Body dissatisfaction starts young: How can we change the picture?

Nyibeni Naam:

All the media that I consumed from Neighbours, to Home and Away to Dolly magazines, essentially reaffirmed that my body is not what you would call Australian.

Anne Smith:

I was at an all-girls school and then I went to a high school and there were boys there. And I think that threw me quite a fair bit. And that’s when things sort of went downhill.

Kelly Griffin:

No child should ever see their parent go through this, and go through the anguish, and the mental and the physical aspects of an eating disorder.

Nicki Isaacs:

We’re seeking compliments but people are actually opening themselves up to criticism as well. And we know that body bullying is a real risk factor for the development of negative body image.

Anne Smith:

If I had of just accepted and loved my whole self then yeah, I don’t know what I would have done…

Sam Ikin:

One of the things I hear a lot from guests that we have on this show who have a lived experience of eating disorders or body image issues, is that they really don’t want to pass those problems onto their kids. Body dissatisfaction is one of the highest risk factors for eating disorders. The troubling news for those of us who are parents, is that more and more young kids are telling us that they’re dissatisfied with their bodies.

Sam:

As a parent, who’s been affected by an eating disorder, it’s one thing to say that we don’t want our kids to follow in those footsteps, but actually protecting them from it is a whole other story.

Sam:

In this episode of the Butterfly podcast, we’re investigating how we can change the picture for kids.

Nicki:

There’s more diversity these days, I believe. I think there’s still a very narrow range, but it’s not only about the thin ideal. In certain areas and contexts, it might be about a curvaceous body or an hourglass figure.

I’m Nicki, I work at the Butterfly Foundation. I’ve been there for about five or six years, and I’ve been a psychologist for the last 23 years.

Nicki:

There’s no end to the Instagram scroll. There’s no end to the TikToks that they can watch. We have got access to celebrities, lives that we’ve never had access to. We have access to so many different things through social media. And a lot of the time, what we’re looking at is not even real because we’re looking at images that have been photoshopped or filtered. We’re looking at our friends having the time of their lives. Often, we’re comparing our most vulnerable, lonely self to our friends.

Nicki:

Pre-COVID, it was sitting under a palm tree on a wonderful holiday. These days, people haven’t been traveling as much but they’re still really generally posting photos of themselves where they look really happy and look like they’re having the time of their lives. Or they look, in inverted commas, hot. So they’ll post a photo of themselves looking hot and invite lots of comments on their appearance.

Sam:

The pressures on kids to look a certain way are not new. They were there when I was school, and they were there when my parents went to school and probably when their parents went to school. But the intensity of those messages about how we should look and how we should be eating have intensified. They’re far harder to escape.

Kelly:

Yeah, it was a very different world 20 years ago. If I look back at the internet boom, you know what happened back then. It was completely different to what we’re seeing today. My name is Kelly. I am …what am I now? A 44-year-old male. Single dad; got a couple of kids.

Sam:

Kids are extremely vulnerable. And exposure to restrictive dieting, extreme exercise regimes and hearing adults or schoolmates talk about their appearance concerns quite a lot, can lead to body dissatisfaction and other mental health concerns.

Kelly:

I was always the really skinny kid as I was growing up. I’m pretty small and I’m pretty short. I was never the sort of the tallest guy going around. I was pretty fit and athletic, and I love kicking the footy and stuff like that. Unfortunately, I could never play footy that well, purely because I was just never the biggest guy on the field and just didn’t have that power or strength.

Kelly:

And so that as you’re growing up and hearing your family talk and say, “Oh man, look, check you out. I’ll call you roadmap.” That’s what they used to call me. Because as a little kid you’re running around in the backyard with no t-shirt on, for example, it’s the middle of summer. And all you can see is veins across your chest and stuff like that. So yeah, the messaging there that I always got was “You’re really skinny, you’re roadmap. Do you want to be tiny?” It’s like, “No, I want to be big! I want to be buff!”

Sam:

So, going back with what you know now, what would you tell your younger self? And I guess your kids now?

Kelly:

I wish that I could tell them that confidence and value don’t come from the way you look. It’s the type of person that you are, the type of person that you want to portray being and the values that you partake with and then also share with other people as well. It’s got nothing to do with the way that you look.

Sam:

The studies tell us that if you struggled with body image as a kid, or as a teenager, you’re far more likely to carry those feelings with you into adulthood. And then you’re far more at risk of developing more serious body image or eating issues.

