Resources on body image

Many young women compare themselves unfavourably to pictures of celebrities in magazines, forgetting that those images have had hours of retouching to portray someone's ideal of perfection. Swedish ad agency Forsman and Bodenfors created a campaign called Girlpower for the ministry of health and social affairs to highlight the truth behind the images. You can see their interactive Retouch campaign here which could be useful for using with young women.

There are similar images from Greg Apodaca, a digital retoucher, here and here. The difference between the before and after shots is quite dramatic. I must confess that I found myself thinking 'she's not very pretty', when I saw the before shot because I'm so used to seeing the airbrushed images. But then I had to remind myself of what I might look like that close-up!

The Dove Campaign for Real Beautyis also worth looking at in terms of resources to use on body image. I love the strapline of their Onslaught film - talk to your daughter before the beauty industry does. As it's a global campaign it's worth looking at Dove websites from other countries. For example the Canadian website has an award winning film called Evolution which shows the transformation a model goes through.Remember, though, that this is all about advertising and the ultimate aim is to sell you more soap. Other products made by Dove's parent company have very unhelpful gender stereotypes in their adverts.

Plus there are a couple of asbojesus cartoons on this theme.

You can see them more clearly here.

Another asbojesus cartoon here:

If you want hi-res copies to use with your group, contact Jon Birch, the cartoonist, through his site and say that you heard about him through the Sophia Network - I'm sure he'd be pleased to help.

Anorexi Bulimi Kontakt is a Swedish support agency for those facing anorexia and bulimia in Sweden. They have produced an excellent and hard-hitting film about anorexia which you can download here.

Damaris have published a discussion starter on their website made with the BBC for the charity Beat. It uses the voice and experiences of a teenager who has had anorexia. You can download it here, and you can find out more about Beat on their website.

What resources have you used with teenagers and young women on body image? Add your own ideas in the comments below and this could build up into a helpful resource.