Dr Michael Carr-Gregg and MTR discuss on Sunrise

A UK survey, commissioned by UK charity YWCA Central, has found half of all girls and a third of boys are obsessed with body image.

According to a report in the Daily Mail this week, children are willing to take extreme measures to get a perfect body or reach an ideal weight. The survey of 810 children aged 11 to 16 found a majority compared their bodies to what they saw on TV. A quarter were willing to have cosmetic surgery.

Rosi Prescott, chief executive of Central YMCA, said: ‘Young people appear to be increasingly insecure about their appearance and body image.

‘There is a growing trend to resort to quick fixes, which are damaging to health and often unfulfilling.

‘It is also interesting that what used to be seen as a problem affecting young girls has now spread to young men.

‘The root cause of this problem is the pressure on young people to conform to an unattainable and unrealistic body image ideal.’

A UK Parliamentary inquiry into the issue opened yesterday in the UK.

When are we going to see some real action on the issue in Australia?

Adolescent psychologist Dr Michael Carr-Gregg and I were asked our thoughts on Channel 7’s Sunrise program this morning.

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You’ve probably already heard about 10-year-old French model Thylane Loubry Blondeau and the controversy over the way she is being posed and styled in adult-like ways. I’d written about Vogue’s treatment of Thylane and other young models in an earlier piece titled ‘Vogue’s tarted up photo shoot of little girls is no parody.’

Interest in Thylane has reached hyper drive. I was asked to comment on Channel 7’s Morning Show.

People look at one image and say “I don’t see it. She doesn’t look sexy to me.” This is not about one image or one issue- it’s a collective picture that’s created when we use young girls to sell adult products by putting them in adult make up and adult styling and adult positions. (and we call it fashion and that’s supposed to make it all ok)…

See also:

‘Fashion industry salivates over creepy photos of 10-year-old French girl’

Modelling app ‘fuels teen insecurities’

A leading body image expert claims a new iPhone application which evaluates a person’s modelling potential is feeding an “epidemic of body dissatisfaction”.

The $2.49 app, called Model Potential, rates the user’s appearance after instructing them to enter statistics such as their height, gender, dress size, bra size and body type.

It also requires a description of their body shape from a range of options, including “skinny”, “curvaceous” and “hourglass”.

Melinda Tankard Reist, a prominent author and social commentator, has urged young girls and women to “resist the pressure to be ranked and scored”. Read more.

MTR and Lydia Jade Turner on Morning Show

Teaching little girls that make up rituals should start early

“Make-up is for everyone!” declares 5-year-old Madison, who has become a You Tube sensation for her video sessions on make-up application, recorded and uploaded by her mother.
A child doesn’t make this statement in a vacuum. As documented over and over on the MTR blog, little girls are imbibing a dominant, all-consuming message about physical appearance equating with worth. This has become much more than a child messing around with mum’s makeup, but is now more a reflection of cultural conditioning and the commercialisation of childhood (so perfectly captured in the book title This Little Kiddie Went to Market). What we are witnessing here is just part of continuum which includes child beauty parlours and toxic child beauty pageants. The beauty rituals which adult women are expected to engage in daily are now being transported to little girls.

Madison’s DIY make-up tutorials have been seized upon by cosmetic companies who appear to be sending her products to spruik. The product placement is now overt and there are links back to cosmetic sites. Madison appears to be becoming a tool of the global beauty industry. Her You Tube videos have titles like ‘Sibu Review’and ‘MAC Lipglosses’. It would be good to see Madison’s bubbly personality and creativity directed in other ways.

Parenting blogger Yvette Vignando and I were asked our thoughts on Channel 7’s Morning Show Friday.

More on the pornification of female artists: MTR on Channel 10

Music industry producer Mike Stock recently came out against the increasingly pornified performances of female artists, an issue I blogged on a couple of weeks ago. In a piece titled Why this pop-porn will damage a generation of children, Stock wrote in the Daily Mail:

Now, however, an entire generation of young girls, some as young as eight or nine, is growing up transfixed by the writhings and thrustings of performers such as Lady Gaga and Rihanna, singing along to lines such as ‘Sex in the air, I don’t care, I love the smell of it’…

Just as worrying is the impact the same material must be having on young boys. What is happening now doesn’t just undo all the good work done by the feminists of the 70s, it drags us almost back to the Stone Age. Women, as seen through the eyes of the music industry, have become little more than sex objects again. Read full article here.

