Original air date: Monday, September 29, 2014
“Evening Gown” by Jenny Hahn – JensPaintings.com
This week, Stacy and Malayna will discuss body image and the media, and how we can all make a lasting shift to appreciation and love for the wondrous vehicle that facilitates our lives. They’ll point out positive media images that can support that journey, and tools to deal with the not-so-supportive messages that are all too prevalent in the world today. “Let your adornment be the inner self …” (1 Peter 3:4)!
“…with the lasting beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in God’s sight.” (1 Peter 3:4)
- Embrace film promo and “disgusting” – convo with Erika Eleniak, Baywatch Babe told me I looked good! Ego boost! And how beauty and sex appeal can be limiting…
- Barbie to Bratz, photoshopping (Dove Campaign for Real Beauty) and “fat shaming” – not just women either, I hear the men closest to me talking about their weight and muscles, rather than fitness levels too. And let’s not forget the cultural aspect, body image based on skin color, hair color, or physical build.
- Scene in What the Bleep (celebrating its 10th Anniversary at the Awakened World International Film Festival in Santa Barbara Oct 27 – 30) where she writes positive words and images on her body, to emulate Dr. Emoto’s experiment with water.
- Maria Nemeth, Mastering Life’s Energies: Simple Steps to a Luminous Life at Work and Play – what if you and your body went to couple’s therapy and it was revealed that it loved you, and you don’t give it what it needs? It’s a waste of energy to beat yourself up and put yourself down.
- Gone with the Wind – Scarlett O’Hara is a great example of how she let her beauty ruin her life – not wanting to have another kid because she couldn’t get her 20” waist back down to 18-1/2” after having a baby. Didn’t Melanie seem more beautiful and transcendent because she was kind and loving and saw the best in others?
- Ever notice how your impression changes once you get to know someone? An attractive person can become ugly, and someone who at first glance didn’t impress can become beautiful/handsome.
- Then, think about people you really admire – Oprah, Deepak, isn’t because of who they are? How they make you feel? Their confidence, their comfort, their belief, whatever it is – their them-ness. Paulette Pipe’s perfection. Seeing perfection in others.
- Shift to healthy, compassionate treatment of our bodies. Bloom where we’re planted! We only have so much control over the tools we inherited in this lifetime.
- Every period of history held its own standards of beauty – Been to a museum lately? And still in many cultures today, being thin is a sign of poverty, and being curvy is a sign of abundance.
- Gary Simmons – Finger pointing at the moon, mistaking the symbol for the message. Joseph Campbell – Archetypally, the heroes in myths and the gods and goddesses were larger than life for symbolic purposes. Stronger, more beautiful, to make a point. But society is confusing the myth for reality. The on-camera character for the real person.
-
- zaftig: pleasingly plump, buxom, full-figured, as a woman (from Yiddish זאַפֿטיק zaftik ‘juicy’; cf. German saftig ‘juicy’) (OED, MW)The television sitcom Ugly Betty portrays the life of a girl faced with hardships due to society’s unwelcoming attitudes toward those they deem unattractive. However, a person may also be targeted for harassment because of their beauty. In Malèna, a strikingly beautiful Italian woman is forced into poverty by the women of the community who refuse to give her work for fear that she may “woo” their husbands. The documentary Beauty in the Eyes of the Beheld explores both the societal blessings and curses of female beauty through interviews of women considered beautiful.St. Augustine said of beauty “Beauty is indeed a good gift of God; but that the good may not think it a great good, God dispenses it even to the wicked.”[40]– From Wikipedia: on Beauty
-
- Media Smarts http://mediasmarts.ca/body-image/ – Canada’s Centre for Digital and Media Literacy.
POSITIVE TOOLS:
- Healthy is the new Skinny – Smile TV uploaded the video you can find on You Tube,
- Dove Campaign for Real Beauty – Real Beauty Sketches
- The Body Image Survival Guide for Parents – http://www.todaysparent.com – offers a few suggestions for kids
- OUR SUGGESTIONS
- Replace reading material that celebrates the outer with ones that celebrate the inner – photo albums of people you love! Real people you admire! (Contagious Optimism?)
- Use the guidelines from A Complaint-Free World for body image – no complaining, gossiping or criticizing your body or anyone else’s. Instead, be affirmative, set goals for health, happiness, celebration, enjoyment of all that the world and life has to offer.
- Make eating about health and fun and diversity and exploration and community/family — great app recommended by Awaken Whole Life Center Nutritionist — Fooducate
- Seek out role models from your community that you can spend time with, in person, and beyond—those you’d like to meet and work with and share your favorites.
- Make friends with your face, your body, your spirit’s partner in this life. The underlying meaning is what’s important. – if you were more like you imagine you want to be, how would you feel? Most of us want to feel worthy of love, and appreciation. Love our negative thoughts for pointing us to where we need to be healed, and stop resisting them. The pain is in the resistance – to who we are, to what we fear. Listen compassionately to them, love them, heal them, act affirmatively to create the underlying value.
Spark Movement and saw this on their blog at Spark Summit.com – a resource kit to be an activist
“From writing petitions, to engaging in dialogue to writing and producing theater, you will learn simple yet effective activities to inspire the girls in your community.
In 125 colorful pages of information, activities, resources, and blogs by the young women (ages 13-22) of the SPARKteam (SPARK’s troupe of girl activists), you’ll find the creative work of a coalition of grassroots organizations who have joined together to educate and engage girls in activism.”
- See Jane.org – website for the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media (Event Oct 6th)
- Amy Poehler’s Smart Girls – amysmartgirls.com “Change the world by being yourself”
- Videos like Girls of the World, Operation Nice and Smart Girls at a Party
Pop Conscious 