Keeping our Girls Media Savvy!

Keeping our Girls Media Savvy!- learn how to start a discussion or think critically about media images!

At our CHICs summer camp this past July we spent a full-day on the topic of body image which included looking at how women and girls are portrayed in the media. This education is important for girls because they are being exposed to sexual messages at increasingly early ages, and the sexual content of children's media is on the rise!

Therefore, we looked at magazines and discussed how women are portrayed in the advertising. Parents here is a critical thinking exercise you can do with your daughters to strike up conversation and help your daughters get media savvy too!

Look through various magazines and focus strictly on the colours used in the ads. Does colour direct your eye to certain words on the page? Are they words like 'sexy', 'slim', 'hot'? Now pay attention to the colour of the models lipstick, clothing or handbag...are they the same colour?

The marketing industry is keen and they know how to get your mind to associate with the words on the magazine pages. Hmmm, if I own this hand bag people will think I am 'hot' too! Pay attention to how you feel about yourself? Would you buy that product? Why? Your answers to these questions may need some thinking.

Critical thinking skills exercises like this one are imperative for a girls healthy development of how she thinks and feels about herself. It helps a young girl make decisions based on informed knowledge vs. media sabotage.

Get your daughter to join us for one of our workshops or Spring Break camp to learn more about healthy body-image and self-esteeem!

CHICs Camp and Workshops - Register before you miss out! We had an overwhelming response to our summer camp (camp was over full!!!!) and I wanted to give parents the heads up to register for CHICs Fall workshops and our Spring Break week-long camp early! See our Workshops section to REGISTER NOW www.esteemedchics.com

Resources for Parents and Teachers - Media Awareness Network! I wanted to draw attention to this CANADIAN resource website for Parents and Teachers. It is full of great information! Check out these links! Stereotyping - Girls and Women and don't forget this link Beauty and Body Image in the Media

CHIC Power,

Angela

CHICs Manifesto Summer Camp 2009

This manifesto was created in partnership with fifteen 11-13 year olds at our latest CHICs 2009 Summer Camp! Enjoy....Angela, Founder of www.esteemedchics.com

CHICS MANIFESTO

A public declaration of principles and intentions

1. To create safe space for girls to speak their mind and be open to hear other girls do the same.

2. Do not let anyone rule your life for you. No magazine, review or person. Run by your beliefs and rules!

3. Every girl is beautiful in her own way.

4. To have courage to believe in our dreams and achieve them with confidence in ourselves- to stop simply dreaming and become our dreams!

5. Don’t let others pull you down!

6. Be true to your friends.

7. Save the insults for the air!

8. Not to assimilate to an invisible authority that tells us how we should and should not look or act.

9. Take care of your body.

10. To do things that challenge us and force us to look inside ourselves to find our true inner strength.

11. Don’t judge a book by it’s cover.

12. To include and be respectful. Take a risk and include yourself! Also respect yourself.

13. There’s no “I” in team. Cooperation!

14. You shouldn’t care what other people think of you- just be yourself.

15. Don’t make fun of people behind their back.

16. To create alternative media and encourage realistic and un-sexist portrayals of women that make us feel happy and good.

17. Be proud of yourself and what’s inside.

18. To have courage to stand up for ourselves and not be bullied, abused or persuaded to do things that we do not want to do.

19. Friends are like stars, they come and go, but the one’s that stay are the one’s that glow.

And above all!

TO BE WHO WE ARE,

NOT WHO OTHERS WANT US TO BE!

Nourish Your Daughter's Self-Esteem and Body Image

Imagine what we could do with all the energy we put into hyper focusing on our weight and body image. As a teen and young woman I was trapped in a dieting cycle that had devastating effects on my self-esteem. No matter how much I weighed OR how athletic I was - I still thought I was too fat, not athletic enough, and not good enough. I struggled with disordered eating, self-hatred and low self-image. I honestly spent years putting a lot of energy into hating myself. Looking back, I see how many more great things I could have been doing but didn’t. If you are a teen girl reading this – and you relate to my story – you need to keep reading. If you are a parent and this story resonates with you right now – or in your past – keep reading for the sake of your daughter.

