Advocate for responsible body image media messages!
The Media Watchdog program was created to improve media messages about size, weight and beauty. The program brings students, educators, health professionals, parents, eating disorders sufferers, and concerned consumers together to encourage companies and advertisers to send healthy media messages regarding body size and shape.
While the media is working to embrace more realistic images, there is still more to do to ensure that accurate and consistent messages about weight and weight loss are being communicated. Click here to read a brief paper on recommendations for reshaping the conversation on health and weight.
Bearing the responsibility of changing the media means recognizing and celebrating advertisements that send healthy body image messages, as well as taking the time to express our concerns about advertisements that send negative body image messages or promote unrealistic ideals.
How the Media Watchdog program works.
Media Watchdogs are volunteers across the country who advocate for responsible, healthy messaging in various forms of media, commending or critiquing advertisements or programs that positively or negatively impact body image and self-concept. Watchdogs pay attention to TV, radio, newspaper, magazine and internet ads or programs and send notices of ads or programs worthy of praise or protest to the National Eating Disorders Association office, and alert other Watchdogs of potential actions through the Media Watchdogs Facebook Group.
Instructions for submitting your notification about a praise-worthy or protest-worthy advertisement/media message and process for mobilizing fellow Watchdogs:
1) Fill out this short form, which will notify NEDA staff.
2) NEDA staff and volunteer Watchdogs review the submissions, to determine if NEDA will take direct action by contacting the company or write a sample letter on your behalf, for use by you and other Watchdogs. (Due to the volume of media action requests, NEDA cannot respond to all items, and we encourage Watchdogs to use the interactive Facebook Group to chat, let others know about actions items, and get new updates on action items from NEDA.)
3) You will recieve email notification within one week if your submission is selected for direct action by NEDA or a NEDA-written sample letter to the company for use by you and your fellow Watchdogs.
4) Once the letter is ready, we'll post it on the Facebook group and this Media Watchdogs program homepage.
5) NEDA staff, via Facebook and this homepage, will invite your fellow watchdogs to join you by using the sample letter provided.
It is NEDA’s hope that by reaching out to the leaders of corporations we can educate, inform and build relationships that will lead to lasting changes in advertising. When we write a letter from NEDA, it will be on behalf of all Media Watchdogs which may include an opportunity for you to sign on! Your name and signature may be necessary to express our praise or protest, depending on the submission selected.
The Media Watchdog program includes participation from the National Eating Disorders Association staff, the Board of Directors, and over 1,000 volunteer Media Watchdogs – just like you – who have joined this interactive program e-campaign.
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What to look for in the media.
Aspects of positive ads worthy of praise:
- Ads that display a variety of natural body shapes and sizes.
- Ads that attribute similar positive characteristics to heavy and thin people of diverse identity groups (age, race, ethnicity, class, gender expression, sexual orientation, ability).
- Ads that incorporate images of people eating balanced meals, including desserts, to fuel one’s body as part of a healthy lifestyle.
- Ads that include women in situations which imply equal social power and an understanding that women are more than objects of beauty.
Aspects of negative ads worthy of protest:
- Ads that include an emaciated model or a model whose features have been computer-enhanced.
- Ads that include a large person whose attributes or character are portrayed negatively.
- Ads that glamorize images of people on diets, or ads that present people relying on food as a way to respond to stress, frustration, or loneliness.
Click here for more handouts and tools from the Media Education Foundation
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Facebook Group: Become an Active Media Watchdog!
To help you connect with other Media Watchdogs across the nation, we have created a Facebook group. You can chat with fellow Media Watchdogs, post potential action items for others to support, get updates from NEDA on topics/ads/programs/products our contituents are concerned or excited about, discuss topics related to the media, and more.
Facebook Group.
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NEDA is currently calling for Children's Healthcare of Atlanta (CHOA) to pull their recent ads that target and shame overweight children. Their recent “Strong 4 Life” anti-obesity ad campaign features a series of videos and print ads with kids talking about being “fat”—their word, not ours. A tagline on one of those ads reads, “It’s no fun getting picked on because you’re fat. Just ask Jaden.” The implicit message being that kids who are bullied for being overweight should end their torment by losing weight-- a message that is dangerous and could lead to the development of an eating disorder.
Please use this sample letter to write Children's Healthcare of Atlanta and tell them to pull these dangerous and shaming ads, or click here to email CHOA.
Bare Escentuals
Join us in thanking Bare Escentuals for their ad campaign "Forces of Beauty," which celebrates women for who they are and what they do, not just how they look. Click here for a sample letter to send.
GAP "Always Skinny" Jeans
Join your fellow Media Watchdogs in urging GAP to reconsider their excessively thin in-store mannequins modeling the GAP "Always Skinny" jeans.
Please use this sample letter to write GAP Chairman and CEO, Glenn Murphy, informing him of the potentially negative impact these images will have on girls and women.
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