Body Image - Key Stage 3&4
Guidance, Resources and articles
Body image in a digital world
Encourage students to explore what body image is, how social media can impact it and ways to reduce stress or anxiety caused by online pressures.
Using peer-to-peer discussion and activities, students discuss the impact of social media on body image and identify techniques for minimising stress that may arise from negative body image.
Lesson plan includes:
- accompanying PowerPoint for use in class
- starter activities – carry out a baseline assessment of students' prior knowledge, skills and understanding
- core peer-to-peer activities, plenaries and exciting extension ideas
- 2 films to support the activities – one featuring opinions from students and another featuring photographer and Instagrammer Tobi Shinobi
Naked Beach Body Image Resources for Schools
Guidance
Be Real Campaign - The Campaign for Body Confidence 
Campaigning to chance attitudes to body image and help all of us put health above appearance and be confident in our bodies.
Being Me - Newsround has made a special programme called Being Me, exploring what kids think about their body image.
Teacher Guidance - Key standards in teaching about body image
Pressure to look perfect hits girls' confidence, say Guides
Resources
Dove
- Dove Self-Esteem Project - Campaign to combat self esteem and
body image issues among young girls. Click here to see how you can get involved. Or click here to access Five Session Self-Esteem Teaching Resources - Confident Me - A one-off body confidence workshop and
- Training videos for teachers created to help teachers deliver the workshop
Tools to run body-confidence workshops in your school. Every young person in your school should grow up feeling confident about themselves.
That’s why we’ve developed Confident Me, a free set of easy-to-use, evidence based resources for schools like yours.
The resources are in the form of single and five-session workshop options designed to adapt to your in-school timetable. The resources include lesson plans, presentations for the students as well as student activity sheets, and it is all downloadable for free. (13/02/20)
MediaSmart - Body Image and Advertising
Some great teaching resources and lesson plans on body image. Also includes a section for young people and a section for parents.
Media Smart Body Image and Advertising - Teachers Notes
You can also use the TV adverts in MediaSmart UK's youtube playlist.
If you do wish to use the case studies, please ensure that your school or educational institution has a valid Educational Recording Agency licence.
Boys' Biggist Conversation-Body image and advertising: Resources
Media Smart and First News have come together to create the Boys’ Biggest Conversation – a campaign to encourage young men, across the UK, to talk about body image and the effect it has on their mental wellbeing.
Although the resource focuses on the representation of men in the media, it is designed for use with students aged 11–14 years of all genders, aiming to broaden the discussion and build understanding of how this issue can affect everyone.
Articles
22/06/16 BBC News - Unilever to use 'less sexist' ads Adverts showing women unable to resist the lure of chocolate, slaving in the kitchen and going giggly at the sight of a man will be no more if consumer goods giant Unilever has its way. The firm, behind more than 400 brands from Ben & Jerry's ice-cream to Dove soap, has pledged to remove sexist stereotypes from its own ads and called on rivals to follow suit.
04/10/16 BBC News - Pressure to look perfect hits girls' confidence, say Guides Girls in the UK are markedly less confident about their looks than they were five years ago, research by Girlguiding suggests. Just 61% of 1,627 seven- to 21-year-old girls polled for the 2016 Girls' Attitudes Survey felt happy about their bodies, down from 73% in 2011. Girls as young as seven face "intense and unobtainable appearance pressures to be perfect", say the authors. Girlguiding director Becky Hewitt called the impact "shocking".
17/11/17 BBC News - Jamie Oliver bans daughter, 14, from posting selfies TV chef Jamie Oliver has said he has banned his 14-year-old daughter from sharing selfies, describing them as the unhealthy "sugar of social media". "We ban Daisy from doing selfies and mainly she doesn't, but a couple slip up," the father-of-five told the Lifestyle News hound. Oliver, 42, says he is among the first generation of parents learning to deal with children sharing photos online. He and wife Jools regularly post family photos on their own Instagram pages. But Oliver, a prominent campaigner for healthy eating, described teenage girls' use of Instagram as "frightening".
17/08/15 Health.com - What the 'Perfect' Body Looks Like in 18 Different Countries Female graphic designers from around the world were given the same photo and asked to tweak the image so that the model met the beauty standards of their country. "The goal of this project is to better understand potentially unrealistic standards of beauty and to see how such pressures vary around the world.”
Click on the title to see the shocking results.
Guide to what a "normal" vulva looks like - BBC News
Teenage girls are being directed to a new online reference tool that helps them check if their vulva looks normal. Available on the sexual health charity Brook website, the resource gives visual examples and advice on how female genitals change in puberty.
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