The Campaign for Body Confidence - any thoughts?

[KateMumsnet]

Hello everyone!

Following the success of our Let Girls Be Girls campaign, the Campaign for Body Confidence recently got in touch to discuss how we could work together to tackle the pressure felt by children (and adults...) to aspire to unrealistic and unhealthy body image ideals.

They want to make sure that we're exposed to a variety of body shapes and sizes in advertising and the media they're particularly concerned about the ubiquitous use of airbrushing in advertising and that children have the tools they need to resist unhealthy social pressures.

One of the co-founders of the campaign, Lynne Featherstone MP, recently became Minister for Equalities - so there's a real chance that some of these issues will be discussed and perhaps acted upon by government.

We'd like to put our heads together to try and come up with some ways which Mumsnet could help out. For example, we could perhaps ask those retailers who've signed up to the Let Girls Be Girls campaign to move things up a notch - by pledging not to use airbrushing in any advertising aimed at children and teenagers so that they don't compare themselves to images which aren't actually achievable in real life.

We could also ask them to to include a variety of body shapes when marketing to this age group - All Walks Beyond The Catwalk, supported by Erin O'Connor and a signatory to the campaign, is currently campaigning for something along these lines.

They're also really keen to improve coverage of women's sport in the hope of increasing participation - is this something that we could help raise awareness about, with a [racks brain hopelessly] Kick-a-football-with-your-daughter-day, or somesuch?

Anyway, if you've got any nifty ideas about how we could help get this issue onto the agenda of the relevant companies, and/or government - or any other comments - we'd love to hear them!

[Kaloki]

I think what would be wonderful is, you know how mascara companies now have to put a disclaimer saying that the models are wearing fake lashes, having fashion advertisements put a disclaimer on images that have been altered.

Too many images get passed off as real, when in reality the impossibly skinny model in them would be showing ribcage rather than smooth flesh. So that it could be seen that it isn't a realistic expectation.