Alesha Dixon documentary last night - anyone else?

I didn't see it but I really like Alesha.

I think it is terrifying that so many young people look up to these people as being perfect and beautiful and don't realise how false so much of it is. I remember being about 7 or 8 and thinking I was huge and grossly overweight. Looking back however I wasn't at all but I've been like this for as long as I can remember and find it really sad that even more children will be going the same way. I also think it's veyr confusing for (younger/easily influenced) people who see x in the paper getting a hard time for being so skinny and then in again the next week for being spotted with a bit of a bloated stomach and being accused of letting themselves go.

i watched it and liked it.

one thing that really hit home though was what the woman Alesha met in the V&A said. Alesha had commented about how she has "flaws" and the woman said that she wasn't "her with flaws", she was just "her". and i thought to myself, that's true. i'm conscious of pointing out what i don't like about my body, and i just realised, that i'm not me "with flaws" - this is what i look like. has anyone ever been flawless?

i also found it really sad when those wee girls where pointing out what they didn't like about themselves. especially the girl who said she didn't like being brown. that was so sad. also the girl who said a size 8 was perfect, and thought a size 14 was too big. gobsmacked.

and i felt sorry for the girl who got the boob op. she's only 18 ffs - she looked so very painfully thin when getting ready for the operation. i couldn't believe her parents were paying for it. poor girl.

Gosh that is really sad. I was very consious of my birth mark as a child. So much so I tried to scrape the skin off. I have a birth mark, about 7cms long, kind of oval shaped on the back of my right calf. As a child I was bullied for 'pooing myself' or 'not washing' This was all in primary school. As I grew older I realised how individual I am and now it doesn't bother me at all.

My youngest sd has a few issues with her body. She is a skinny little thing but thinks she is fat. We constantly reassure her she isn't fat, nor skinny, just normal. She is beautiful though and we are forever telling her so. She has the most amazing eyes and when we compliment her it makes her smile so much it melts your heart. On the other hand her sister has some issues with learning maths and people have started to call her thicko or stupid. She confided in me how upset it makes her feel as she really tries.

I missed it, really wanted to see it aswell. I'll try and catch it on iplayer.

I stopped buying magazines like Heat and others like it when they were doing the double page spreads of celebs in their bikini's with all the pics titled with things like bloated, fat, too skinny etc. It once had a picture of Martine McCutcheon with the teeny tiniest bit of a belly and they had said she had a big belly! She's prob one of the most healthiest looking celebs around with a very realistic body.

Ah, bum flaps, I wanted to see that. What channel was it Lily? If it's the Beeb I'll Iplayer it.

I whole heartedly support a more realistic representation of women in magazines. I wonder when air brushing started? What did magazines do prior to this time? Did women feel just as inadequate when they looked at pictures of Twiggy, etc pre-air brushing? Or is it just in our make up to feel inadequate, and therefore would things improve if airbrushing was abolished?

I do have a slight issue with this whole Dove campaign. Are they using the term 'real' women when what they actually mean is fat, I wonder. Are women who are size 8, 10, 12 not real then? If so, what are we? ? I laugh but it is mildly irritating and ever so slightly patronising, I think.

I read an interview with Kate thingy from GMTV and she said that she's seen pictures of herself in 1 magazine with 'Kate puts on the pounds' and then the same picture in a different mag with 'Kate too thin'. Madness!

I'm so worried that if I ever have children I'll pass my insecurities on and/or they'd pick them up form magazines anyway. It's tough enough being a child and growing up as it is. I can rememeber getting weighed in primary school and our teacher called out everyones weights. I was a pound heavier than my friend and absolutely heartbroken. I wish I was only a pound heavier than her now ?

BBC3, Janna.

And I do think Dove is MORE representative of real body shapes, I have seen more generous figures in the same ad as slimmer ladies, I'm sure (because I remember comparing myself to both)

Grazia's reply to Dixon consisted of "our cover is the main selling tool, are you mental?" I'm paraphrasing of course.

