The press have been banging on again about someone's weight, will they ever stop? This time they are attacking Princess Beatrice for apparently being overweight. Well she doesn't look it to me.

Her mother, Fergie, has been fighting back at these claims, arguing that she is a healthy size 10, and is quite rightly questioning the Medias involvement in all of this, asking them to take more responsibility for their actions.

Beatrice herself is said to have commented 'will they be happy if I get anorexia because then they would write about that?' Exactly. When will the media stop? And when will it be ok to not look like skin and bones just to please them?

Peaches Geldof has been strutting her stuff on the catwalk dressed in Agent Provocateur, looking, well, weird. Surely Agent Provocateur is meant to 'be sexy' not something that is worn by a bemused 19 year old who just looks like she is toddling along in fancy dress.
Fair enough, it was for charity but the drug-taking party girl seems far too young to be acting like this, having only just escaped Police charges over a drug scandal as well as being nicknamed Dyson the hoover for her alleged cocaine snorting. Just another celebrity kid that will no doubt end up in rehab.

This week 16 year old Georgia May Jagger stepped in out a Herve Leger bandage dress whilst attending the SATC premier. She may be the latest Jagger kid to sign up to a modelling agency, but at 16 should she really be wearing this? The fashionable body conscious look is seen on many celebs including Victoria Beckham and Rhianna, but it is far too tight and revealing to be seen on the body of a sixteen year old. This is just another example of the over-sexualisation of teenagers; she has been in the spotlight most of her life and with the constriction of the fashion and music industry, no doubt has grown up beyond her years.

Everything about this girl screams grown-up, yet knowing she is a 16 year old it is worrying to think where her childhood has gone. At 16 she is obviously far too image conscious, and no doubt the modelling industry will only cause this to continue. In this case it is obvious that it is her environment and parental influences that have caused her to grow up so fast and it will be the media that pushes it forward to the masses.

On the subject of Dove's campign, an most interesting study into the implications of these ideals and social pressures is the campaign and global survey funded by Dove, Beyond Stereotypes: Rebuilding the Foundations of Beauty Beliefs, 2005, following the success of their earlier campaign in 2004 The Real Truth about Beauty in which it was revealed that 54% of girls age 6-17 are aware of a need to be physically attractive. This leads me to ask are they not only aware of the need to be attractive or driven by this need? This may seem like an obvious revelation in our contemporary culture, but it leads me to ask if children as young as six years old are realising this need for attractiveness, where is their childhood going? Surely at this age, appearance should be the least of their worries.


The latest campaign in 2005, aims to make a ‘change in the ways in which girls and women talk about beauty and body image’. There was clear evidence that girl’s mothers and their views have a strong influence over the way girls see themselves which in turn leads to insecurities, and it was also documented that 76% of girls age 15-17 in Great Britain feel that it is harder to personally feel beautiful when confronted with today’s beauty ideals. This idea that family play an important role into teenage development is well documented, and it is evident that certain negative family views can be projected onto an individual, usually going through puberty, leading to higher insecurities and an overly self-conscious outlook. This is an interesting factor when you think about how this would contrast with the views young girls learn off their peers and the media.

http://www.campaignforrealbeauty.co.uk/

Dove Real Beauty

Air Brushed Nation

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Celebrity Culture

In recent years the celebrity has become a dominant part of contemporary culture, and often seen as a construction of our cultural identity. The introduction of gossip magazines and tabloid newspapers such as Heat and the Sun are examples of texts which are based around celebrity culture and are seen to ‘dumb down’ this subject bring the image of the celebrity to our attention.

It is this fascination with celebrities and their lives which is intriguing, and in particular the fascination with the image of the celebrity which has been described as losing its grounding in substance or reality. The notion that female celebrities are the construction of the female ideal, which puts them in a place that we can only strive and dream to be in has been replaced by the idea that we CAN and SHOULD be like them and has been brought to our attention through the media.

The images of celebrities cannot be avoided in everyday life and this only brings these ideals closer to us, making the image of the celebrity seem achievable and realistic, when in actual fact these images are manipulated, airbrushed and have money thrown at them to create these illusions.


There are always exceptions to the rules, for instance in this case we can think about current celebrities such as Beth Ditto the lead singer of the Gossip, who can be seen as the forerunner for ‘larger ladies’, weighing 15 stone 14, in the music industry, even being placed at the top of the NME list for ‘The Coolest Person in Rock’. She has filled a gap in the market for a realistic view of our culture; walking around the streets it is clearly evident that we do not all conform to the idealised skinny image of the celebrity, however whether she has yet to alter adolescents perceptions of what they should be like and their perceptions of themselves remains to be seen.