Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Your Call 091108 How is our obession with beauty affecting our daughters?

Why is our culture obsessed with the beauty of young women -- and increasingly sexualizing girls? On the next Your Call, we will have a conversation with Darryl Roberts, director of the documentary film America the Beautiful which examines pressures facing women and long time author and social theorist Jean Kilbourne, on her latest book So Sexy So Soon: The New Sexualized Childhood and What Parents Can Do to Protect Their Kids as well as young women who are working to address these issues locally. How do the girls in your life deal with the pressure to seek beauty at all costs? It's Your Call with Rose Aguilar and you.

Guests:
Jean Kilbourne, social theorist and author of many books, most recently, So Sexy So Soon: The New Sexualized Childhood and What Parents Can Do to Protect Their Kids

Darryl Roberts, screenwriter and filmmaker of recent documentary America the Beautiful which looks at the fashion, advertising and cosmetics industries

Jennifer Berger, Executive Director of San Francisco's About-Face which works to equip women and girls with tools to understand and resist harmful media that affects their self-esteem and body image.

Click to Listen: How is our obession with beauty affecting our daughters?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great show! I grew up in the late fifties and sixties. Even then, I felt I had to be thin and beautiful to be o.k. I spent my adolescents on and off diets, and developed an eating disorder. My parents encouraged dieting and never gave me any complements on my looks.

It was great to hear parents who are counteracting all the messages kids get. Today, even at 53, and in spite of the fact that I intellectually believe that looks don't matter, I feel inadequate because I'm not beautiful and don't have a great, young, body. (I'm actually too thin.) And what kids have to deal with today, is even worse. I take heart, that there are parents with more awareness today.

Anonymous said...

Great show! I grew up in the late fifties and sixties. Even then, I felt I had to be thin and beautiful to be o.k. I spent my adolescents on and off diets, and developed an eating disorder. My parents encouraged dieting and never gave me any complements on my looks.

It was great to hear parents who are counteracting all the messages kids get. Today, even at 53, and in spite of the fact that I intellectually believe that looks don't matter, I feel inadequate because I'm not beautiful and don't have a great, young, body. (I'm actually too thin.) And what kids have to deal with today, is even worse. I take heart, that there are parents with more awareness today.