National NOW Times >> Summer/Fall 2005 >> Article

Love Your Body Events Raise Awareness and Self-Esteem

By Bonnie Rice, Love Your Body Day Coordinator

Every day, women and girls are bombarded with advertisements encouraging them to chase an unattainable ideal of physical beauty. We also are exposed to a constant stream of lifted, tucked and airbrushed "perfect bodies" in the movies, on TV and on the Internet.

In the race to look like these fantasy images, women spend billions of dollars each year on cosmetics, skin-care products, teeth-whiteners and hair color. This pursuit can also lead to harmful behaviors like smoking to lose weight, invasive cosmetic surgery to change physical features, and dangerous eating disorders.

The NOW Foundation's Love Your Body campaign helps raise awareness about women's health, body image and self-esteem. This year's eighth annual Love Your Body Day is Oct. 19, and NOW chapters and campus activists across the country are hosting Love Your Body actions and events. Activists will speak out against the unrealistic vision of Hollywood, fashion advertising and diet industries, the physical risks of silicone breast implants and tobacco products, and call for diverse and realistic images of women and girls in the media — images that help to promote good health and encourage self-esteem among women and girls.

Media Images Lead to Dangerous Behavior

Images of women in the media are narrow and unrealistic — even photos of supermodels are air-brushed to create an illusion of "perfection." Television provides few positive role models for girls, and teen and "fashion" magazines would rather discuss makeup than career choices. The message is always the same — women and girls should be frail, weak, and sexy and not appear to be seeking power. Women are not immune to these messages, and the constant pressure to look like the latest "it girl" can lead to dangerous eating disorders like anorexia or bulimia.

Plastic surgery promises to make any woman look younger and thinner, and many women are buying what the plastic surgeons are selling. Aging is set up as the antithesis of beauty, and women are led by advertising images to believe that a dress size larger than a 4 is unacceptable.

Tobacco: A Growing Danger to Women and Girls

Lung cancer continues to be the leading cause of cancer death among U.S. women, having surpassed breast cancer in 1987. Approximately 90 percent of all lung cancer deaths among women who continue to smoke are attributable to smoking; and smoking has been linked to other respiratory diseases. The list of tobacco-related illnesses has expanded to include mouth, throat, bladder and other cancers, as well as heart disease, the top killer of U.S. women.

Tobacco companies spend $5 billion each year on promotion and advertising, and the most dangerous promotions target children and young adults indirectly — for example by having favorite actors smoke cigarettes in photos or in their movies. Experts agree that the younger people are when they begin smoking cigarettes, the more likely they are to become strongly addicted to nicotine. In addition, pregnant women who smoke are more likely to deliver low-birthweight babies and smoking increases the likelihood of infant mortality.

Silicone Breast Implants: A Hidden Risk

More women, particularly young women, are getting breast implants than ever before. The number of women undergoing this surgery has more than tripled in just seven years. But do these women know how dangerous implants can be? Many women have become seriously ill from ruptured and leaking silicone gel breast implants, and there is an appalling lack of long-term safety data from the manufacturers.

Because they are unsafe, these implants were taken off the market in 1992 (although saline implants remained available). But under the Bush administration's political appointees, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has said it will approve the use of silicone breast implants made by Mentor Corporation — this despite concerns raised by the FDA's own experts about the lack of safety data and serious allegations that the company misrepresented safety information and hid defective products from inspectors. For more information on NOW's effort to block the sale of these dangerous implants, visit www.now.org/issues/health/implants.

Get Healthy

Low calorie/no carbohydrate dieting has become an obsession in this country. Fear of becoming fat leads some women and girls to develop unhealthy and unbalanced eating habits, which can rob us of self-esteem and sap our energy. A study in the late '90's showed that more than 80 percent of fourth-grade girls (ages 9-10) had been on a diet to lose weight. At the same time, a shocking number of young people are significantly overweight.

So what can you do? Eat healthy foods and exercise regularly so that you reach your "feel good" weight. Living at a weight that feels good to you has nothing to do with fat or thin, it is the weight that allows you to do the physical activities you love without feeling tired or out of breath. Women also can prepare themselves to expect weight variations that normally accompany growing older. The important thing is to be healthy and to love yourself regardless of what the scale says.

Join Us! Participate in Love Your Body Day

On Love Your Body Day, Oct. 19 this year, activists around the country say "No" to twisted beauty standards, media images, and hazardous advertising campaigns by holding rallies, pickets, house parties, classroom discussions and more.

Get active:

• Visit your favorite department store and ask them to display the Love Your Body poster;
• Host a house party to show the videos "Redefining Liberation" and/or "Hollywood's Smoke and Mirrors" and discuss the issues;
• Compile negative/positive ads and images of women and young girls to create your own Love Your Body display;
• Hold a "Design your own Barbie" contest;
• Coordinate with a clinic to offer free breast and health screenings at a LYBD health fair;
• Conduct workshops and discussions on campus, at women's centers and at community events;
• Download a Love Your Body Day action kit from the NOW Foundation web site at www.nowfoundation.org. The kit includes information on women's health, tips for planning events and actions, petitions, products and the product order form, plus you can order the 2005 Love Your Body Day poster.

Design the 2006 Poster

The NOW Foundation is holding a poster design contest for the 2006 Love Your Body Campaign. There will be five winners, and one poster will be distributed nationwide, featured on the NOW Foundation web site, and will be exhibited at the 2006 National NOW Conference in Albany, NY.

Prizes range from $100 to $600 in categories comprising elementary and middle school students, high school, college and non-student/professional. Entries must be postmarked by March 1, 2006.

Participation rules for the poster contest and more information on the campaign are at http://loveyourbody.nowfoundation.org/or call 202-628-8669, ext. 117.