Outcomes

Students demonstrate:

• an awareness of the media's role in dictating standards of attractiveness to society.
• an understanding of how media images can affect their own feelings towards their own bodies and towards others.
• an understanding of how unattainable these standards can be for much of the population.

Materials & Preparation 

• Review the teaching backgrounders Body Size Introduction and Some Myths About Obesity
• Prior to class, have students bring in magazines
• Photocopy Story Starter

The Lesson

Discussion

Begin the class by explaining that there are billions of people living on the earth, each one unique in their colour, size, features and personality. Each one of us has traits that make us unique. Some of us are small, some of us are big; some are fair, some are dark; some are girls, some are boys. Tell students to look around the room at their classmates - look at all the differences between just the people in this one room!

The people that we see in the media represent only a small percentage of the different types of people that live in the real world, and this is a problem. When we see the same type of people each time we turn on our TVs or open a magazine or when we are told in advertisements that it is better to look like one type of person than another, it can make us dissatisfied with the way that we look - with our body image. 

• What makes a body healthy?  (Balanced diet, exercise, lots of sleep etc.)
• Do you have to be thin to be healthy?
• How might wanting to look like the people we see on television and in magazines be a negative thing?  (People who desperately want to be thin may develop eating disorders, exercise obsessively, or turn to smoking or drugs as a way to control appetite. They may develop low self esteem and become depressed if they can't change the way they look.)

Think about the people that you see on TV and in advertisements in North America. 

• What are some words that you would use to describe the women?
• What are some words that you would use to describe the men?
• What is the message that these images tell us about how people should look?
• Think of your own family and friends - do they look like the people you see in the media?

The truth is that very few of us look like the people you see in the media. In fact, if you met a celebrity in real life, he or she probably wouldn't  look anything like their media image. This is because the images of people that we see in ads or on TV are carefully constructed - photographs are touched up to make them look more attractive, or they are filmed using lots of make-up and special lighting. They even have special software that can alter a picture of someone and give them longer legs, or make even make them thinner. But despite this, many of us are influenced by these images, both in our feelings towards others and in our feelings about ourselves.

Activities

Activity One

Pretend that you are an alien travelling through space. One day you come across a deserted space station from earth. In the space station you find all sorts of magazines (those astronauts got pretty bored just floating through space!).  As you've never seen a human before, this is very exciting - so you put together a report on humans based on the magazines that you've found.

In small groups, go through the magazines that you've brought to class. From the images that you see in those magazines, create a description of what a "typical" earthling looks like based on what you've found.  (Students might like to create a composite man and a composite woman using bits and pieces of the people they've found in various ads and photos.)  As well as physically describing earthlings, what would our aliens say about people based on these magazines (i.e. humans are always smiling and happy, humans live on beaches, humans wear cool clothes, etc.).

Present your reports to the class.

Activity Two  

• Review the Story Starter with students. (Teachers can distribute this directly to students or provide verbal prompts and work through the story section by section.)
• After students have finished their stories, discuss how they felt in their "alien worlds." Try to transfer their alien experience to the pressures within our own world to conform to a certain look.

Evaluation