Body Image, Dove and Ranting

Hi,
So Dove has a Positive body image campaign. They have Real Beauty Sketches http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpaOjMXyJGk

And loads of other 'Body Friendly' Ads. And that's great. But.....

90% of girls (15-17) want to change at least one aspect of their physical appearance, Body fat being the most common.
So why has barely anyone done anything about it. Well....
When women get self conscious they try to look 'better'. By buying more makeup, more clothes, more hair product. These things make them feel like they look better. All those dieting courses, all the biscuits for comfort eating, that make you go back to the diet again. All of this so you buy more stuff! basically, if we felt good about ourselves, we wouldn't need to buy so many things. Things to cheer us up, things to make us look different, then things to make us fat again, and so the cycle continues.
With the Dove ad, although they are telling women to feel good about their bodies, they are still promoting the idea, that what we look like is the most important thing. If you think about all of the body image related deaths, tha anorexia, bulimia, diabetes and suicide then maybe you will start to see a problem with mesages like looking good is the most important thing.
So thanks alot dove you are really helping end the body image problem! (Not)
Bye

Facts
Girls’ self-esteem peaks when they are 9 years old.
80% of children who are 10 years old are afraid of being fat.
9 million teens in America below 15 years are obese, that’s three times more than in 1980.
Obese boys and girls have significantly lower self-esteem than their non-obese peers.
Up to 12% of teen boys are using unproven supplements and/or steroids.
Nearly a quarter of girls age 15-17 would consider undergoing plastic surgery.
13 percent of girls age 15-17 acknowledge having an eating disorder.
7 in 10 girls believe they are not good enough or do not measure up in some way including their looks, performance in school and relationships.
80% of 10-year-old girls have dieted.
90% of high school junior and senior women diet regularly.
Young girls are more afraid of becoming fat than they are of nuclear war, cancer, or losing their parents.
95% of people who diet instead of following a healthy meal plan will gain back the weight they lose in between one and five years.
73% of teenage girls who abuse diet pills and 79% of teenage girls who self purge frequently read women’s fitness and health magazines.
At any given time, one in every three women and one in any four men are on a diet.
9/10 of girls who are high school juniors and seniors diet while only 1/10 of high school girls are overweight.
Individuals who frequently diet often experience depression.
35% of individuals who diet only occasionally progress into pathological dieters.
2/5 of women and 1/5 would give up 3-5 years of their life to realize their weight loss goals.
The diet and diet-related product industry boasts annual revenues of $33 billion.
By 1990 the average age that a girl began dieting had dropped to eight from fourteen in 1970.
Roughly one half of girls in 4th grade are on diets.
More than half of nine and ten-year-old girls admitted that they felt better about themselves when dieting.
Often, one of the first seating disorders symptoms to manifest is poor body image.
According to a study from the University of Central Florida, nearly 50% of girls aged three to six were already concerned about their weight.
A study showed that women experience an average of 13 negative thoughts about their body each day, while 97% of women admit to having at least one “I hate my body” moment each day.
Roughly half of the women in the U.S. wear size 14 or larger though most standard clothing retailers only cater to sizes 14 and smaller.
When asked to choose their ideal body shapes, 30% of women chose one that is 20% underweight while 44% chose an ideal body shape that is 10% underweight.
A Glamour magazine survey showed that 61% of respondents felt ashamed of their hips, 64% felt embarrassed by their stomachs, while 72% were ashamed of their thighs.
One study showed that women overestimate the size of their waists by 25% and hips by 16%, while those same women could correctly estimate a box’s width.
One study showed that 75% of women consider themselves overweight when, in reality, only 25% were.
Four out of five women in the U.S. are unhappy with their appearance.
81% of ten-year-old girls experience a fear of being fat.
42% of 1st through 3rd grade girls say they wish they were thinner.
Adolescent girls are more afraid of gaining weight than getting cancer, losing their parents or nuclear war.
More than half of white, adolescent girls who are a normal weight view themselves as fat.
Seven out of ten women felt angrier and more depressed following the viewing of fashion model images.
A study that offered preschoolers a choice between two dolls that were identical except for weight, the preschoolers chose the thinner doll nine out of ten times.
Children were asked in one study to rate pictures of other children based on attractiveness. The obese child was rated less attractive than a child with a facial deformity, a child in a wheelchair and a child who is missing a limb.
One quarter of all television commercials convey a message related to attractiveness.
The rate of eating disorders in Fiji surged following the introduction of Western television programming.
A study found that viewing music videos featuring thin women correlated with a jump in body image dissatisfaction.
In Allure magazine model and actress Elizabeth Hurley stated, “I’ve always thought Marilyn Monroe looked fabulous, but I’d kill myself if I was that fat.”
Actresses Cameron Diaz, Julia Roberts and the singer Diana Ross meet the BMI criteria for anorexia.
A People magazine survey showed that 80% of female respondents felt that women in movies and television programs made them feel insecure about their bodies.