Danni Rowlands:

Appearance and image are still such important, important things in our society. And that’s not helping people to feel comfortable or happy in their bodies.

Sam:

You might recognise that voice. We’ve had her on the podcast before, that’s Danni Rowlands from Butterfly.

Danni:

I’m the national manager of Prevention Services at the Butterfly Foundation.

Sam:

Danni’s career is dedicated to helping prevent those feelings of body dissatisfaction early on, reducing the chance of them becoming more serious cases of body dissatisfaction or even eating disorders later in life.

Danni:

It unfortunately starting younger and younger. We’re hearing from primary school aged children and families of primary school aged children that they’re hearing that they’re body shaming themselves, but also other young people. There’s obviously restrictive eating as a way to manage all of that. So we are seeing it earlier and earlier, and there’s lots of factors that play into why that happens.

Danni:

Social media is a big game changer in the body image space. And that of course happens earlier and earlier, but also just, I don’t know…Everyone seems to be pushing older thinking and more mature thinking and behaviors earlier and earlier.

Sam:

I’ve mentioned parents and the role that they play in building resilience in their children, but parents aren’t the only adults that can have a significant role in the child’s upbringing. In fact, in many communities, other family members and close friends can be just as important in terms of role modeling.

Nyibeny Naam:

My name is Nyibeny Naam, I’m 30 years old. I came to Australia when I was nine and grew up mainly on the mid north coast; Coffs Harbour. When I first ever became conscious of the notion of body image, and I guess the first moment I can really pinpoint was probably around the age of 10. So, we’d been in Australia for about a year at this point. And by the time we came here, we weren’t really sort of aware of the differences in nutrition and the kind of foods they’re eating here. Our weight really fluctuated really quickly. And at the same time, sort of adjusting to a new country, adjusting to a new environment, meant that having to learn a whole new language and learn a whole new way in terms of how society operates. Now, when we came to Coffs Harbour, our family was the only African family for the first two years there.

Nyibeny:

And so the kinds of bodies that I saw didn’t really look like mine or my siblings. And if you can imagine, Coffs Harbour is a beach town. So, the kind of in look was tall, tan, lean, blonde. All attributes were most likely we’re never going to meet in its entirety. I could meet lean, but I couldn’t do blonde. I’m a dark-skinned African girl and not having your own body image reflected in society that you see, it’s not something that you think would be detrimental as a child, but looking back on it, all the media that I consumed from Neighbours, to Home and Away, to Dolly magazines, essentially reaffirmed that my body is not what you would call Australian.

Nyibeny:

And that really kind of did a number on myself and my sisters, I think more so, because especially going through that puberty phase, you’re starting to like boys and all of this, and to constantly have this reinforced that you are not what’s considered the norm or attractive, just really started wearing on our self-esteem.

Nyibeny:

One of the messages that really kind of stuck out, and this is more to looking at it from sort of a media portrayal in society was, when I did see my body reflected in media, it was largely through things like music. Rap music or international modeling or sport. And so it kind of really sent home that there was only three separate types of ways to be a black girl. You either were in a music, shaking your butt, or walking on a Victoria Secret’s modeling campaign. Both which are very wide views of what it means to be attractive or normal.

Danni:

We also need to keep challenging the objectification and self-objectification of people. I will say people now, when I was younger was absolutely more around females, but as time has progressed, I think we now say definitely with males as well. And so we need to make clear that this is a non-gendered issue and also start to really build protective factors, particularly in young people. We need them to be strong with their social media literacy skills and media literacy skills and manage the resilience and body resilience so that when they’re in these tough times, that they’re not taking out stressors and discomfort or uncomfortable emotions out on their body and the way that they look.

Danni:

We absolutely need to dismantle this toxic diet culture that infiltrates everywhere.

Anne Smith:

My name is Anne. I live in Adelaide. I have a partner and two beautiful children. Grace is three years old and Aiya is almost one. I love being a mom. My lived in experience goes back about 15 years. I was in year nine when I really started struggling with body image issues. Yeah, that’s sort of where it all began.

Anne:

I was at an all girls school and then I went to a high school and there were boys there. And I think that threw me quite a fair bit. And that’s when things sort of went downhill and body dissatisfaction was probably the biggest thing for me and comparison as well. Yeah, it was sort of a downward spiral from there.

