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[Definitie:] "An ergogenic aid is any substance or phenomenon that enhances performance."
(Wilmore and Costill) 
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Ugly truth about beauty
As ideal morphs from Venus de Milo to Victoria's Secret, teens' self-esteem gets needed boost, writes Andrea Gordon
Toronto Star
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty." Truth, of course, is never out of style. But with all due respect to Mr. Keats, Shari Graydon thinks a lot of what passes for beauty nowadays, especially what's peddled to kids by the image merchants, is a crock. Unrealistic, unattainable and unhealthy. The Ottawa media literacy activist has an antidote. She wants teenagers, already a notoriously lippy and opinionated demographic, to rebel, to talk back, to question the messages they are fed. And she's written a book, aimed at readers 11 and up, showing them how to do it. "You are not your nose. Or your butt, or the cold sore on your upper lip," she says in In Your Face: The Culture Of Beauty And You. "You are not your hair — on good or bad days. You are not your legs or your lips or the mole that only you (and possibly your mother) know about. You are not your biceps or your fingernails." While today's kids are a pretty savvy bunch when it comes to media multi-tasking, Graydon says they need help deconstructing the messages. Those messages that tell them how to look, what to wear and that, skin-deep or not, beauty is what it's all about. They need ammunition to counter the onslaught of skinny airbrushed models in fashion magazines, the sultry pop stars on music videos and reality TV shows that pitch plastic surgery as the route to living happily ever after. Especially at a time when, in the United States, more money is spent each year on beauty products and services than on education. The ugly side of the contemporary beauty industry and the pressures to conform are nothing new. It's a debate that American feminist Naomi Wolf tackled almost 15 years ago in her book The Beauty Myth. Graydon's book is almost like a junior version. Its release this month comes at a time when kids are bombarded with more media than ever before and marketers are targeting them at ever-younger ages. "I am very worried about kids," Graydon, 46, said in a recent telephone interview. The media are their touchstone, their source of entertainment and bonding, she says. But, overwhelmingly, they set kids up to constantly compare themselves in unhealthy ways — to each other and to the unrealistic faces and body shapes portrayed on page and screen. "(It's all about) how do I measure up, how do I fit in? Do I look like that? No, I don't. What could I do to look like that?" Graydon says. "Media targeted to girls and young women in particular are relentlessly focused on reinforcing that comparison and suggesting that you can achieve those unattainable ideals by purchasing products or by wearing brands." The results can be dangerous, contributing to problems ranging from low self-esteem to depression to eating disorders. The messages are increasingly aimed at boys as well. The heavy marketing of the muscle-bound body, Graydon says, has led to increased use of anabolic steroids. She calls it "a sleeper issue like anorexia was 10 years ago." Graydon also worries about the long-term impact of the message that satisfaction comes from consumption — of certain labels, makeup or diet products. That kind of consumer environment, she says, is a recipe for "enormous dissatisfaction, dislocation and disconnection." She isn't alone in her anxiety. Last year, the Media Awareness Network and the Canadian Paediatric Society joined forces to publish MediaPulse, a guide for parents and doctors to help measure the impact of media on kids. It includes warnings about the effect on body image and urges parents to pull in the reins on media consumption. "Research has linked the thin female beauty ideal and the muscular male body ideal portrayed in the media with a range of health problems, including body dissatisfaction and eating disorders," the guide says. It reported growing numbers of children and teens turning to dangerous weight-loss practices, muscle-building regimes and cosmetic procedures and said physicians are seeing growth in eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia and at alarmingly young ages. The guide also cites a U.S. survey of girls in Grades 5 to 12 that found 59 per cent were dissatisfied with their body shapes and 66 per cent wanted to lose weight, while only 29 per cent were actually overweight. In Ontario, concerned teachers have taken steps, too. The Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario launched a program this year called "Reflections Of Me: The Body Image Project" to help children learn to be comfortable in their own skin. The project, which includes resources that can be integrated into the kindergarten-to-Grade 8 curriculum, is in the pilot phase. While the consequences of society's beauty obsession can be grim, that's not the