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Encouraging positive body image

Rachel Lattimore"When you look in the mirror, see a person, not an object that has to be changed."

That's the advice from Rachel Lattimore, youth support co-ordinator for the Eating Awareness Team based in central Christchurch.

"When girls and guys look in the mirror they look at a part of their body. Whenever you focus on one thing, it becomes bigger. It's kind of like the idea that there's a spider in the room and you're afraid of spiders the spider will become the whole focus of the room."

Rachel's team, which has five part-time staff, offers information, one-to-one counselling, and help for people with body image issues and eating disorders, and their families.

Go GIRLS

One of Rachel's projects is Go GIRLS. (Giving Our Girls Information and Resources for Lasting Self-esteem).

"It's not a group for people with eating disorders. It's a group for girls who want to prevent eating disorders - socially-minded girls."

The group is part political and part social, and the young people choose what they will do to help make other young people feel better about themselves.

"Go Girls is really about making a difference. There's peer awareness campaigns, or they'll write to advertisers, whatever they want."

The 2007 project was a big one - the girls making a DVD. Hollie Smith donated songs, and a production company helped with the final product.

"They do their own personal work around body image. A lot of it is looking at messages around body image and bodies, and the media and how teenagers are represented."

The group also helps promote Love Your Body Day, on October 17.

Become a media critic

Teens should become media critics Rachel says.
"They're the biggest target market, but they're the most under- represented. They've got a lot of power; people in society are just disempowering you. You can use that, you can change it."

The majority of Rachel's work is one-to-one with clients and educating families about eating disorders and body image issues.

""I work with 12 to 25-year-olds and their families. I run an education group for parents but I don't do support."

This helps maintain confidentiality between Rachel and the client, but parents and families are "hugely involved" in body imge issues, she says.
"As soon as you've got an eating disorder in the house it affects the whole house. And by the time someone becomes aware there's an eating disorder, everybody's revolving around the eating disorder. It's affected the whole family; it's become a problem, but it's been there six months, a year, two years..."

Disorders 'insidious'

Eating disorders are 'insidious' she says, often beginning around a guise of healthy eating. From a youth perspective eating disorders are about identity and the idea that you have to look perfect.
"There's a lot of perfectionistic tendencies around anorexia. We teach a lot of problem solving, a lot of anxiety-reducing techniques - identifying feelings and learning to deal with them."

Eating disorders can also make people think in very "black and white"
terms, which are often negative, she says.

"We do a lot of things to get them to look at their thinking, to unwind themselves and look for good things. Often they have a story that says they are bad."

"If you believe that you are not okay you are going to look for anything in the world that reinforces that your not okay. So the media is really helpful there, because the media [advertisers] constantly tells us we're not okay - that in some way their product will make us feel better.

"Their intention is not to make us feel crap, their intention is to sell their products. But the by-product of selling it to us (in that way)is that it can make some people feel worse."

"I like getting my hair done, I like make up, I like pretty clothes, but I don't buy them because it makes me feel better, I buy them because I'm a bit of a girly-girl. That advertising doesn't make me feel bad. But in the past, when I did have low self-esteem, it did - I felt like I should have looked like that. That's where a lot of girls and guys are coming from: 'I'm supposed to look like that and because I don't in some way I'm failing'."

Image issues take time to fix

Teens are often still figuring out who they are and who they want to be, she says, but there are no quick answers to this question.
"It looks easy and it's achievable and they want to feel good now.
People don't want to hear that these things could take months or years."

The centre does no advertising, but is a busy place, with Rachel seeing dozens of clients each month.

Anyone over 12 can access the service, Rachel says, and there is a focus on getting both mental and physical health right, which can be a long process.

"Regular eating is a behaviour that equals wellness physically. When your not eating regularly it affects your brain chemistry. The psychological side is really where the issue starts.

"You can get your weight right and be eating well but still have obsessive thoughts, very low self-esteem and awful body image and all those things... that's why working with families is important."

"It's really hard on families. It's really about grounding everybody and getting a plan in place."