Good on The Mirror, who finally agreed. The finished article looked great. Scarily, they did a side-by-side of what they would have retouched, and while it would have been a little more polished (skin etc), it would also have been scarily thin ("dodgy" armpit removed)

LTP, that bit with the children hit me a bit hard too - that little girl who said her teeth weren't white enough and the girl who didn't like her brown skin, I had a tear in my eye. I told MrSun I didn't want MissSun to grow up, when you ask her if she's beautiful she always replies 'yes'. MrSun has an unrealistic idea that she'll always be confident and feel like that, sadly, when she starts school and her peers pick up things at home/tv whatever and start saying other things to her she'll probably be like the rest of them, not confident in her own skin. I find that the saddest of all, they're so young to be feeling like that.

I couldn't believe the little girl who said size 14 was big. How does she even know what size 14 is?

I didn't see it but it sounds really interesting - does anyone know if it will be on again?

Damn, i wanted to watch this to, will keep a look out for a repeat

I didn't watch it but it sounds very sad.

From what I've seen of it, the Dove campaign is using women of a range of body sizes rather than just "fat" birds.

But I suspect it comes across as "the fat birds campaign" because in comparison to most models women are curvier regardless of their BMI or clothes size.

That's not to say women who are 5ft 10 and size 8 without bulges where you'd expect hips or breasts can't be within the "normal" body size range but they certainly aren't the statistical norm...

I know all societies have definitions of beauty and attractiveness but it seems to me that ours is the only one whose definitions of beauty and attractiveness are artificial and unachieveable for the majority of women. I can't believe it's a healthy atmosphere for anyone to grow up in.

Didn't catch it, but absolutely agree that women should be kinder to each other. I can't abide Heat et al for their constant nit-picking and bitching about famous women's bodies. And it's always struck me that we are not only bombarded with images of impossible perfection on the covers of women's magazines, but men's too.

In fact I could get quite angry about it all, so I'm going to step away from this thread before I suggest that we start a Hitched campaign for real beauty and start calling you all "sisters".

I didn't see the show but did read an article about this model yesterday who has been labelled fat in the brazillian media...

http://www.theimproper.com/Template_Article.aspx?IssueId=4&ArticleId=1781

Fat???? On which planet?

I would much rather see her modelling, than the skeleton that is pictured further down the page.

What is truely disgusting is that said skeleton was clearly in mid prep for some show. How can the fashion industry refute claims that they encourage extreme dieting and negative body image when they allow girls on their catwalks looking like that? She quite clearly looks to be at death's door - there were major campaigns in the 80's for people living in Ethiopia that looked healthier! - yet because she's a model it's deemed acceptable and is positively encouraged to appear so emaciated. The fact that she (and her sister) died of complications from sustained lack of food seems to be merely a hazard of the job. Disgraceful!

One of the things Susie Orbach brought up on the documentary was that within 3 years of introducing TV on Fiji, there was a glut of bulimics. These women, who has previously been quite unaware of these "perfect" people, suddenly began using extreme measures to live up the riduculous ideals of how women should look in the modern age.

I didn’t actually see the picture below (was just trying to find a picture of her and her “back fat” really) but I am very much hoping that’s been altered. I can’t believe anyone could stand up at that weight.

Maybe I've not seen enough of their ads to full their full range of women. I suppose what I'm thinking is that as a size 10/12 person but very 'real' (saggy boobs, stretch marks, et al) I bet they wouldn't dare use me ? I'd cause people to turn over. 'Real' doesn't, and shouldn't equal 'fat'.

I agree - real doesn't equal fat. I think I was trying (badly) to say that women who are by no means fat by their BMI come across as fat now because of our media-manipulated expectation of what women should look like on screen/paper.

I think the Dove campaigns have done "focuses" on women who are curvy (not necessarily fat) rather than keep to women with "stick insect" body shapes. and women who don't have hair and skin like teenagers (ie, they've shown grey hair and wrinkles). I've not seen that much advertising for them but it's stuck in my head a bit so they must be doing something different!

I don't fancy my saggy tummy and boobs have much chance of selling anything other than a strict diet but I don't think you need to be "air brushed" to be attractive.