondly, it is overwhelmingly negative and interventionist.
Clearly body image is an intensely personal matter and individuals of all different sizes and shapes will react differently on a personal level, yet the anxiety shown towards projected idealisation of the body form according to an industry-led standard is not being met with a practical method of dealing with those worries on that personal level: voting LibDem and legislating for an accurate and representative selection of models won’t remove any health concerns caused by an unhealthy lifestyle, it only tries to remove an apparent stigma – it only deals with one side of the question.
And there’s the rub, thin or fat, tall or short, apple or pear, muscular or lean, this is all beside the real point that there is a direct connection between body confidence and physical health – whatever is done to equalise appreciation for all does nothing whatsoever to encourage healthier behaviour or enable us to live better, longer and happier lives. And politicians who want to be successful cannot refuse to acknowledge facts.
While there are obvious and justifiable concerns about obsessions of any sort this campaign may be getting wrapped up in its’ own. Removing a culture of oppression does not empower individuals to take responsibility for their actions alone – it must also be balanced by the greater availability of realistic positive non-prescriptive options.
This must include encouragement for more active lifestyles, whether that means changing housing, transport and employment policies to reduce commuter times and the amount of time spent sitting passively, whether that means better access to a fuller range of sport and outdoor activity facilities with requirements for communities proportional to their population, or whether that means taking action to change the pressing cost calculations inherent in dealing with less healthy options to reflect the growing demand on health services caused by demographic changes.
In particular government messaging on food health should also be more considered – one week it’s obesity, the next it’s anorexia, then it’s bingeing and crash dieting, each stimulating commercial demand to compensate for our failure to meet conflicting aspirations. And better education must be allied to messaging to ensure greater consistency between departments instead of the destabilision caused by over-emphasis on each in turn.
With the massive lack of institutional coordination it’s no wonder that confusion reigns!
It is less than inspiring to see Jo Swinson fail to broaden out her critique and apply it to society as a whole. Much more is needed.
Collections of research papers that have been self-assembled by politicians always make me suspicious. Is Jo’s portfolio of research a peer-reviewed metastudy that takes in all the evidence, viewed as a whole, or is it a collection of only those studies whose findings support the campaign?
Unfortunately I find the assertions oppressive. Politicians would like the creative sector, in whatever form it shows itself, to take the blame for society’s ills, many of which they have created themselves. It is a soft target, operating in the zone of feelings and emotions rather than clear cause and effect, so anyone can claim anything about its impact. That is why our theatre was censored up until 1968 and why photographers and retouchers are having a hard time at the moment.
If Jo was around when Leonardo da Vinci was painting would she have told him to cut down on the egg white because the Mona Lisa’s skin really didn’t look like that? That kind of interference is where this is heading.