Get REAL! about Media and Body Image
A Digital Media Literacy Toolkit
In our media saturated culture, it is hard to escape the onslaught of messages about our bodies
– messages that can make us believe that reshaping our bodies to attain a certain “ideal” can
bring us happiness, success, and popularity. Instead these messages can affect our body image
and self-esteem, and, in some cases, lead to unhealthy eating and exercise behaviors, even
eating disorders.
To help counteract media’s potential influence on normalizing unrealistic body standards,
students from California State University, Northridge (CSUN) partnered with the National Eating
Disorders Association on a civic engagement project to create a Digital Media Literacy Toolkit.
CSUN students from the Department of Journalism collaborated with peer educators from Joint
Advocates on Disordered Eating (JADE) at University Counseling Services to research, develop,
and design a toolkit to educate, engage, and empower their friends, family members,
classmates, and other students at high schools, colleges and universities.
The Get REAL! Toolkit features interactive activities to think critically about the body image
messages we see, hear and read in the digital media culture every day. Some of these
messages are created by the media industry, advertisers, and celebrities who perpetuate
unhealthy retouched body images in photos and products they endorse. Others we create
ourselves -- along with our friends and people just like us – when we email, text, tweet, post,
pin, like, and share online.
We invite you to Get REAL! and use the toolkit to test your media literacy skills, find out what
your digital footprint tells about your body image, and let people know where you stand on
media’s picture-perfect body images. Take the body positive pledge to move beyond the
cultural ideal body standard for muscular men and thin women, and give a social media shout
to support celebrities who speak out against retouched, picture-perfect photos of themselves.
Let’s use our media literacy skills to advocate for change and shift the spotlight from limited
and artificial body ideals to more diverse and authentic body shapes and sizes that reinforce
healthy lifestyles.
Lynn Grefe
President and CEO
National Eating Disorders Association
Bobbie Eisenstock, Ph.D.
Faculty Mentor, Get REAL! Project
California State University, Northridge