With Miley Cyrus having toured Australia, and attracting media interest for her clothing and performance in an audience dominated by very young girls, Channel 10 asked me to comment. Here’s what I said:

Huzzah! More sexualised images of women served up by the fashion and beauty industry

Here’s some photos from the latest issue of Vogue Italia featuring Australian model Robyn Lawley, with two other plus-sized models, Tara Lynn and Candice Huffine.

The colloqial expression “Huzzah” was deployed recently to describe the inclusion of the size 14 Lawley on the cover and inside, as though this is some world-shaking victory.

The ‘plus size beauties’ lean over plates of spaghetti in their lingerie. Lawley sits with legs spread. In other images two models loll around topless on a chair in a boudoir-like setting. Another lays back over a couch in corsetry. The expressions are of high-class glamourous seduction.

I am not contesting that they are beautiful women, and the images are visually rich. The question I ask is, why is stripping off and sexualising larger-sized women a great victory? How is depicting them as semi-naked sexual adornments like their skinnier sisters, a reason to celebrate?

And given that size 14 is an average size why is it being called a ‘plus size’ anyway?

I also wonder if these models didn’t have classic model facial features and large breasts, whether their ‘larger’ bodies would ever have made it on any magazine.

Simply using curvier bodies doesn’t change the primary aim of presenting women in magazines like Vogue, as sexually alluring. The baring of female flesh – even when the flesh comes packaged as something other than an eight or ten – is still what counts. But the flesh has to be of an ‘acceptable’ kind in the first place. Size 14 isn’t that radical.

Regarding Lawley’s positioning on the Vogue cover, according to her mother (as reported by Frockwriter) the photographer asked Lawley to sit how she would sit if she were a really powerful person.

I’m not sure it’s power that comes across in the image. Sure, if she were a man in a pinstriped suit perhaps. I just don’t see that many men sitting that way in corsets and suspenders. Or perhaps I don’t get invited to meetings of business men sitting around in their jocks with their legs apart.

Sitting spread legged in sexy lingerie directs our gaze and suggests sexual availability not ‘I’m planning a company takeover’.

Vogue Italia’s editor-in-chief Franca Sozzani recently told Women’s Wear Daily,  “We help [plus-size women] dress fashionably.

Which is kind of funny given the three curvy models aren’t wearing all that much in some of the shots. Perhaps she should have said, “we tell ‘plus-size women how to take their clothes off to make them more acceptable”.

And while I appreciate that Sozzani has launched a petition against pro-anorexia websites, I share Patti Huntington’s view that this is also somewhat ironic.

Last year I ran a thoughtful guest post by Ethel Tungohan  titled ‘Plus size models a tokenistic attempt at inclusion’. Ethel wrote:

A quick look at plus-size fashion shoots show that plus-size models are usually shown as naked. Though fashion editors can easily justify the nudity of plus-size models by asserting that women’s bodies should be shown in all their glory, it is bizarre that a large number of plus-size fashion spreads hardly seem to have any fashion content, preferring instead to depict plus-size models in one of two ways: either they are overly sexualized or they are revered for being ‘real’….

It’s too early for Huzzah.

Today a guest blog post by Julie Parker, reprinted from her site Beautiful You.

I’m not a fan of beauty pageants. Any competition that requires women to compete against one another in swimsuits; having their bodies scrutinised, judged and scored, is not going to win any awards from me for being a positive pastime for women to be involved in. I guess if a young woman chooses to enter a beauty pageant she knows the chief thing she is being judged on – her body and appearance. While there is of course the important question to answer about education or world peace, such things really run distant second to the swimsuit and evening gown sections and I am sure the entrants, as well as the public, are aware of this.

If this wasn’t enough of a worry, what really concerns me about the latest pageant I have come across is the mixed and degrading message it is sending about wider societal issues. I first learned about Miss Earth Australia from a friend who is a plus size model. Let’s take a look at the Miss Earth Australia entry requirements:

“We are looking for earth-loving participants who will motivate members of their local communities to take action to protect the Earth from man-made pollution. Our candidates must be cheerful, intelligent, articulate, beautiful, knowledgeable about environmental issues and be committed to doing their best to help make our planet clean and sustainable. To be a part of this incredible event, you must (i) have a working knowledge of environmental issues; (ii) be able to talk about pain-free solutions that can be taken at home and at work to reduce wastage of resources and encourage sustainability; (iii) have planted a tree and have encouraged those around you (family, friends, workmates, members of your community) to plant trees.”

