Kiss My Assets Column at Elegant Plus Magazine

Creating  Powerful Girls

by Dr. Robyn Silverman

It’s that time again. The diet commercials are in full force which can only mean two things; bathing suit season is right around the corner and nationwide body image is getting ready to plummet. Many adults worry that between all the talk about buff bodies and diet plans, girls will slip into a self esteem slump. How can we help girls to elevate their self worth without needing to go on and on about loving your body?

Confidence and self worth, both positive and negative, can influence how a person feels, thinks, and acts throughout childhood and adulthood. Those who have strong feelings of confidence and high self worth will feel more positive about themselves, think more positively, and act and behave more positively than those who have low self confidence and low self worth. In addition, girls with strong feelings of confidence and high self worth will like who they see in the mirror each day and know that they are worthy of love.

Girls are looking to the women in their lives to show them the ropes. Whether you are a parent, big sister, teacher, or friend of a girl, you can inspire girls to become confident in themselves by following these tips:

Help them to realize her unique gifts:

Everyone is talented or special in some way. While we are not all little Einsteins or mini- Monets, everyone has something to offer. Let her know that you appreciate their gifts. Allow her to show you what she can do—without doing it for her! She will get better with time. Hang up artwork, projects, or awards that exhibit these gifts so that your child knows that you value her special talents. Creating a Wall of Fame will allow her to see all of her accomplishments.

Be present:

When a girl is sharing new knowledge or new gifts, pay attention! This is the time to shut off the TV and the cell phone. When you do this, she will know that she is important and worthy of your undivided attention.

Don’t over-praise:

You can let her know that she is special without over-praising. Not everything she does is worthy of the Wall of Fame. She can’t always be super, perfect and fantastic. When you praise a girl when praise is due, she will know you are being genuine and that she has really done a good job.

Be a RAD role model (Reliable, Accountable, and Dependable):

While you may not always be available when she needs you, create a pattern of responsiveness and responsibility. Be on time, be reliable, and follow through with what you say you are going to do. When you are a RAD role model, she will know that she can count on you and that she is worthy of your follow through. She will also learn what it means to be a positive role model to others.

Praise effort:

It may be easy to focus on a high mark on a paper or a gold medal, but it’s really important to praise effort instead of results. When a girl knows that she has worked hard and that hard work is praised, she will likely keep putting in the effort to make the accomplishment. When we are results driven, failure can stop us in our tracks and make us give up for fear of failing once again.

When we take the time to instill confidence in girls, they become a little bit stronger everyday. Then they can call upon that strength when they are feeling low or bombarded with negative, body-bashing messages. The strength of positive mentors carries on even when you’re not around!

Until next time (and the next 5 tips)!

____________

About the Author

Dr. Robyn J.A. Silverman is a Massachusetts-based child and adolescent development specialist and body image expert whose programs and services are used worldwide. She is also a success coach for parents and educators, who are looking to achieve their goals, improve their lives or improve the lives of others. She is a writer and professional speaker who presents to PTAs, schools, businesses and organizations that focus on children or families. Interested in doing some coaching with Dr. Robyn or having Dr. Robyn present a seminar at your school or business? Go to DrRobynSilverman.com for more information.

Popularity: 14% [?]

 By Jeanne Rust, Phd, Guest Author for Elegant Plus Magazine

What can we do to begin to combat the messages we get from the media including magazines and television?

How can we make a difference in the world and begin to teach people to respect who we are as a person on the inside rather than what we look like on the outside?

When am I going to say, This is enough! I am going to refuse to pay attention to what other people think when they judge how I look. I am going to refuse to give away my power to a society that worships a handful of super models who use airbrushed photos!

The PBS website has a marvelous article called Perfect Illusions. The beginning paragraph states, One of the ways we can protect our self-esteem and body image from the often narrow definitions of beauty and acceptability is to become a critical viewer of the messages we are bombarded with each day. Media messages about body shape affect the way we feel about our bodies and ourselves only if we let them! When we recognize and analyze the media messages that influence us, we remember that the definitions of beauty and success do not have to define our self-image or potential. We must use our creative minds to view all media with a discriminating eye. All media images and messages are things that are made up. They are not reflections of reality. Advertisements are created to do one thing: convince you to buy or support a specific product or service. We see what advertisers want us to see to convince us to buy a specific product or service. Advertisers often will make up an emotional experience that looks like reality. Just because they think their approach will work with you, it does not mean it has to work with you! As individuals we decide how we want to experience media messages. We can choose whether we want to think or believe the message. We can use a filter that protects our self-esteem and body image. (I like to put on my super-dooper protective bubble!)

