A Dangerous Game: The Media and Body Image

February 20th-26th is National Eating Disorders Awareness Week.  Eating disorders are a sensitive topic, making it too easily and too often skipped in conversations about health and wellness.  Overlooked are discussions with young about body image, among whom this crisis runs rampant.  The media still swoons, after many years, over the “perfect” size 0 body.  So I’d like to ask: Where are the role models for young women?  Why is this destructive media attention to unattainable thinness allowed to continue when there are 10 million females and 1 million males suffering from disordered eating in the United States—an illness related to the highest mortality rate of any mental health disorder?

As a nurse and a nurse practitioner student, it has become my role as a provider to intervene when I see a child nearing the clinical label of “overweight”.  I must speak to the family about healthy food choices and exercise, but is a fine line I walk when approaching my patients and their families.  I think, “Could I create an eating disorder in this young person?  How can I best be sensitive to their needs?”  Similarly, when I see a young girl, painfully underweight with little self-confidence, how can I also approach her with the same sensitivity?  How can I effectively battle the images young people are assaulted with daily in movies, TV, and magazines in the exam room?

From my own experience as a Division I collegiate cross country and track and field athlete, I know the physical and emotional toll body image issues took on my teammates and myself.  The secrecy of this unspoken “thing” was apparent in our nightly rituals, as we distance runners sat in the dining hall together, after two or more hours of grueling practice, eating little and comparing meal choices, silently, to those of our teammates.  We had severely low BMIs and most of us no longer got our period–both indications of malnutrition and unhealthy bodyweight.

I know we weren’t the only ones coping.  I watched female gymnasts, field hockey and basketball players, as well as my friends in the dorm struggle, too.  But where were our coaches, health care providers and teachers?  Where were our positive role models?  No one talked about it.  Through our misery, we continually received reinforcement that our emaciated bodies were “beautiful” and “healthy” via images of the professional athletes we aspired to be like, and through media portrayal of the “ideal” woman.  So, the bones we were seeing in the mirror were beautiful?

Women in college are not the only ones at risk.   In 2009, Ralph Lauren made national news for firing a size 4 model for being “too fat” after they had severely altered her image in their campaign (see above).  This is where the National Organization for Women and the National Eating Disorders Association come in with their “Let’s Talk about it Campaign”.  Visitors to the site are encouraged to speak out against media representation of unrealistic bodies bombarding the eyes and minds of us all.  On the website, you can share your story and feelings or be inspired by videos of others who have struggled with their own self-image and come out stronger on the other side.

Do you have your own story of a struggle with body image?

February 20th-26th is National Eating Disorders Awareness

Happy Valentine (Not So Much) from President Obama

Charmaine Ruddock, director of Bronx Health REACH, is a coalition of 50 community and faith-based organizations, funded by the Centers for Disease Control’s REACH 2010 Initiative to address racial and ethnic health disparities.

Happy Valentine (Not So Much) from President Obama

A week ago on Valentine’s Day REACH communities across the country received the kind of Valentine’s Day gift that had no love behind it.  Included in the President’s proposed budget for FY12 was the defunding of the 12 year REACH program. REACH which stands for Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health is CDC’s cornerstone effort to address the stubborn and persistent gap between the health outcomes of whites and those of people of color be they Asian/Pacific Islanders, Blacks, Hispanics, Alaska Natives and American Indians.  The genius of this effort is that in 1999 CDC took the unprecedented approach that the communities most affected by disparities should take the lead in addressing their disparities.  By all accounts this was a major departure in public health.  Heretofore, health disparities was something studied and researched with papers written and academic treatises produced but not much done in terms of addressing them in the local context where there were occurring and definitely not with a community based participatory approach. Enter REACH.  In 1999, under the leadership of the then head of CDC, Dr.David Saatcher grants were made to 36 communities.  Their mandate was to convene coalitions made up of people who work, worship, and live in the community –residents, healthcare providers, academic institutions, faith-based organizations, public health departments, elected officials, business people etc. The Coalitions first task was to put together a community action plan to address the prevailing disparity and its underlying contributing factors in their community.  This was no knight in shining armor riding in on a white horse telling ‘those people’ what their communities should be doing. Instead, communities were given the resources to figure out what they needed to do and then go about doing it.