Looking into things a little further I found you also must be between 5”6 and 5”11 and of course the usual never having been pregnant or had a child, being born female and of good moral character. Oh – and you can only be a size 8 or 10. Don’t forget that one. Just in case you do forget or decide you might like to push the boundaries with a size 6 or size 12 physique, there’s a none too subtle reminder that all criteria will be “strictly enforced.”

Where do I begin? Since when did a woman’s height or weight have anything to do with her commitment to the environment? Is having knowledge of environmental issues and having planted at least one tree really enough to lay claim to being a positive environmental advocate? What on earth (pun intended) does walking on a stage in a bikini have anything to do with well…anything? Why can’t an entrant have had a child? Is there something about giving birth that means your ability to be ‘earth loving’ dissipates?

I know. I know. It’s a pageant. While I am sure that many or even all of the young women who enter are passionate about the environment, clearly the organisers believe there are other important things that they need to be as well. Like hot in a bikini. The thing I can’t help wondering is how this must look to the many Australian women who work tirelessly in environmental circles every day. Like Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young, President of the Australian Rainforest Society Dr Aila Keto or environmental author and campaigner Tanya Ha? While I am sure they want environmental issues to be at the forefront of everyone’s minds, something tells me that they won’t think it suitable via a platform like this.

Even though I may hope, I’m not certain there will ever be a time in the near future when beauty pageants won’t exist. A stand alone pageant is concerning enough as it is with the message it sends girls and women about our cultural views of beauty, but when pageants start hijacking an important societal issue we have an even bigger problem. How can we possibly believe that the organisers of this pageant are serious about promoting these women to be powerful environmental advocates when they only require them to have planted one tree and they must meet a strict height and size criteria?

Please Miss Earth Australia organisers. You cannot sell this one wrapped up in a recycled ribbon. It’s time to get off the grass.

This article has since been picked up by nine msn, Beauty Pageants slammed for mixed messages.

Calling on Federal Minister Peter Garrett and Victoria counterpart Wendy Lovell to intervene

Collective Shout has initiated a petition in response to the news that a US pageant company plans to import its child beauty competitions to Australia. You can find the petition on the Care2 petition site . Please sign and circulate it through all your networks. The petition reads: 

Child beauty pageant company Universal Royalty Beauty Pageant is planning to hold a ‘Child Beauty Pageant’ in Melbourne, Australia, in July.

Many psychologists and child development authorities agree that child beauty pageants are not in the best interest of healthy child development.

A study conducted by Anna Wonderlich et.al (2005) in the Journal of Treatment and Prevention reported ‘A significant association between childhood beauty pageant participation and increased body dissatisfaction, difficulty trusting interpersonal relationships, and greater impulsive behaviors and indicates a trend toward increased feelings of ineffectiveness.’

Kids free to be Kids, the Australian Childhood Foundation and Psychologist Dr Michael Carr Gregg have previously called for children under 14 to be banned from these contests.

Television shows like Toddlers and Tiaras reveal the child exploitation endemic in these pageants. Child advocates around the world have spoken out about the sexualised clothing, suggestive dance moves, hours of grooming and preening required. They have expressed concern about the way pageants provide external validation to girls that their physical appearance is what is most important in being female. They have criticised the way child beauty pageants re-inforce stereotypical norms about female beauty. They have also pointed out that adultifying children in pageants and elsewhere invites us to see them as older than they are, which puts them (and other children) at risk of inappropriate treatment.

Pitting young girls against each other in a competition based on physical appearance and performance is harmful to their wellbeing.Research on the sexualisation of children shows that reinforcing an emphasis on looks and attractiveness leads to negative body image, disordered eating, depression, anxiety and low self-esteem.

We call on the Federal Minister for Early Childhood and Youth, the Hon. Peter Garrett and the Victoria Minister for Children and Early Childhood Development, Wendy Lovell, to take action to prevent these style of pageants in Australia and (with State colleagues) to consider legislative measures to ban all future pageants for children.

Mtr on sexualisation of girls and pageants this week on SBS

Nina Funnell writes that girls are learning to read their value as a person in terms of how their physical appearance is received by others.