Now I accept my body as a sounding board for what I need to be doing to honour myself! I exercise for the fun of it NOT because I am burning X amount of calories or attaining a certain number on the scale or a certain ration of lean muscle mass to fat! Believe me – I spent thousands of dollars accomplishing all of it but it always came back to haunt me in the end. WHY? Because dieting is based on deprivation and for me, when I deprive myself of something I am bound to resent it and retaliate! Hence, the weight came back, the negative attitude returned stronger than ever, and I would start backing away from doing the things I loved because I felt I was not good enough, fit enough, or skinny enough! What crap! What I now realize is that I do take up more space in this world than some and less than space than others and I don’t need a ‘picture’ perfect body to be happy. I need to be fueling my energy into things I love - not obsessing about calories in and calories out rather happiness in and happiness out!

Parents our daughters are bombarded with messages around what is and is not acceptable as a female – how to look, dress, talk. Adults can filter some of this bombardment but teen girls take this seriously and at times, literally. In deadly combination – our society bombards us with images and advertising for fast and processed foods. These media messages and marketing campaigns conflict with one another – you can’t eat fast and processed foods and look like the models that advertise those products. Have you seen the commercial for Carl Jr. Burger done by Paris Hilton. Here is the picture for the ad. Now what are we striving for – insanity!

TIPS to Nourish Your Daughter's Self-Esteem and Body Image

Tip 1 – Be a strong, healthy role model: This is vital in teaching your daughter how to feel about food, eating, and her body. Does the way you feel about food and your body conflict with how you want your daughter to feel about her body and food? Are you critical of your body and eating habits. Are you skipping breakfast, not exercising or an exercise nut! I say you need to ‘be the change you want to see’. As parents if you want good things for your children you better be modeling it in your own life. If your not, that's okay because it creates a great bonding and growing experience for you and your daughter. If you want her to feel good about herself – you need to feel good about yourself too! Your daughter will appreciate your honesty and it will actually deepen your relationship because she will view you as real and authentic. Teens ask for authenticity in adults all the time when they are in my counselling office. Trust me on this one.

Tip 2 - Create a NO judgment NO criticism zone: With your daughter co-create a home that is a safe haven for minimal to no negative messaging. It could be that you agree to no fashion magazines in the house, to limit certain music videos or television shows; that dieting becomes off limits. Talk to your daughter about how the media images and messages impact her as a young girl and ask her what she needs in her home to create a space where she can safely and confidently express who she is without negative bombardment.

Tip 3 – Move away from the diet mentality for good! Dieting = deprivation = rebelling = disordered eating due to resentment of being deprived = destructive thinking and behaviours. Look at Oprah – she is still pumping the newest diets but she still cycles through weight loss and gain. Diets fail! A healthy, happy and balanced lifestyle doesn’t. What we eat and how we feel is correlated with what we fuel our bodies with. So fuel them with healthy foods and it will result in feeling good. Do things to keep active that you enjoy not because you have to but because you want to. If it is just walking – then walk. If it is swimming and hiking – then swim and hike.

Tip 4: Teach your daughter's to be comfortable with the space they take up in the world: based on their needs, their ideas, their inner drive and beauty not their body shape and size. Honour your body and be proud of yourself for who you are! Help your daughter connect with strong female role models that are comfortable with who they are regardless of what societies demands of us to look a certain way and be a certain weight - we have the power to challenge those messages and achieve greatness in all areas of life regardless of size, shape, and weight.

Enjoy the journey ~ CHIC power!

Spring and Summer Camps for Teens and Mom's Too!

Register for Summer Camp before
May 31, 2009
and be entered to win
2 tickets to see the
Jonas Brothers
at GM Place June 30, 2009

Featuring FOUR Distinct Programs:

1. CHICs for Girls – camps for 8-10 yrs, 10-12 yrs, 12-14 & 11-14 (see schedule)
2. CHICs for Mothers and Daughters – Girls ages 11-14
3. Transitioning to High-School – Boys and Girls in Grade 7
4. Backstage Pass ‘Your Ticket To Fun’ afternoons!

