Because of practices like the above, many women (and men!) are left striving for unachievable body shapes, and spend their lives miserable with their bodies. Beyond Chocolate drew my attention to the below, which is open for signing until 23rd December 2009 (Sign Here.):

“A proposal for a new compulsory hour per year in the PSHE curriculum that will deal with the problems teenagers face when it comes to their appearance. The lesson will attempt to tackle confidence issues early so they don’t have a chance to develop, so young people in the UK will not be held back by their lack of self esteem and self belief. The lesson content will be created by a team of experts and psychologists and will include preliminarily:

• talks from outside experts
• making teens aware of the techniques magazines and fashion houses employ to make models/celebs look unrealistically perfect
• challenges to help the teens not to obsess so much about appearance and not to use as much make-up/fake tan;
• tips for body confidence collated by psychologists

This is an incredibly important campaign, as nothing is being done in our schools to counter-act the incredible swelling in the UK of media exposure and its consequent negative influence on teenage self esteem. Your backing would be greatly appreciated.”

Sign Here.