Kids and adults asked what body part they'd change

A bunch of kids were asked what one thing they’d change about their body. And then? A group of adults were asked the same question.

The result is ridiculously cute and completely disheartening in equal measure.

While one of the groups looked confused, shrugged and finally declared they’d add an imaginative, superhero-like body part like fairy wings, the other group’s replies revealed a whole lot of self-loathing.

And — you guessed it — the group that asked for mermaid tails, wings and cheetah legs were the kids, while it was adults who obsessed over “problems” like their skin, their stretch marks, their eyes and the puffiness of their face.

The video is a sad reminder of how we’re not born hating our bodies — but all too often, are socialised into comparing ourselves to a narrow, unrealistic body image ideals by the time we reach adulthood.

A few more sad facts about body image, gleaned from Mamamia’s first body image survey:

Eighty per cent of us are unhappy with the way we look.

Sixty per cent think negatively about our appearance at least once a day.

And a whopping 90 percent say that the way we feel about our body has stopped us from doing something in the past 12 months; whether that be going to the beach, having sex or getting our picture taken.

As women, we are bombarded with digitally altered images of airbrushed perfection every day.

We see them in catalogues, in magazines, on billboards, on the television and on the internet.

Almost every picture of a woman’s body that we see has been nipped, tucked, smoothed, cropped and stretched beyond recognition.

The result? We think we’re somehow supposed to live up to these impossibly thin, impossibly pretty images.

But you know what the operative word is here?

Impossible.

Because the reality is that none of us will ever reach the crazy societal bar that has been set.

The only way you can look like that is with the aid of a computer.

At Mamamia we don’t put up with it.

We’ve always drawn attention to the fact that women are being sold a shit deal.

A fake ‘reality’. A lie.

And we have always called for there to be more diversity and realism about the way women’s faces and bodies are portrayed.

We call out Photoshop fails when we see them.

We refuse to engage in the seemingly endless ‘post baby body’ commentary.

We expose marketing that makes women feel rubbish about themselves in order to sell a product.

And we never airbrush or digitally enhance photos on this website that we have created ourselves.

Readers, with your help we can start a new conversation about the female body.

We can create a new “normal”.

One that is diverse...

and interesting...

and REAL.

One that talks about the female body in terms of what it can DO and not what it looks like.

One that we can use to re-educate our daughters...

our sons...

our friends...

our family...

and THE WORLD about what real women’s bodies look like.

There is just one rule for our definition of ‘real’:

No digital alteration.

This is about you. As you are.

What do you think of the video? What would your kids say to this question, compared to your own response?

Tags: body-image , kids , video

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