At Nanaimo Parks Recreation and Culture ~ Oliver Woods Community Centre:
Tues. April 21 – June 9, 2009 from 5-6:30pm: Girls ages 11-14
CHICs at Nanaimo Parks, Recreation, and Culture to register call: 250-756-5200 click on the link to view the Lesiure Guide write-up:
http://www.nanaimo.ca/assets/Departments/Parks~Rec~Culture/Leisure~Guide/LGteen.pdf

Cost: $120 for 8 sessions

July 6 – 10, 2009 from 9am-3pm: Girls ages 11-14
CHICs Summer Camp at Nanaimo Parks Recreation and Culture to register call: 250-756-5200 click on the link to view the Leisure Guide write-up:
http://www.nanaimo.ca/assets/Departments/Parks~Rec~Culture/Leisure~Guide/LGteen.pdf

Cost: $250.00 for the week

At Greater Vernon Parks Recreation and Culture:
Fri. April 17- June 5, 2009 from 4:30pm – 6:30pm: Girls ages 10-14
CHICs at Greater Vernon Parks Recreation and Culture to register call:
250-545-6035 ext. 0 or click on the link to view the Leisure Guide write-up:
http://www.greatervernonrecreation.ca/youth/index.html#new

Summer Camps:

From 9am-12pm summer camps will feature Esteem Services workshops featuring CHICs for girls; Transitioning to High School for grade 7 boys and girls; and a Mother- Daughter CHICs camp. Backstage Pass Events will do a supervised lunch from 12pm-12:30pm and sponsor “Your Ticket To Fun’ afternoon events each day from 12:30pm 3:00pm. You can register for half-day or full-day week-long camps ~ see pricing below. Be sure to read the letter to Parents and Guardians for details on our Esteem camps in this package.

July 13-17, 2009 from 9am – 3pm: Girl’s ages 10-12 years old
9am-12pm – CHICs
12:00-3pm – Backstage Pass Events – ‘Your Ticket to Fun’ afternoon events

July 20-24, 2009 from 9am – 3pm: Girl’s ages 12-14 years old
9am-12pm – CHICs
12pm-3pm – Backstage Pass Events – ‘Your Ticket to Fun’ afternoon events

July 27-31, 2009 from 9am – 3pm Mom’s and Daughter’s ages 11-14
9am-12pm – CHICs for Mother’s and Daughter’s - *see pricing and registration
12pm-3pm – Backstage Pass Events – ‘Your Ticket to Fun’ afternoon events

August 17-21, 2009 from 9am-3pm: Girl’s ages 8-10 years old
9am-12pm – CHICs
12pm-3pm – Backstage Pass Events – ‘Your Ticket to Fun’ afternoon events

August 24-28, 2009 from 9am-3pm: GRADE 7 BOYS AND GIRLS
9am-12:00pm – Transitioning to High School
12pm-3pm – Backstage Pass Events – ‘Your Ticket to Fun’ afternoon events

FEE SCHEDULE:
•CHICs camps - $200
•Mother/Daughter camp - $250 plus $50 for each additional daughter
•Transitioning to High School: Grade 7 Boys and Girls - $100

Register before May 31, 2009 and be entered to win 2 tickets to the Jonas Brothers concert at GM Place June 30, 2009. Draw June 1, 2009 winner announced in CHIC Chat e-news (sign up by clicking here)

To register or more info call Backstage Pass at 250-753-2323 or e-mail: angela@esteemedchics.com or check out www.esteemedchics.com