tone Graydon wanted for her book. She learned after a few tough sessions speaking at high schools that kids had little interest in her earnest lectures. So, instead, she appeals to their intelligence, curiosity and fascination with popular culture — an approach she also followed in her earlier acclaimed book, Made You Look: How Advertising Works And Why You Should Know. In Your Face, published by Toronto's Annick Press, is 164 pages of hard facts and photos, juicy tidbits and provocative questions intended to arm young readers with some tools of critical thinking — to urge on them a skeptical, challenging attitude about the fantasies they're being sold. Who knew that Elizabethan women applied bandages soaked in vinegar and cat dung to their hairlines in hopes of attaining a high forehead? Or that big companies today enlist teens in "cool hunts" to act as their eyes and ears — secret agents, really — and tip them to the latest trends that can help sell their brands? And it demonstrates that the perfection you see on the page is a technological feat, not a biological one, by showing how much younger a woman appears after the photo of her has been Photoshopped. In Your Face romps through the ages looking at how the notion of beauty has changed — from Renaissance painter Peter Paul Rubens' depiction of his wife in all her cellulite splendour to Kate Moss' "heroin chic" look of the 1990s. It notes how perceptions vary among cultures — the ideal Ugandan woman weighs about 150 pounds — and looks at how early we are influenced, beginning with bedtime fairy tales. Arming kids through education is something Ann McKee of Toronto supports. The former teacher and veteran of the advertising business has launched 5 Elements, a series of camps and workshops for teenaged girls to help them navigate the common challenges they face. Media manipulation is among the topics they examine. What McKee heard this summer is that girls are fairly clued in about what the industry is up to. They know they can't buy happiness in a tube of mascara, and that cover girls get lots of help from technology before magazines hit the newsstands. But they still need strategies to cope because the peer pressure to conform and be cool is overwhelming, she says. "If they're not wearing the right clothes or the proper labels, they're labelled as uncool." It infects many parents, too, making them reluctant to say no to the latest pricey jeans or expensive hairstyle. Fourteen-year-old Hayley Crichton of Toronto agrees. She knows the fashion magazines she reads are all about pitching products and the perfect image. And she also believes the most important thing for kids is to be comfortable in their own skin. Even so, the media barrage can be hard to resist. "I know a lot of people who want to be like certain actors and actresses and who say, `Oh, if I just get those clothes, I can look like that,'" she says. Does she ever feel lured by the images? "I hate to say it, but sometimes I do." Casey Irvine, 12, who lives in Blackstock, says at her school there's "much too much" worry among her peers about dieting and keeping up with the latest styles, and it's hard not to get caught up in it. "I don't think it has a good effect," she says. "You need to be who you are." Some friends won't even eat cake on their birthday, says the Grade 7 student, "because in all the magazines they say the stars are about 100 pounds." Even Graydon knows from personal experience that critical thinking can only go so far. She discovered that as president of the non-profit women's organization MediaWatch. It was the early 1990s and she had to familiarize herself with the world of fashion magazines. She was shocked at how it affected her. Each time she flipped through the pages, she recalls, she came away a little more self-conscious and a little more dissatisfied with her own appearance. "It was profoundly shaking for me," Graydon says. "Even being able to deconstruct the messages and think critically...all that doesn't stop us from those yearnings on an emotional level." So, in the face of that unbecoming truth, kids need some other supports, too. Healthy parental role models for one thing. Tell kids all you want to accept themselves as they are and that it's what's inside that counts. But don't expect them to listen if you're always running off to the gym, obsessing over your Atkins diet or booking an appointment for Botox. Equally important, Graydon says, is limiting media exposure. She urges her readers to "take a beauty break" by tossing out the fashion magazine, turning off the TV and skipping that visit to the mall. Graydon doesn't really expect kids will ever stop caring about how they look. She just wants to save them from being slaves to the beauty industry. "Understanding the powers and pitfalls of trying to look our best won't necessarily inspire us to toss out the tweezers or hair gel," she writes in In Your Face. "But putting beauty into perspective can definitely help us to stop feeling so controlled by it." |
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