Size diversity plan can help body image | Letters

We appreciate Hadley Freeman’s point (Don’t blame the fashion world for the cult of skinny, Weekend, 10 September) that eating disorders are multifactorial, unattributed to any single cause. However, we disagree that the fashion industry, and its media representations, don’t play a role.

The industry’s promotion of extreme thinness is a major sociocultural pressure that increases eating disorder risk. Furthermore, these pressures are harmful to models, who too often must put their health at risk to keep their job. Legislation that can change this thin-ideal saturated environment has a high potential to decrease the incidence of disordered eating behaviours.

The Women’s Equality party’s proposal argues for legislation aiming to increase size and shape diversity in fashion, including through larger sample sizes. Such legislation can be effective when end-users are involved and when enforcement is possible in practice and through the allocation of resources. In addition, providing youth with tools to resist appearance pressures is critical to decreasing rates of disordered eating. The WEP’s additional focus on including media literacy in curriculums would address this. A number of effective, evidence-based media literacy programmes are freely available for schools.

Limiting the impact of the thin ideal can only happen through concerted efforts to decrease these pressures and simultaneously help young people resist them. The WEP’s proposal outlines such a plan and may pave the way to healthier working conditions for models and positive body image for the greater public.
Rachel Rodgers Associate professor, Department of Applied Psychology, Northeastern University, USA, Professor S Bryn Austin Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health and Harvard Medical School, Sara Ziff Founding director, Model Alliance, Áine Campbell, Madeline Hill, Meredith Hattam Co-directors, Model Alliance

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Size diversity plan can help body image | Letters

Kids as younger as eight "want to be thinner than regular entire body size"

Kids as young as eight are dissatisfied with their bodies, a examine displays.

And the bulk of ten- and 11-12 months-olds are making an attempt to control their excess weight.

The report by the Australian Institute of Loved ones Research (AIFS) examined more than 4,000 youngsters about the nation at ages eight to 9 and yet again at 10 to 11.

It located far more than half of all the kids they spoke to desired a entire body size a bit thinner than the regular, but younger kids had been the most dissatisfied.

“In contrast to 10- and 11-year-olds, a big quantity of eight to nine-yr-outdated boys and girls have been dissatisfied with their physique size with several young children wanting to be thinner than the common physique size,” explained Ben Edwards, executive manager of AIFS’s longitudinal examine for Australian kids.

But Edwards mentioned the “good information” in the analysis, was locating that as the young children received older they had been much more exact in gauging their appropriate physique dimension and far more likely to be satisfied with it.

Nonetheless, although the older kids have been a lot more probably to be happier about their fat the bulk of the older aged young children had experimented with to handle their bodyweight in the previous 12 months.

The report said 61% of boys had taken steps to handle their weight in the past year, compared with 56% of women.

Edwards mentioned several boys have been trying to add muscle mass, rather than decrease fat, unlike ladies who had been primarily concerned with losing excess weight.

Kids as younger as eight "want to be thinner than regular entire body size"