A good day

Today is a very good day....

Today I read that a code of conduct has been established as part of a national strategy on body image. A report has been prepared by a government-appointed national advisory group on body image. 

The group is chaired by former Cosmo editor Mia Freedman and includes, amongst others, model, television producer and wife of Lachlan, Sarah Murdoch.

This new code will be urging the use of healthy weight models, realistic and natural images of people and disclosure when images of people have been digitally manipulated. 

As a mother of a teen girl and tween boy this is very good news, especially when my kids recently saw this frightening image that was used for a Ralph Lauren advertisement which I retrieved from the Huffington post website:

And just last week, Ralph Lauren was again in the press, this time with the English paper The Telegraph sharing an image of model Valentina Zelyaeva. The image appeared in a shop in Sydney and on the clothing label's Australian website, with her waist digitally squeezed to appear impossibly skinny ....

                                  

Oh dear....                                                            

How refreshing and wonderful then to see the beautiful and NON digitally enhanced Murdoch, on the front cover of the Australian Women's Weekly . She agreed to remain untouched when editor Helen McCabe asked if a completely non-airbrushed photo could be used for the front cover. The Courier Mail reported that Murdoch said "It makes me mad that we can't embrace the beauty of ageing, because we're all going to do it." . 

Have a look...

 

I am sure that this is not going to be the norm with celebs but this little "baby step", as Editor McCabe called it, is certainly a good start in trying to help counter "the unhealthy epidemic" of negative body image that affects so many people. 

Yes indeed, this is a very good day!

Best wishes, 

Natasha In Oz.

Beauty isn't worth thinking about; what's important is your mind.  You don't want a fifty-dollar haircut on a fifty-cent head.  ~ Garrison Keillor