Negative Self-Esteem Attract Negative Experiences

Low self-esteem attracts negative experiences and when you work on self-esteem you work on changing your experiences. Have you ever heard the expression 'you create your own reality' or 'like attracts like'? Well it is true. Think about it...if you are walking around in life feeling sorry for yourself, hating your parents, friends, family, or life what do you expect to see in the outside world? You are creating what you want to see because you are looking for the hate you are thinking about. You also start to choose things in the outside world that will help you validate that you hate yourself, life, family etc. For instance, if you are smoking, drinking, experimenting with drugs or sex or even thinking about getting involved in any of these things - you are in a mind set of low self-esteem. No one is expressing love for themselves if they are thinking about or doing any of the things I mentioned. How could you! You are harming your body, your mind, and your relationships with people who care about you. If you believe you have low self-esteem or are doing anything that goes along with low self-esteem (this includes talking about people behind their backs, bullying, or back-talking to your parents) and want to change that - you need to change the way your think about yourself. So how?

I have talked about self-care, changing your thoughts, and the attitude of gratitude in the past and these truly are the roots of changing how you feel about yourself. High self-esteem starts with believing you are worthy of loving yourself! Not worthy of other people's love but loving yourself. Stand in the mirror and say 'I love and accept myself' and pay attention to how that feels, how you are making eye contact with yourself - or are you...what your thoughts are about yourself immediately after you say 'I love and accept myself'. If it is awkward, or you can not quite look at yourself, or maybe you have a negative self-talk comment coming into your mind - good! That is normal if you are moving from low self-esteem to high self-esteem. It takes practice to love and accept yourself. Especially if you have spent a great deal of time hating yourself. So, practice this mirror exercise daily until it becomes more comfortable. This is called a daily affirmation. Practicing daily affirmations helps to root information into our unconscious thought patterns. Changing our thought patterns from negative to positive is necessary to change our life habits.

You need good life habits to have high self-esteem. An affirmation that I currently use is 'clean thoughts make clean habits'. It's written on my bedroom mirror so that each night when I go to bed and each morning when I wake up it is the first thing that I see. It helps to remind me to love myself for who I am and to honour that I am a great person. Positive affirmations is one way of nourishing your inner person. There are lots of ways that we can nourish ourselves. If this idea does not fit for you - make a list of what nourishes you - what makes you feel good about being you - and then implement some of those things into your daily life. It may feel or seem awkward at first but with practice and perseverance - that low self-esteem can quickly change to high self-esteem!

Happy practicing:) and remember...nobody is perfect so be gentle with yourself...

Esteemed CHICs Group on Facebook

Tips for Healthy Body Image and Self-Esteem!

I know all too well the pitfalls that girls young and old fall into when it comes to self-esteem and body-image and I want to share some tips to empower you to love and nurture yourself towards a life that is defined by YOU not the outside world.

I follow the mantra written on my swim bag which states 'do one thing every day that scares you'. Now that is a great tip to make healthy change and here are three more.

1. Stop weighing yourself: The number of people I know that allow the numbers on the scale to dictate how they feel, act, and live life day-to-day amazes me and this is people both overweight and thin! I spent thousands on diets and guess what I recommend - throw out the scale because it is a self-esteem destroyer not enhancer.

2. Turn RED thoughts into GREEN thoughts: Try keeping track of how often you have negative thoughts about yourself in a day - 'I'm useless' - RED thought. Then catch yourself talking RED and start thinking of how you can turn that into positive talk - GREEN thoughts. For example, 'I am a useless runner' can be changed to 'I am proud I gave myself the time to exercise today and tomorrow I will run a little longer/faster/harder.' Talk back to the self-critical voice! Practice posting affirmations on your bathroom mirror that remind you how great you are!

3. Move your body for FUN: Get back to being child-like and make a list of activities you like to do for fun - not ones you do because it will make you skinnier, faster, better! Then, do whatever it takes to make the time in your life to put those activities in regularly. Pay attention to how you feel about yourself. Doing something because you have to or doing something because it makes you feel good. I bet the feelings go from resenting to enjoying. You decide!

The bottom line is 'be kind to yourself' in your thoughts and actions and your body image and self-esteem will respond positively.

Happy practicing!