“Destiny enjoys singing, dancing and, of course, pageantry” announces the beauty pageant’s MC as a made-up blonde in a white gown sashays across the stage. Did I mention that Destiny is a five year old child? Welcome to the world of Toddlers and Tiaras, an American reality TV series that follows the lives of children and their families as they prepare for and compete in beauty pageants.

Having recently sat through a Toddlers and Tiaras marathon (as research for a book chapter) I now consider myself an expert on winning children’s beauty pageants.

The first thing you need is a pushy and obnoxious mother who has no problem with screaming at her child. In one episode a mother screeches “Flirt! You’re not flirting!” as her six year old daughter practices her routine. “Stand up straight, suck your tummy in!” directs another. In one episode a girl cries in pain as her mother attempts to force an earring through a closed up ear piercing. And another ignores her five year child’s cries of protest as her eyebrows are forcibly waxed adding that her daughter “is just a bit, kind of terrified” because the last time “the wax was way too hot and it actually ripped off her skin”.

The second thing you need to do is fake-it-up. From the age of about two girls begin to wear fake hair, fake eyelashes and fake teeth sets (known as “flippers”). Almost all girls get fake tans with a number owning their own spray tanning machines at home. One four year old is taken on “diva days” where she is “treated” to facials, manicures and pedicures. Others have waxing, teeth whitening and chemical hair straightening as well as weaves and hair extensions.

And then there is the all-important clothing. “Glitz” outfits – dresses decked out with diamantes and other jewels – cost between five and ten thousand dollars. One mother admits that she has spent more than $15 000 that year alone on pageants, adding that if she saved the money her family “could probably live in a bigger home, but [winning Miss America] just feels like my daughter’s destiny.” Her daughter is only three. Other mothers talk about taking “second pageant jobs” to pay for the expensive and numerous competitions.

Then there is the cost of hair and make-up, professional photography and photo retouching (airbrushing), and the price of pageant coaches who train the girls. Brandi, a thirty-one year old Prozac-popping coach who thanks God for bringing her to pageantry, offers her six year old clients bonus advice on picking up boys, “I tell them to get with the smart boys- the nerdy ones- because when they grow up, they’re going to be the rich ones, and you can be a trophy wife”.

On pageant day parents wear tacky customized t-shirts displaying their child’s name and photo. Three year olds have “before and after” shots displayed on the show like on diet product advertisements. One mother feeds her child three cans of red-bull energy drink before competing to keep her “perky” during competition. A six month old girl already has seventy pageant titles to her name. Girls perform sexualised dance routines imitating MTV video clips. And boys compete too. One ‘Little Mr’ is introduced by the MC as “Matthew”, adding that “Matthew’s favourite person is his daddy in heaven”.

While the show may sound exploitative and crass, it is actually documenting the appalling and exploitative behaviour of stage parents who live vicariously through their children’s achievements. It’s incredibly cringe worthy to watch but the show offers an important window onto a world which many of us are only aware of through the adult outputs of the industry in the form of Miss Universe winners and runner-ups.

Meanwhile, the media continues to laud individuals such as Miranda Kerr and Jennifer Hawkins (and to a lesser extent Jessinta Campbell and Rachael Finch). These women, as supposed role models, teach little girls (and stage parents everywhere) that the easiest way for a girl in today’s society to achieve fame, fortune and success is to win a beauty competition.

It’s hardly surprising that little girls are now feeling anxious about their bodies at an earlier and earlier age. Nor is it surprising that they are learning to read their value as a person in terms of how their physical appearance is received by others. Seeing little girls being judged, scrutinized and assessed over their appearance is truly distressing. Even worse, the fact that this process is not only normalized but actually celebrated by their parents is just horrific.

Equating a girl’s self worth with her appearance is a dangerous and destructive game and one that the media encourages girls to play from a very early age. Parents should want to protect children from this message, not teach it to them.

Oppose US child beauty pageants coming to Australia

If you haven’t watched it already, this ACA video is a must-see. It provides further evidence for the sheer ugliness – and harm – of child pageant culture. We meet the American woman behind plans to bring this toxic child exploitation fest to Australia in July – and the Melbourne woman who will run it here. She is already preparing her young daughters for entry. One reveals she doesn’t like wearing make-up – but that is clearly of insignificant to her mother who is too busy organising her daughter’s body waxing to care. Someone who does care is Julie Gale, my colleague and friend from Kids Free 2B Kids who also appears here.