Sam:

So when we say that these feelings of body dissatisfaction carry forward into adulthood, Anne’s first eating disorder behavior appeared when she was 15 and the most recent one when she was 30. But becoming a parent was the catalyst that motivated her to make some real changes.

Anne:

It wasn’t until I really realized that, “Hang on a second, I’m still doing that to relieve stress.” And that’s when I realized that I really needed to just stop it for good. And it took being pregnant to actually make that decision. So even though I’d already become a yoga teacher and I’d already run retreats and I had done so much self-development and been through 10 years of therapy. Yeah, there was still those times where I did it like every couple of months, I just allow myself to do it.

Anne:

It was still sort of there. So, becoming pregnant, yeah, it was sort of sad for me to make that full change, but it took growing another life for me to, yeah, realize how important mine was.

Sam:

So what do you wish you could tell your younger self? And I guess now, your kids? Knowing what you know now.

Anne:

It sounds cliche, but just that you’re beautiful, inside and out. And the world is at your feet. I think that’s the biggest thing. I don’t grieve the time lost anymore because I’ve accepted it as this is my whole person and this is who I am. But it is a lot of time spent with things now that I realized didn’t really matter. And if I had of just accepted and loved my whole self, then yeah, I don’t know what I would have done. I think I would have done a lot more in that time. I feel like I did waste a lot of time worrying about things that really didn’t matter. So there is some sadness around that. And I guess that’s why now I live my life to the absolute fullest.

Sam:

Like all of the guests in this episode, Anne really doesn’t want to pass her issues on her kids and see them make the same mistakes that she did.

Sam:

It’s difficult to talk about how we can protect our kids against the problems that we developed without acknowledging that there’s one massive game changer. And that is social media. Well, we used to be able to turn off the TV or just close the magazine. Nowadays, these messages that kids are bombarded with are so hard to escape.

Nicki:

It’s a very image focused environment. And people are often looking for compliments and compliment based on their appearance. If people can focus on their body functionality, rather than on the aesthetics, it can make a big difference. They can really appreciate their bodies for what their bodies can do rather than how they look. And when it’s a forum such as social media, we’re seeking compliments, but people are actually opening themselves up to criticism as well. And we know that body bullying is a real risk factor for the development of negative body image.

Nicki:

And we also know that a lot of people with eating disorders will report that being body bullied was a catalyst for the development of an eating disorder. We know that from the people who we’ve discussed lived experiences with, and we know that from research. So it’s very important to discourage young people from being negative about another person’s appearance, because that kind of bullying or teasing can have a really lasting impact on young people.

Sam:

It’s nice to think that we have some sort of control over how our kids end up feeling about their bodies and whether or not they end up developing the problems that we did. But as we’re hearing, so much of this is out of our hands. So, let’s go back to our lived experience guests and see how they’re trying to negotiate this minefield with their kids.

Kelly:

My eldest daughter is a dancer. And we talk about the fitness industry being body conscious, so is that particular industry as well. So, I’m very, very mindful about some of the messages that she sees and hears and things as well. If there’s any, any sniff whatsoever of any type of discussion or messaging, we talk about it very, very heavily.

Kelly:

Now on saying that, unfortunately, she’s had to see her dad go through it. And that is killer. No child should ever go through this, by the way, for one thing. No person should ever go through this, but no child should ever see their parent go through this and go through the anguish and the mental and the physical aspects of an eating disorder.

Sam:

Nobody wants to follow their parents’ mistakes. Do you think that is something that’s strengthened her in the end?

Kelly:

A hundred percent, a hundred percent. Oh man, I’ll go more than a hundred percent. So the point where she navigates her friend’s discussions and talks to her friends and talks to her school and does research papers through high school. For the last few years, every research paper, every drama thing, every dance that she can do and put some sort of interpretation on, it’s all about eating disorders, it’s all about body image. It’s all about those types of relationships.

Anne:

I’m deeply passionate about accepting my children for their whole self and encouraging them to be completely, uniquely who they are. I believe that without that expression, that full expression of self, that’s when these problems start to begin to rise. And maybe, yeah, I really struggled with identity with who I was as a person, probably because of the cultural factors and religion and time and place of life and school. And it’s hard to find yourself in a system. So, I’m very, very passionate about allowing my children to live their life for them and giving them as many opportunities as I can to explore whatever interests they might have. And as soon as they show that they’re not interested in something, I just roll with the flow of them in their life. Yeah, what we don’t express, we repress. And that’s what I did for so long.

