A social enterprise providing education and information to protect and enhance the mental health of young people
"It's not surprising parents think the worst thing that could happen to their child is to grow up fat. It's not. It's far more damaging for a child to grow up feeling ashamed and unloved." Photo: Stocksy "My daughter is fat, isn't it my job to tell her?" a well-meaning father wrote to [...]
PHOTO: A man shows off his body art, including eyeball tattoos, at a tattoo festival in Sao Paulo, Brazil, in 2014. (Flickr: Augusto dos Santos) The Baird Government has been criticised for recently regulating the practice of eyeball tattooing, as the New South Wales Opposition calls for a ban on the procedure. The [...]
Victoria's Secret's new ad has sparked a petition calling for it be amended. Photo: Frances Black For a company that has built its fortune from hoisting up breasts and covering derrieres, Victoria's Secret seems to not be very keen on the actual bodies of the majority of women. Their distorted body image is [...]
Removed: Miranda Kerr on the cover of Harper's Bazaar magazine. Photo: Harper's Bazaar Coles supermarkets has pulled thousands of copies of Harper's Bazaar Australia magazine featuring a nude Miranda Kerr on the cover because the store's executives deemed it "inappropriate". However, the retail giant has been unable to elaborate on what was the catalyst for [...]
Is makeup akin to wearing a burqa? Photo: galleryhip A reader by the name of Lady Diazepam made an interesting comment in response to a blog I wrote last month about the stigma of obesity at work. She wrote about a time when she was languishing at the bottom of the office hierarchy. But as [...]
Mission Australia Each year we encourage Australians aged 15-19 to ‘speak up’ about the issues that really concern them through Australia’s largest online youth survey. In 2015 we had nearly 19,000 respondents. We strive for an accurate representation of our nation’s youth. Among those who take part are young people who are in [...]
gettyimages Most of the anorexia patients Dr. Joanna Steinglass sees in the inpatient eating-disorders unit at the New York State Psychiatric Institute have been to treatment before. While in the hospital or a residential treatment center, they generally gained weight and began to eat a wider variety of foods. But after they left, [...]
Professor Susan Sawyer spoke at the 2015 Melbourne Mental Health and Wellbeing of Young People seminar. Her presentation on Obesity and Body Image was acclaimed by hundreds of teachers, counsellors and social workers who attended the seminar. Her talk was recorded and can be viewed below.
Talking to your child about food can be daunting. Children are becoming more and more conscious of their bodies, people’s comments, and what and how they eat at an increasingly young age. They look to adult role models in their life to help them build a healthy relationship with food, but many of us, through [...]
Eating disorders have a significant and underestimated impact on Australian society. They occur in individuals of any gender, age, cultural or socioeconomic background. While estimates of the incidence of eating disorders vary between countries and studies, there is consensus that eating disorders, disordered eating and body image issues affect approximately 9% of the population and [...]
