Australian
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Teacher’s notes

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This clip shows teenage girls and women discussing weight, dieting and body image. Presenter Rachael Oakes-Ash recalls her own experiences of being weighed at the beginning of each term in high school in voice-over to a re-creation of the scene. Oakes-Ash is shown talking to a group of teenage girls, most of whom admit to having dieted at some period in their lives, and who link the desire to lose weight to images in the media as well as to peer pressure. Oakes-Ash also talks to a mother and daughter about dieting and the daughter claims that she has to maintain a certain weight to remain employed by an acting agency.

Educational value points

• According to research published by Women’s Health Victoria in 2005, about 76 per cent of Australian high school girls wanted to be thinner, even though most were of normal or below-normal weight for their height; additionally, less than a quarter of young Australian women were satisfied with their weight. A 2005 study by Flinders University revealed that girls as young as 6 years old were worried about their body image, and 47 per cent said that they wanted to be slimmer.

• Research has found that there is a link between the media and a negative body image. A study conducted by Flinders University in 2002 found that after viewing advertisements promoting an 'impossibly thin ideal’, teenage girls felt less confident, angrier and more dissatisfied with their weight and appearance. However, while all early adolescent girls (13–15 years old) had a negative reaction, among mid-adolescent girls (15–17 years old) only those who spent a lot of time on their appearance were negatively affected by the advertisements.

• Women’s Health Victoria points out that in our society being slim is considered the ideal for women and that women experience sociocultural pressure to achieve this ideal. Research published in the Journal of Social Psychology in 1997 found that women’s body satisfaction was influenced by their exposure to the thin ideal presented in fashion magazines and as major consumers of media, girls may be susceptible to this pressure, particularly as many regard models and television stars as role models.

• A 1998 study conducted by Dr Jeanie Sheffield from the School of Psychology at the University of Queensland found that nearly one-third of the girls surveyed had been on a diet at some time in an attempt to lose weight. The study surveyed about 2,000 young people between the ages of 10 and 19 about their eating habits and body image and found that girls are three times more likely than boys to diet.

• Girls nominate peer group pressure as one of the reasons for dieting and may compare their own bodies to those of others. Sheffield’s research indicates that girls may diet because they are teased about their size or shape; however, their dissatisfaction with their bodies is also a result of sociocultural attitudes promoted by the media about appearance.

• Evidence indicates that men and boys are becoming increasingly concerned about body image. According to the Victorian Government website Better Health Channel, about one in four Australian men in the healthy weight range believe themselves to be fat, while 17 per cent of men are on a weight-loss diet at any time. The media increasingly presents the male ideal as lean and muscular, and this may be related to an increased consciousness among men about body image.

• A poor body image can affect self-esteem, confidence, personality development and interpersonal attractiveness, and may lead to eating disorders including anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa and other diet disorders. According to the Victorian Government’s Better Health Channel website, it is estimated that about one in every 100 adolescent girls in Australia will develop anorexia nervosa, while about five in 100 girls will develop bulimia.

• Dieting or depriving the body of food leads to hunger and can cause a preoccupation with food and eating disorders. Dieting or inadequate intake of food can make people feel tired, irritable, depressed and anxious, and experience difficulty in concentrating. An inadequate nutritional intake can be particularly dangerous for adolescents, whose bodies are still developing. Low-kilojoule diets teach the body to get by with less, so dieters are likely to put on weight once they end the diet, and two out of every 100 dieters develop an eating disorder as a result of dieting.

This clip starts approximately 16 minutes into the documentary.

Peering in through windowed doors to a school hall with a fisheye lens. Inside the hall are a line of teenage girls in uniform. They move down the line to a teacher who is about to weigh them. We see flashes of the scales, nervous hands and pensive faces, until finally we are outside the hall again as Rachael Oakes-Ash narrates.
Rachael At the beginning of term in my first year of high school, the girls in my year would march into the gym, strip off any excess clothing and stand on the regulation school scales. The teachers then read our weights aloud.
Teacher You have developed over the holidays, haven’t you. 43. Is that nail polish you have on? 78?! Take that off before the end of P.E. 73 and a half. Have you got regulation underpants on under that? 61. That’s down.
Rachael I used to think the kilos would go on my record for life. I imagined for the right amount of money you could have your records altered to hide the truth. I always tried to be sick on weight day.
Teacher All right. That’s it girls. Locker rooms and change.

Rachel Oakes-Ash is sitting in a classroom talking casually with a group of teenage girls.
Rachael OK, hands up here who’s been on a diet. So pretty much everyone?
Girls Yeah.
Rachael Did any of them work?
Girl 1 I don’t know, I can’t remember.
Girl 2 Sort of.
Girl 3 I think I just gave up after a while.
Rachael Sorry? What happened to you?
Girl 3 I just give up after a while.
Rachael Why?
Girl 3 Because I need to eat.
Rachael That’s pretty fair.
Girl 4 What you can do is just chew the food and you get the taste but you don’t get the calories.
Rachael Have you lost weight doing that? How much weight have you lost?
Girl 4 Oh, like six kilos.
Rachael You’re all healthy girls, you know. Why do you want to lose weight?
Girl 5 Like, all models and stuff are like fully really skinny and the same with people on TV.
Girl 6 There’s lots of peer pressure as well about looking good and stuff, yeah.
Girl 5 And all the clothes that are designed for our age pretty much are for the skinny people, straight up and down.
Girl 7 I once walked into a shop. I said ‘Oh hi there. How are you?’ Had a nice chat and picked out a nice skirt and I said ‘Oh, have you got this in a size 14 please?’ ‘Sorry?’ ‘Have you got it in a larger size?’ ‘No, sorry. We don’t stock that large.’ And I just walked out of the shop and I was mortified.
Rachael How did you feel? And did you consider going on a diet after that?
Girl 7 I did. I marched straight on home. I looked up in the phone book – Weight Watchers – and I went on 1, 2, 3.

Rachael conducts a vox pop on the streets of Bondi outside a sweets shop with a lady and her teenage daughter.
Lady on the street But I’m constantly telling my daughter here, ‘Oh, you’ve got to watch what you eat and that’.
Rachael So how does that make you feel when your mum’s constantly telling you you have to watch what you eat.
Girl on street Well, I have to because I’m actually part of an acting agency so I’ve got to watch every step of my move. Like, every day is just water, water, salads. Like, you can’t get too carried away. You’ve got to watch it extremely.

In the classroom.
Girl 6 My mum was on Weight Watchers but she doesn’t do it anymore, but lots of mum’s friends do Weight Watchers.

On the street in Bondi.
Rachael So you can’t be more than 50 kg or 56 kg otherwise you lose your acting contract?
Girl on street Yeah.

In the classroom.
Rachael So where do you think the pressure comes from? Does it come from your friends or your mother?
Girl 6 Not my mum, but my friends.
Girls Friends. Magazines. TV. Media.
Girl 6 A lot of media pressure because all the people on TV – they’re gorgeous.