See also ‘Mums to protest bringing US-style beauty pageants to Melbourne’  (It’s not just mums protesting of course).

Teaching girls their value is in their physical beauty

Many readers will have seen the documentary Toddlers and Tiaras revealing the child exploitation that is the US beauty pageant industry. A five year old begging not to have her eyebrows ripped out. Little girls preening, strutting, pouting, beckoning to the judges ‘come here baby’, kissing their finger and pressing it to their backsides in a gesture indicating they are smoking hot, the suggestive dance routines and sexualised costumes, parents investing thousands of dollars to turn their daughters into big haired, grotesquely made-up sexy dolls. In the words of  Melissa Wardy of Pigtail Pals: 

Teaching young girls a very narrow version of beauty, transforming their bodies so that their beauty can be measured and judged, or to use their sexualized bodies to earn money for the family is disgusting…When you add to this the chemically dangerous spray tans, butt glue, nail glue, eyelash glue, hairspray, and cosmetics applied to these tiny, developing bodies, it is not a stretch to say these pageant programs are both emotionally and physically abusive.

After viewing some of the episodes online I thought – at least this is one toxic US export that hasn’t infected our shores.

I can’t think that any more. Because this toxic pageant culture is on its way to Australia. Universal Royalty Beauty Pageants will open for business in Melbourne in July.

As Elissa Doherty and Kate Jones at the Herald Sun report:

The July pageant, for babies to adults, costs a minimum of $295, which includes a compulsory beauty competition, modelling and make-up workshops.

Optional extras include tanning, dressing like a celebrity for $50 and a photo and autograph session with American beauty pageant star, five-year-old Eden Wood…

Melbourne-based Kristin Kyle, helping organise the event, said it was already attracting interest from across Australia and New Zealand. The winner will take home a laptop, a rhinestone crown, a 1.5m trophy, an “official supreme royalty banner” and a stuffed teddy bear.

In its marketing material, the event claims to foster a “positive, fun-filled atmosphere” by encouraging self-confidence, education and “striving to be your very best”.

Making girls conform to stereotyped norms of female beauty

Here’s what I had to say about child beauty pageants on Channel 7’s Morning Show today. Naturally I disagreed with the pageant mum who said it was about “Playing Barbies” and “It’s what girls should do” and the Sunshine Coast pageant organiser who likened pageants to “sport” and said they were about being “beautiful and having fun”.

Collective Shout is planning action against child beauty pageants in Australia. Check the website for details and updates.

Commercial exploitation of the female body exposed at Endangered Species Conference

Just came across this piece  in The New Internationalist and had to share it with you. It’s an outstanding unpacking of the normalisation of rigid norms of female beauty, which have been exported around the world. Written by Giedre Steikunaite,  it’s a report on the Endangered Species Summit held recently in London to challenge the toxic culture that teaches women and girls to hate their own bodies. Wish I’d been there.

The Beauty Myth…and madness

‘The human body is now a product,’ said photographer Wendy Hicks. So we buy and sell ourselves, constantly remake our bodies, blindly believing we are ‘improving’ them. This commercial exploitation of the body has become a norm; once normalized in a society, it’s taken for granted…

So why are we doing it? Because we’ve been sold a myth, a beauty myth. And because it makes somebody very, very rich. ‘People without problems are not commercially viable,’ said Rosi Prescott, CEO of YMCA. A happy person is a bad consumer. Thus, a business lesson: create a problem, convince me I have it, and then sell me the solution – voilà! …

The problem is not limited to the Global North. ‘Body hatred is becoming one of the West’s hidden exports,’ Orbach wrote in her book Bodies. It’s a new form of corporal colonization. ‘We’re sending body hatred all around the world’…

‘We are living in Marshall McLuhan’s global village, sharing many of the same images worldwide. They become identity markers, framing our streets, our magazines, our look, providing a sense of continuity in a befuddling and fast-changing environment’…

‘When interviewing young girls I found that they felt there was just no alternative, only the mainstream image,’ said Natasha Walter, author of Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism. It’s an issue of diversity: you’re in trouble if you can’t see your own reflection out there; it affects you negatively. We have to mainstream the ‘alternative’ (ie the real image).

Read the full article here

‘We want girls and women to see their bodies as a place they live from, not as a complicated place of fear.’

And here’s the opening speech to the summit by psychotherapist, psychoanalyst, writer and social critic Susie Orbach. It’s short, but so powerful.