Tim Abbott

Girls and body image

Half of secondary school girls considering cosmetic surgery, Guides study finds.

This new study for Girl Guides found that 46 per cent of girls aged 11 to 16, and 50 per cent of girls aged 16 to 21 would consider cosmetic surgery to make themselves thinner or prettier. And 42 per cent of girls aged 11 to 16 were controlling to excess what they eat to stay slim.

What was particularly concerning was that the impact of negative body image seemed to be happening even before puberty. While 60 per cent of 7 to 9-year-old girls said that they were very happy with their appearance, the figure dropped to 27 per cent for 10 and 11-year-old girls. Which suggests that by the time we first meet them in secondary school at Year 7, about three quarters of girls are already uncomfortable about the way they look.

Just to explain the apparent mild fixation with body image on this blog, we're working on a new project for schools that addresses this area. More news soon.

5 Deeply De-Christian Doctrines Meme

Joe tagged me with this so I thought I ought to play ball and join in.

List 5 doctrines that are taught within the Christian church that you believe to be deeply de-Christian.

I will interpret 'taught' in it's broad sense. Some of these things may not be preached from the pulpit, but are often taught by what we do. Also, I'm pretty much on the same page as Joe with the five things he listed so the pressure is on to find another five.

1. The longer / louder your prayer the more likely it is that God will hear it.

2. When Jesus said 'make disciples'; he had in mind a teaching series delivered by an expert

3. That holiness is more about what I do than what God does

4.The body of Christ looks like a (our?) church rather than the church (with all her faults, diversity and character)

5. That running a business is less spiritual than running a church / Christian organisation

Most of the people I might have tagged seem to be on a blog holiday however, should they wish to join in, for perhaps a more youth work tinted view I tag Ian, Sarah and Alice.

Dunbar's number, or The Monkeysphere

Seth Godin on Dunbar's number.

There's a limit to the number of people with whom we can effectively maintain a relationship and that number is a maximum of about 150. Interesting that the gathering of Jesus' followers after his ascension numbered about 120.

There's a brilliant exposition of this theory by David Wong, What is the monkeysphere? (some-rude-words alert) which roots it in everyday life, even if you don't entirely agree with all of David's conclusions.

Something happens when we get more than 150 people together - we lose touch. Think about the churches you know. What do the ones with up to about 120 people feel like compared with the ones that have 180 or more? Interesting!

Creativity and Creeds

"The Christian movement which ditches the creeds and covenants in favor of total experimentation finds itself looking less and less Christian. The movement which favors creeds at the expense of innovation finds itself theologically correct yet culturally irrelevant. However movements which are able to find the perfect point of tension between creativity and creeds have the ability to become something truly special."

Creativity and Creeds by Mark Sayers

Pop Connection

Last night I went with a few friends to Thundersley near Southend to see Ally heading up a Pop Connection concert. Ally was formerly based here in Colchester with schools band "Collective".

Pop Connection is a project that gives primary school children the opportunity to sing in a choir and to perform in a concert. A trained singer/coach spends a week in the school teaching the children seven songs and preparing them for the concert. On the Thursday a sound engineer/producer does a recording of the children which is then mixed with the backing tracks to produce a mini album that is exclusive to that school.

The concert takes place the following week and is hosted by a local church. After the concert the mini album, which include karaoke tracks, is on sale.

Pop Connection gives children a wonderful experience, makes a serious contribution to schools' music curriculum and community links and gives churches a totally user friendly way of connecting people with the work they're doing. Highly recommended.

ClickToFlash

ClickToFlash is a small plug-in for the Safari browser on the Mac that blocks Flash animations from loading. This not only speeds up web page loading times but also cuts down the work your computer processor and graphics chip have to do running Flash.

You can still view Flash whenever you want just by clicking on the graphic that displays in its place. You can also choose to enable Flash for whole web sites if required.

YouTube clips will play in H.264 video format rather than Flash which is not only better quality but requires less processor power. You can still switch to watching YouTube clips in Flash if you want.

I've installed ClickToFlash and so far it works perfectly. My MB Pro doesn't heat up like it used to when viewing multiple Flash enabled web pages and I can now ignore all sorts of annoying ads. Neat!

Flashblock performs a similar function for Firefox on all platforms.

Body Image - 2

Estimates vary, but most surveys indicate that between 25% and 40% of teenager girls of school age would consider cosmetic plastic surgery.

Gok Wan, he of TV programme "how to look good naked", has a petition running to get body confidence included in the school PSHE curriculum. All he's asking is one hour per year. How much of a difference this will make may be open to question, but it can't do any harm and, linked as it is to a popular TV programme, could at least be another credible voice in the general social muttering about media, body image and the impact all this has on teenage girls.

The programme web page  has a bit more info, links and a comments section which is illuminating in itself and could be useful source material for discussion on the subject with young people.

The No. 10 petition is here.

Body Image - 1

By now you've probably seen this image and the story behind it circulating on the web.

It is, allegedly, a Ralph Lauren ad featuring a ridiculously photoshopped model, Fillippa Hamilton. (Here she is on the Ralph Lauren web site looking relatively normal) As the image started circulating Lauren started issuing DMCA takedown notices to offenders (will they be calling here I wonder?)

Boing Boing has a full rundown of events.

Going after companies who posted the image inevitably invokes the Streisand Effect whereby an attempt to censor stimulates the multiplication of the information across the internet. Lauren subsequently admitted that they were indeed responsible for the "poor imaging and retouching" and that they have "addressed the problem".

There are a whole lot of unanswered questions, like, Who did the original artwork? and, Who signed off this image for publication? Surely no fashion house with the resources of RL would allow an image like this out by mistake. And no one seems to have been able to come up with the original ad in print or on the web. All of which makes me wonder what's really going on...


UPDATE, 15 Oct
Well, it seems the original of this ad was a display poster for a Japanese department store. But no matter, Fillippa Hamilton has now been sacked by Ralph Lauren "as a result of her inability to meet the obligations under her contract with us" which apparently means she was too fat. Hamilton is a UK size 8. More details from The Times

Sunday influences

Today...

This made me angry
The woman who is standing up to feral thugs

This made me sad
Niki Made Her Choice and, Apparently, So Did We

This inspired me
How to think, what to think, and thinking outside the box
(though note the story is fictional)

And this made me smile
Dave, exploring the meaning of sabbath in a whole new way (and I'm slightly jealous!)

Rounded the day off by joining with friends at Pub Church, but as this is still something of an underground movement I can't say any more than that!

Sand animation

This is quite amazing.

H/T: Gareth