Council on Size & Weight
Discrimination, Inc.
Attitudes toward body image are
formed early in life, and the Council's Kids Come In All Sizes
Project seeks to improve the self-esteem and self-image of young
girls and boys, and to combat the discriminatory attitudes
towards large bodies which are promoted by the media and the
fashion and diet industries.
We feel that this work is
especially important in light of the devastating statistics on
chronic dieting, low self-esteem, and eating disorders among
young girls. 50% of 9-year-old girls and 80% of 10-year-old
girls have dieted. 90% of high school junior and senior women
diet regularly, even though only 10% to 15% are over the weight
recommended by the standard height-weight charts. Young girls
are more afraid of becoming fat than they are of nuclear war,
cancer, or losing their parents. For more statistics, with
citations, go to Facts
and Figures.
Most of the girls we see in our
test workshops are obsessed with being thin. When the "waif
look" was introduced, girls considered it an indication that
they were still not thin enough. One of them said "I thought I
just had to look like Christie Brinkley. Now I have to look like
Kate Moss?!" The fashion and diet industries try hard to deny
it, but there is no doubt that the sharp rise in eating
disorders can be directly attributed to the obsession with
dieting and thinness. Anorexia has the highest mortality rate
(up to 20%) of any psychiatric diagnosis, and can be fatal even
during recovery, when girls are no longer starving themselves.
Girls develop eating and
self-image problems before drug or alcohol problems.
Nevertheless, there are drug and alcohol programs in almost
every school, but no eating disorder programs. We advocate for
body image programs in schools, we give workshops and pilot
programs to demonstrate the importance of such programs, and we
provide technical assistance to any individual, group, or
educational institution starting a body image and self-esteem
program.