Nyibeny:

With two of my nieces, they’re only 14 days apart. And since they were little, they kind of set off on this path of this one is reaching this milestone at this stage, and this one is that. But as they’ve hit the nine-year-old stage now, their bodies are very different to each other. And you can see how that sort of coming into play with their interactions with each other. And my goal, and same with my sister’s, is to not let them buy into that competitive notion of my body’s bigger or my body’s better or this, but just to sort of say, “Look, my body is my body and it functions as it needs to.” And to move them away from that mindset of that inherently existing as a girl or a woman is about competing on simply your body. That you can learn to value what you can offer society as a whole person.

Nyibeny:

And it’s very difficult because having this conversation with you as an adult, obviously, it’s easier to articulate this in abstract terms, but with younger kids, you have to be able to give consistent messages in a digestible fashion. And one that doesn’t obscure what the issue is. So when one of my nieces told me that she didn’t like me calling the other one skinny because in her mind, ergo, it meant she was fat, I had to sit down and think, “Okay, how do we navigate this language?” We can’t just remove these words, but we need to remove the sting of these words. Why does she think skinnier means better? Why does she think that by implication she’s fat, if we call somebody else skinny?

Nyibeny:

So we sat down and we talked about descriptive words. We said, words are used for conveying message. And once we had this discussion about language as something that you use to convey messages and to connect with people, the one who felt hurt by this word skinny, was able to kind of take some of that sting out of it. And I think it really is just about communicating at the level that children can understand, but also taking into account their feelings and the messages that they’re absorbing from society. And making sure you’re checking in with them constantly, just to know, especially in the pivotal period of time, where they are growing, that they’re going to see messages that sometimes do make them feel bad, but to give them the space to talk about this and not to dismiss them.

Sam:

Kids are great imitators. And whether you like it or not, parents, teachers, and other adults who are in their life play an important role in helping to prevent eating disorders and to promote body image acceptance in young people. And Danni Rowlands spends a whole lot of time in schools for her prevention services work, but she stresses that prevention takes a whole of community approach.

Danni:

We have worked for parents because, of course, what happens in the home is really important and can support young people. But also the home environment is where parents might start to see if there’s something that’s developing that is of concern. And so we do have that early intervention component as well. And then of course we work with professionals. So whether that’s educators, teachers, coaches, youth workers, school nurses, and wellbeing teams, basically so that we can inform them on what body image is and isn’t, and where it is concerning and what they can do if they are worried about a young person.

Danni:

But in all of those sessions, one of the things that we really try to do is empower our audiences to role model. Role model positive behaviors, positive language, because obviously when people can see it as we’d like it to be, it’s much easier to adopt and take on board.

Sam:

And another really important factor, according to our experts, is encouraging parents to help children know when to look for help and then where to go when they need it.

Nicki:

What we encourage is stigma reduction and encouragement of health seeking. So, we really want people to talk about it because a lot of people are in the same situation, but because they’re not talking about it, because there are barriers to seeking treatment, seeking help, people don’t realize. And the more we can talk about it, and the more we can encourage people to seek help, the better their prognosis can be.

Sam:

To find out more about Butterfly’s prevention programs, go to butterfly.org.au. You’ll also be able to find out about support groups and support programs that are available in your area. And the website also has a whole lot of body image and prevention resources.

Sam:

If you or someone you know needs help right now, they can call the Butterfly National Helpline on 1800-ED-Hope. It’s 1800 334 673. And if you prefer to chat online, you can do that at butterfly.org.au as well, or email support@butterfly.org.au.

Sam:

And before we go, I want to thank you for being part of our loyal audience. It really means a lot to us that so many people keep jumping in and joining our audience. And we love hearing your feedback. If you’ve got anything that you’d like to tell us, or if you want to suggest a topic that you’d like us to cover, drop a line to Butterfly’s amazing communications team, you can get them at C-O-M-M-S, that’s comms@butterfly.org.au.

Sam:

The Butterfly podcast, is an Ikin Media Production for the Butterfly Foundation. It’s written, produced, edited, and hosted by me, Sam Ikin, with the assistance of Camilla Becket and Kate Mulray. The theme music is from Cody Martin with additional music from Breakmaster Cylinder.

Sam:

And a massive thank you to all of our guests, Nicki Isaacs, Danni Rowlands, Nyibeny Naam, Kelly Griffin and Anne Smith. If you know someone who you think could benefit from this podcast, please share it with them. You’ll find it wherever you get podcasts.