How the Internet is amplifying poor body image
It's Love Your Body Week*. If you don't love your body, you're in good company. The crowd-funded documentary Embrace , in cinemas last month, told us that 70 per cent of girls don't much love their bodies. Forty-five per cent of women of healthy weight think they're overweight. Australians, most of them women, spend $1 million a day on diets. They spend $1 billion a year on cosmetic surgery. The film's message is that while we are more than our bodies, our bodies have become how we measure ourselves. But the film doesn't spend much time on the role of digital technology. Exposure to pornography and the objectification of girls starts young these days, twisted by exposure to violent online games such as Grand Theft Auto that are now played by boys as young as 10. A parent in Embrace speaks for many of us when she says she feels as though her daughter is drowning in a sea of media that reinforces unattainable and dangerous expectations. "I'm in ...