Charmaine Ruddock, director of Bronx Health REACH, is a coalition of 50 community and faith-based organizations, funded by the Centers for Disease Control’s REACH 2010 Initiative to address racial and ethnic health disparities.

Happy Valentine (Not So Much) from President Obama

A week ago on Valentine’s Day REACH communities across the country received the kind of Valentine’s Day gift that had no love behind it.  Included in the President’s proposed budget for FY12 was the defunding of the 12 year REACH program. REACH which stands for Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health is CDC’s cornerstone effort to address the stubborn and persistent gap between the health outcomes of whites and those of people of color be they Asian/Pacific Islanders, Blacks, Hispanics, Alaska Natives and American Indians.  The genius of this effort is that in 1999 CDC took the unprecedented approach that the communities most affected by disparities should take the lead in addressing their disparities.  By all accounts this was a major departure in public health.  Heretofore, health disparities was something studied and researched with papers written and academic treatises produced but not much done in terms of addressing them in the local context where there were occurring and definitely not with a community based participatory approach. Enter REACH.  In 1999, under the leadership of the then head of CDC, Dr.David Saatcher grants were made to 36 communities.  Their mandate was to convene coalitions made up of people who work, worship, and live in the community –residents, healthcare providers, academic institutions, faith-based organizations, public health departments, elected officials, business people etc. The Coalitions first task was to put together a community action plan to address the prevailing disparity and its underlying contributing factors in their community.  This was no knight in shining armor riding in on a white horse telling ‘those people’ what their communities should be doing. Instead, communities were given the resources to figure out what they needed to do and then go about doing it.

Mama Grizzlies, “Big” Bosom question the IRS & First Lady on breastfeeding

Barbara Glickstein is the Co-director of CHMP.

The Center for Health, Media and Policy (CHMP) recognizes that the public relies on the media to support decision making about their health – whether it’s promoting healthy behaviors or supporting healthy public policies. We are guided in our efforts by a stellar team including CHMP’s National Advisory Council member, Gary Schwitzer, who is publisher of the website HealthNewsReview.org, where reviewers grade daily health news reporting by major U.S. news organizations for “accuracy, balance and completeness”. The public’s ability to sift through the volume of information available is daunting and growing every day – I know because I find it daunting myself and check this site regularly. I recommend you do too.

So this week, when the IRS and First Lady Obama stepped forward with actions and words supporting breastfeeding, I followed the media coverage unfold and think it presents a good case study underscoring how critical CHMP’s work is.

In Danielle Friedman’s Daily Beast article, “Michelle Obama has officially endorsed breastfeeding, and her Tea Party critics are slamming her for it. But even as they score political points, are they helping her cause?” she reports on the range of reactions the media reported on nationally to the IRS announcement that breast pumps can be paid for with pre-tax Flexible Spending Accounts or deducted as a medical expense if her end-of-year total out-of-pocket medical costs add up to more than 7.5 percent of her income.

Included in her article she highlighted something new to me and I wonder if this is new news for you too – the Affordable Care Act passed last year included a  provision that  – “the health-care bill requires some employers to give nursing mothers break time and a designated place to pump.”

She reminds her readers that in January “the surgeon general’s office issued a “Call to Action to Support Breastfeeding,” outlining steps families, clinicians, and employers can take.”

Ms. Friedman asks if the response by those who oppose these actions, which she quotes in her article, have inadvertently helped spread a positive message on breastfeeding or hurt the cause. What’s your take?

Barbara Glickstein is the Co-director of CHMP. [caption