This document discusses body image issues faced by girls and young women. It provides statistics showing that many girls as young as 8 are being hospitalized for eating disorders, and 1 in 4 twelve-year-olds would like cosmetic surgery. Experts argue that unrealistic media portrayals produce anxiety and insecurity. Advertising frequently uses sexualized images of women and girls to sell products. Writers and advocates like Maggie Hamilton, Julie Gale, and Melinda Tankard Reist are bringing awareness to these issues and empowering people to make complaints against problematic advertising.

1. Body Image:!
Who’s to blame?!
“Although this may be the most affluent generation to walk the
planet, it also has the dubious distinction of being the most
insecure and depressed.” – Marketing guru Martin Lindstrom

2. Some stats…
 A 2006 National Youth Cultures of Eating Study found that
close to 20% of adolescent Australian girls use fasting for 2 or
more days to lose weight. 13% use vomiting. Others use
slimming pills, chewing but not swallowing food, smoking and
laxatives.
 Girls as young as eight years old are being admitted to
hospital with eating disorders.
 1 in 4 twelve year old girls in Australia would like to have
cosmetic surgery. (AAP August 2007)
,
 A 20% increase in inquiries from teenage girls for plastic
surgery was reported in 2008. (Sunday mail, Brisbane)

3. Plastic Surgery…
Statistics show that increasing numbers of adolescent girls are
seeking plastic surgery and cosmetic procedures such as botox
injections.
 Priyanka, at age 16, after being told by her boyfriend that she didn’t
look ‘hot’ enough, underwent breast enlargement. Now 18, Priyanka
says she is more confident that she was at 16, and besides “I look
great in my swimsuit”.
Article in India Today, 2007
 Amy, 18 years old, performed well in her final year of high school, so
her parents bought her a special gift: fake breasts! “I just felt as
though I wouldn’t be complete without them.. I could have gotten a
new car, but I’d much rather have bigger breasts. Now, I feel like a
real woman.”
Cosmopolitan 2004

4. Anxiety Sells!
 Anxiety is good for business, because it keeps girls (and
women) purchasing.
 Repeated exposure to unrealistic images of female
bodies has produced a massive market for beauty
products, diet and weight-loss products and programs, as
well as a pre-occupation with appearances.
 Many young girls feel they have to be slim to be popular.
Concerns about looks intensify as girls grow up.
Marketers know this, they use experts such as cultural
anthropologists and child psychologists. They know girls’
lives intimately and which buttons to press.

5. “Anxiety Sells”

6. “Anxiety Sells – Women on Display”

7. “Sex Sells”
Is the media to blame?
From a very young age, children are bombarded with sexually suggestive images and
messages from both the media and their social environment. Advertising often exposes
children to inappropriate images in a bid to sell products and make a profit.

8. Sexualisation of women in advertising
It doesn’t help when advertising shows images such as this..

9. Sexualisation of young girls in advertising
It doesn’t help when magazines portray children like this...

10. Expert opinion on
Psychological Impacts
When life’s all about appearance, there’s Neuroscientist Susan Greenfield is seeing
no incentive for girls to value themselves 11 year olds who are two to three years
or their unique talents. behind in cognitive development than 11
years old were fifteen years ago. Girls are
Maggie Hamilton spending more time in their bedrooms,
worrying about how they look and what to
wear, and are less directly engaged in life.
Girls of twelve or thirteen…say that BBC News, September 2006
while they don’t want to conform, they
feel they must, to have some chance of
surviving at high school. We need to
work with kids to let them know it’s Girls are coming of age in a more dangerous,
okay to be unique, to have your own sexualized and media-saturated culture...as
ideas, as that’s how you have a much they navigate a more dangerous world, they
happier, healthier future. are less protected.
Gina, child psychologist, in an interview Mary Pipher (Psychologist)
with Maggie Hamilton, 2008.

12. Body Hatred!?!
Tania Andrusiac (who wrote “Adproofing your
kids”) describes our culture as “allergic to body
diversity”, and creates problems “that only
consumption can solve”.
She says “This epidemic of body hatred makes
a few select people very rich, and so many of us
very sad.”

13. Is anyone doing anything about this?
Maggie Hamilton; Julie Gale; Melinda Tankard Reist.
Maggie Hamilton is a writer and publisher, gives frequent talks and lectures, is a regular
media commentator and keen observer of social trends. She has held a number of senior
roles in publishing and at the ABC. Her many books include What Men Don’t Talk About,
which looks at the lives of real men and boys, and What’s Happening to Our Girls? Maggie is
currently researching What’s Happening To Our Boys? due out mid 2010.
Julie Gale is the founder of Kids Free 2B Kids, and has been working since 2007 to raise
public and corporate awareness on the issue of the sexualisation of children in the media,
advertising and popular culture. Julie has generated appeared on television, radio and in
newspaper articles throughout Australia and internationally. In 2009 she contributed to a
number of Australian seminars, including “Bratz, Britney and Bralettes: The Sexualisation of
Childhood and Children”, “Sexualised Media: Risks, Reviews and Regulation”, and “Generation
Next”.
Melinda Tankard Reist is an Australian author, speaker, commentator and advocate with a
special interest in issues affecting women and girls. Melinda is author of Giving Sorrow
Words: Women's Stories of Grief After; and Defiant Birth: Women Who Resist Medical
Eugenics. Melinda's commentary has been published and broadcast in Australia and
overseas. A founder of independent women's think tank Women's Forum Australia, Melinda
is editor of the magazine-style research paper Faking It: The Female Image in Young Women's
Magazines (2007). Melinda’s latest book Getting Real: Challenging the Sexualisation of Girls
has just been published by Spinifex Press.

14. What can we do?
If you don’t like the way women are being
portrayed in an advertisement, you can complain to
the publication or to the Advertising Standards
Bureau:
Complaints
And tell your friends;
boycott products/shops/
The Advertising Standards Bureau brands; speak to other
women about it!
Level 2 Use the power of your
voice!!
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