| A Current Affair For the text of our live FAQ with Denise Greenaway, body image psychologist, talking about the Mirror Mirror program, self-esteem, and eating disorders, click here. It may come as a shock to anyone who doesn't have a pre-teenage daughter, but girls as young as nine and 10 are hung up about their looks and body image. On the end of jibes and insults from boys in their classes, they often develop eating disorders at these precocious ages. Psychologist Denise Greenaway spent several years treating the victims of eating disorders, and after seeing so many women and girls on the verge of death, she decided it was time to tackle the problem at itssource. Denise sat down and wrote a program through which she hoped that victims suffering from negative body image could address the psychological issues and avoid the consequences to the victim's physical health. Denise called her program Mirror Mirror. According to Denise, young women feel fat and heavy because they carry around with them all the negative messages they receive from society and their peers. Supporters of Mirror Mirror say there's a need for this program in every school because all young women suffer from a lack of confidence or self-esteem. The Mirror Mirror program helps young women deal with the unrealistic images with which they are confronted every day. Denise sees the messages spread by magazines as being of particular danger to impressionable minds. ........."Australians buy more magazines than any other country. I see women who read fashion magazines while they reach for a Mars Bar. They are getting double messages to be thin and be able to throw a chocolate cake together"..... Denise has conducted workshops indozens of primary and high schools, and is very encouraged by the results, as are teachers and parents. Their biggest role models are their mothers and their teachers, but Denise says that many are too busy to notice a young girl's need for help, and often women who are over 40 find it difficult to believe that these are real problems at all. Mirror Mirror has been in operation for almost three years, and now has the backing of business, government, women's and community-based groups and the medical community. And the objective? According to Denise, it's simply ...."to make young girls happy to be who they are"..... |
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