1. When you see an ad or hear a message that makes you feel bad about yourself, your body, or others by promoting only thin, formulaic body ideals, talk back to the TV and advertiser by writing a letter.

2. Make a list of companies who consistently send negative body image messages and make a conscious effort to avoid buying their products.

3. Write them a letter explaining why you are using your buying power to protest their messages.

4. Get your friends and/or students at your school or work to join you. There is power in a grass-roots movement.

5. You can tear out the ads you find offensive and send them to the advertiser with the message: I do not want them.

6. Consumers have much more influence with corporations than we realize. Corporations are so competitive with each other in todays world as they fight to get our attention. They have to be flexible and responsive so just a few people raising their voices can make a huge difference. We can look upon this as seed planting. Our seeds will sprout and grow. it might take some time but we can make a beginning in changing our culture!

We can be strong and change the world in which we live!

——————————

Jeanne Rust, PhD is the CEO and Founder of Mirasol, a treatment program for women and teens with anorexia, bulimia, obesity, and binge eating disorder. Her treatment philosophy is integrative combining the best of the medical model of treatment with the most effective alternative ones. Learn more about eating disorders at http://www.mirasol.net

Reprinted with Peremission from: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jeanne_Rust,_Phd
http://EzineArticles.com/?6-Ways-to-Combat-the-Medias-Body-Image-Message&id=827128

Popularity: 20% [?]

Meet Pat Ballard:
Queen of Rubenesque Romances

by Lisa Klobucar, Regular Contributor to Elegant Plus Magazine

Elegant Plus  is pleased to have author Pat Ballard share some of her work and wisdom with us. Pat has written such novels as, Abigail’s Revenge and A Worthy Heir.  Her central female characters are BBW’s.  Pat, who is the self proclaimed, “Queen of Rubenesque Romances” writes witty, romantic tales of men and women who struggle and fall in love. If you are looking for a time out, these are novels that are the perfect escape.

EP: In Abigail’s Revenge, the central character, Abigail is a Plus-size woman. You have the male character Desh, describe her rounded, full frame and her beauty, “…don’t ever be ashamed of your beauty. Don’t run from it. You are a beautiful woman.”

Do you feel that larger women tend to shy away from their curves, their beauty over all?

PB: I think, in most cases, it’s very hard for larger women to accept and believe that they can be beautiful. On a daily basis, we’re told that we can’t be beautiful if we aren’t tall, thin and young.

EP: When writing Abigail’s Revenge, did you have someone in mind for the character of Abigail or was she a product of a fertile and active imagination?

PB: Abigail was mostly a product of my imagination. I wrote the prologue of Abigail’s Revenge one day, just “playing around” with a different writing style. Just to prove that I could write in a more “mysterious” voice than I usually do. I liked the prologue, so I sent it to several reading friends and their reaction was very strong. So I decided to tell Abigail’s story.

EP: The characters within Abigail’s Revenge are rather startled to see Abigail’s new larger frame. Yet, Abigail feels good being a larger woman and makes no apologies for her larger voluptuous figure. Do you feel that Plus-size women need to take a stand for themselves and accept who they are size and all?

PB: Abigail knew a lot of hunger in her childhood, so when she was sent to prison and started having regular meals, her body sought and found its natural fullness. So Abigail couldn’t grasp the concept that she should make herself hungry again by dieting just to be skinny like she used to be. And that’s the point I was trying to bring out to my readers. Each of us has our own mold that our bodies fight to maintain. When we diet, 99% of us gain it right back if we aren’t hungry. So, yes, each of us should accept the size we are, look the world in the face and say, “Hello! This is me! I’m not apologizing for who I am. And I’m not changing who I am just because society thinks I should.”

 EP: The lead female characters in, Abigail’s Revenge and A Worthy Heir are Plus-size women who face personal and emotional obstacles by other characters within  the book due to their size. Do you feel that larger women are treated in a similar fashion say within the workplace, their homes, or in general by society overall?

PB: Yes. I use these other characters in my books to bring out the issues that larger women face. I always have the “opposition” character that I use as the mouthpiece of what we hear and have to deal with every day in our society.

EP: Your books have an underlying tone of self-acceptance and even on your website you have, “10 Steps to Loving your Body”.  Do you feel that in today’s thin-centric society it is important for women of any size to wave their self acceptance banners and proclaim, “I like who I am?”

