Healthy is the new skinny……………………
As I continue to pull together my findings to complete my research I just happened to travel on the bus to Leeds to go shopping yesterday and I read an article regarding 19 year old Disney starlet, Demi Lovato, entitled ….
“Demi Lovato continues to push for body acceptance with ‘Healthy is the new Skinny’ t shirt” which I wanted to share…………
……………….. of course as my inquiry question is concerned with the body image of female dancers and I have been researching whether the media and the ‘skinny’ portrayal of models and female icons in the entertainment industry has an effect on body image cultures and expectations in the dance profession I was immediately interested and googled to read more.
Something that has concerned me since I blogged a few weeks ago was that a fellow BAPPer had commented that her research had revealed that dancers were perfectly happy with their bodies and had no body issues which was a complete contradiction to my findings, particularly in young dancers and the female practitioners I came into contact with, so this article and Demi Lovato’s story renewed my opinion that there is still a pressure on females in the industry to conform to body ideals and those pressures can manifest themselves into eating disorders and other unhealthy lifestyles.
The article reports :
“After her rehab stint in 2010, Demi Lovato has appointed herself a spokeswoman for healthy body image. Although she’s admitted to experimenting with drugs and alcohol, the Disney star’s problems stemmed largely from her eating disorder.
To keep other impressionable girls from falling into the same self-hatred, she’s championed a healthy body and lifestyle; she recently called out her old employers at Disney for running an episode of Shake It Up where one character joked about not eating. Disney pulled the episode, and a PR rep apologized. Similarly, she was spotted wearing a T-shirt that reads ‘Healthy is the new skinny’ at a recent trip to Disneyland . “There are so many pressures that are put on to you when you’re in this industry to conform to body ideals” she says.”
In a series of interviews to try and inspire others to ‘Stay Strong’ she discusses her personal issues…………………………
In an interview with 20/20 in 2011 she states she had a "really unhealthy relationship with food" since age 8 due to bullying experienced as a child and self-mutilated her wrists to cope with her emotions and depression since age 11. She admits she had an unhealthy obsession with being referred to as ‘fat’.
Lovato told ‘You’ magazine that she always thought she should diet. “As long as I can remember I looked in the mirror thinking, 'You're fat, change it'," she said. "I started overeating when I was about eight; I was a binge eater. I would bake a whole plate of cookies and eat them all. Then when I turned 12 I was bullied in school and they called me fat. I went from being an overeater to stopping eating and I lost about 30 pounds. From then on I continued undereating, but my weight plateaued. I started throwing up to lose weight."
To raise awareness about personal issues similar to her own, Lovato became a Contributing Editor to ‘Seventeen’ magazine.
She is also to discuss her personal issues as part of a larger campaign called "Love is Louder than the Pressure to Be Perfect" directed towards teenage girls and hopes she can inspire others to “Stay Strong” and accept themselves for who they are and stay away from self harming either through eating disorders or cutting (Lovato has had personal problems with both) .
‘Love is Louder Than the Pressure To Be Perfect’ is a new movement which addresses the pressures that teenage and college-age girls feel to be perfect in everything they do.
The pressure to be thin, pretty, talented, and hardworking came to a dramatic crescendo for Demi Lovato in November 2010, when in a much-publicized incident she punched a backup dancer before heading to rehab.
The Love is Louder article reports: “While in rehab, Demi learned how to love herself for who she is, and found healthy ways of coping. But she’s not the only girl who’s had to deal with this problem – a 2011 ‘Seventeen/Yahoo! Study’ found that a whopping 80% of young women feel the pressure to be perfect in everything to do. Now, Demi and Seventeen are joining the Love is Louder movement started by The Jed Foundation and MTV to tell teen and college-age girls that “Love is Louder Than the Pressure to Be Perfect.”
Brittany Snow is the actress who is responsible for the campaign and says, "When I strated the Love is Louder movement with the Jed Foundation in 2010 I had no idea it would reach hundreds of thousands of people around the world. I struggled a lot with self-image when I was a teenager and it inspires me to see Demi and so many others joining Love is Louder to support anyone who feels mistreated, misunderstood or alone. Helping other people is one of the ways I deal with the pressure in my life".
In a new video, Demi talks about ways to take control when the pressure gets to be too much. “There's a ton of pressure out there to meet impossible standards," Lovato says sitting before a white backdrop. "To look right, be smart, be thin, talented and popular. And many of us feel like we have to be everything to everyone, but it doesn't have to be that way. When the pressure to be perfect is overwhelming, find an outlet. I love to paint, but there are also other ways to relieve that pressure. You can sing, dance, act, draw, shoot photos, write or run."
Courtney Knowles, executive director of the Jed Foundation, spoke to MTV News about why he believed the teen star was the perfect candidate to represent the Love Is Louder movement, "I think her story really resonates with a lot of girls. I think it already did. There had been a lot of speculation about what she had been through and the fact that she's so brave, that she's willing to talk about these sensitive issues openly is really important, because part of the problem is so many teenagers don't want to seem like they're failing at anything, so they don't talk about this. And without addressing the problem, you can never feel better."
Demi continues on the video, "I have come to realize that just making yourself happy is most important," she continued. "Never be ashamed of what you feel. You have the right to feel any emotion that you want, and to do what makes you happy. That's my life motto."
This article gave me inspiration to complete my inquiry which I felt had lost momentum for me and I’d lost a bit of the fight and spirit I originally felt when I chose this issue to discuss. Last module I felt really passionate that it was an area of dance that was swept under the carpet and ignored for those who do suffer with ‘self image’ issues, that it was important to address those issues to help young dancers make healthy choices and that in some way my inquiry was important. This module I have even begun to question whether all the research I’d carried out was false because another researcher said all dancers were happy with their bodies. I think it can be accepted from all the research and articles I’ve reviewed and read over the last few months that this is not the case. I’d been criticised of making it a personal campaign because of my own ‘bad’ experiences but reading all these articles involving Demi Lovato, isn’t that exactly what I’m trying to do, to discuss an issue that affected me at college and so through my research try to identify that and how things can improve for the benefit of others in the future. Whilst the Love is Louder campaign is mostly aimed at an American audience at least it shows there is light at the end of the tunnel, that celebrities who have felt those pressures and suffered those body image issues that have caused them the worst kind of health and well-being issues are starting to try and educate others to follow a healthier path, to ‘give back’. Perhaps we can eventually get the dance industry to adopt the slogan, “Healthy is the new skinny” but if not with improved health education we can improve the health and well-being of the next generation of dance practitioners?!
References:
No comments:
Post a Comment