Wednesday 9 April 2014

...One Giant Leap for Womankind

So now we are a little more aware about the effects that the media has on our perceptions of ourselves and the women around us, what can we do to buffer ourselves from it's effects?
It is clear that the media will not change; as mentioned below, the media makes far too much money from our insecurities to change anytime soon. So rather than being passive sponges to the information the media feeds us, we need to take an active step in changing the way we see the media in order to boost our self esteem. These tips from Terese Katz from PsychCentral are a great way to make a positive step:

1) STOP doing this:




Talking to your female friends about how much you think you need to diet and what you think is imperfect about your body is such an easy conversation to slip in to, it is such the norm these days that talking about real issues seems out of the ordinary! So make a change; make an active effort to talk to your friends about the interesting stuff they learn at university, or even where they want to be in 5 years time!

2) Develop what is known in psychology as Mindfulness. The main aspect of mindfulness is becoming consciously aware of your thoughts and feelings in a given moment, allowing you to control what you concentrate on.
    In other words; rather than letting your thoughts and feeling control you (such as feeling bad about yourself when you see a skinny model in a magazine), acknowledge that the thoughts and feelings are there, and tell yourself that they are only passing; let them come in one ear and go out the other.  This can be quite difficult at first, but once you are aware of your feelings, they become a lot less damaging, and you can therefore consciously control your habitual responses to the media's images. Khoury and colleagues (2013) have found that mindfulness has been effective in reducing anxiety, depression, and stress; all potential bi-products of photoshopped media images.

3) Set a good example for children. Teach your children, nieces, nephews, cousins, even grandchildren, to challenge the images that they see around them, that the media uses images of women and men which are unnaturally and unhealthily slim, that it is okay to look how they want to look. McVey, Tweed and Blackmore (2004) found that over 29% of young girls aged between 10-14 were currently trying to lose weight, and 10.5% scored greater than the clinical level of disordered eating. Out of a sample of 2279 young girls, that means that 684 were on a diet, and 228 had clinically disordered eating. If we teach children that overly skinny is not the norm, maybe we can change these figures.

4) Be Healthy! Eat well (well, most of the time!), exercise to relieve stress and feel good about yourself (not to desperately lose weight), treat yourself, and surround yourself with supportive people whom you love.

5) Remember the two main points which feature regularly throughout the blog:

       a) The media alters images of women to make them look slimmer and younger, with better complexions, brighter eyes and fuller lips. Celebrities DO NOT look like the media portrays them.

       b) All women are made genetically different. What is normal for your body is not normally for someone else's, and what is normal for some women is certainly not normal for us.

6) Finally, remember that these hot mommas are considered "plus sized" by today's modelling standards!!! (Jessica Misener, Buzfeed Article)

Allegra Doherty





















Laura Wells























Robyn Lawley
















Marquita Pring
















Sources:

Video:
Mean girls fat talk clip

Tips featured in this post:
Stop Hating Your Body!

"Plus Sized" Models:
These Women are Plus Size According to America

Reference:
Khoury B, Lecomte T, Fortin G, et al. (August 2013). Mindfulness-based therapy: A comprehensive meta-analysis. Clinical Psychology Review, 33 (6): 763–771.

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