PB: In two of my books, Nobody’s Perfect and A Worthy Heir, my heroines come into the story as self-confident women. There’s a lot of “me” in those heroines. In three of my books, His Brother’s Child, Wanted: One Groom and Abigail’s Revenge, I’ve brought the heroines into the story not quite as confident. The reason I did this is because I wanted to address some of the issues that most of us have had to deal with, or are still dealing with when it comes to self-acceptance. But what I try to accomplish at the end of my books is to have all my heroines, and hopefully the reader, feeling so good about themselves that they want to walk out into the street and shout, “Hey world! I like me just the way I am!” No matter what size they are. My goal is to remind all women… of any and every size that we’re okay just the way we are.

EP: What inspired you to write about larger characters in your novels?  Do you feel that any of your characters are a personal reflection of yourself?

PB: I discovered romance novels when I was a teenager. My favorite author, at the time, was Emily Loring. I loved her books because they weren’t just romance novels. They also had wonderful “life-messages” written into the story. I knew I wanted to write novels, but I wanted my novels to have a message that would make the reader feel better about themselves when they’d finished my book(s). But at the time, and until I was 33 years old, I was busy starving myself, trying to stay thin.

After I stopped dieting and decided to love whatever body that developed from eating healthily and exercising moderately, I realized that there was no representation of us “big girls” in the media, movies, or books. Then, one day, that proverbial light bulb went off over my head… romance novels with Big Beautiful Heroines. I immediately started my first novel with a Big Beautiful Heroine, Nobody’s Perfect.

Actually, I think all my heroines have a little of me in them. After all, they’re seeing the world through my eyes.

EP:  Do you have any words of wisdom or self encouragement you would like to pass onto other women who read your books?

PB: Just like a snowflake, each one of us is unique. Each one of us is a one-of-a-kind work of art. There never has been, nor will  there ever be another individual like us. So we don’t have the right not to love ourselves.__________________________

 In addition to romance novels Pat is working on her first non-fiction book, 10 Steps To Loving Your Body, that should be in print by late spring or early summer. If you would like to know more about Pat Ballard and other works by her, please visit her web site.

Popularity: 19% [?]

They Did It Again: Fashion Magazine Slims Curvy America

by Elegant Plus Magazine

They just can’t seem to help themselves.  Fashion magazines, I mean.  Schizophrenic messaging …… one minute they are celebrating women of all shapes and sizes, the next they are photoshopping [is that even a word?] a celebrity or model to shave off any signs of a real woman’s body.  It’s as if they just can’t reconcile the need to sell magazines which requires bowing to a bit of public pressure and demand for more realistic body image and their own, silly concepts of beauty which only embraces one body type………the thinner the better, baby!

Glamour is the culprit this time. But we all know it could be any of them.  September’s issue features the super-hot star of Ugly Betty, America Ferrera.  Yay!… right?   Well, maybe not.  See the little photoshop elves in the art department, rubber stamped if not outright encouraged or directed by the Editor in Chief, worked a little of their digital diet magic.  And poof!  America is no longer a healthy size, what, 8? (She isn’t plus-size by anyone’s standards but Hollywood or fashion). She is now miraculously somewhere between the coveted fashionably sized 2 to 4 on that glossy magazine cover (see above, left compared to un-slimmed right image).  Maybe they thought we wouldn’t notice.

What’s even funnier is that the tag for their on-line interview with the star states:

 “America Ferrera, star of Ugly Betty, is climbing Hollywood’s A-list—and she’s ignoring the unwritten rule that says stars must be blond and Twizzler-thin.”

Now, did someone forget to watch Ugly Betty?  Or are they just too dumb to get the message?  How about The Devil Wears Prada?  Nope, the irony in that one went flying over their heads too. Hmmm.

I thought maybe Glamour was starting to get it with spreads like this one back in April of 2007:

Plus Model Kailee O’Sullivan in Glamour, April 2007

I guess I was wrong.  America - keep doing your thing. Ugly Betty, Real Women Have Curves, Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants….. they are all inspirational roles compared to the air-brushed ‘perfection’ these fashion magazine tout. And, oh…. take a page from Kate Winslet: raise holy hell over this manipulation of your already highly attractive body.

And for a little education - check out this link on fashion and digital image altering: If Looks Could Kill: Digital Manipulation of Fashion Models

So what do you think? 

Did Glamour go too far?  Or did America need some slimming to become “Hot”?  And even if she did, do you think fashion, magazines and the media play a part in girls’ body image issues and maybe even a role in the rise of eating disorders?  Is it ethical to digitally alter images to make celebrities and models thinner?

Popularity: 24% [?]