Nov 24

Exposing reality: the Kardashian Kollection

I don’t normally read Reveal magazine, but I was tipped off last week that I was quoted in it, so I made a point of picking up a copy. Inside, I found their take on the new collection of clothes at high street store Dorothy Perkins, apparently designed by – and certainly promoted by – the Kardashian sisters, who are stars of a US reality TV series. It was a photo of Kim Kardashian in her underwear which graced the cover of that edition of Zoo magazine earlier this year, about which I said that it represented “almost everything that is wrong with Western society today”, combining as it did the toxic elements of our celebrity and sexualised culture. These comments zipped around the world, indicating through the controversy that they generated just how challenged we are by these pressures on young people.

This clothing collection – or Kollection (Kollektion, even?) – has received extensive press coverage over the past couple of weeks, which is the sign of a successful PR campaign on the part of Dorothy Perkins. Meantime, the appearance of the collection raises further questions about role models for girls and women, and whether or not we are in a healthy place on this one. It is interesting to read the statements of the Kardashian sisters, reported in several media, stressing that they are all different shapes and sizes, and that their collection therefore reflects this, and is suitable for ‘real women’. If you look at the clothes themselves, you may disagree – “tarty” (not my words) is how they have been described. In fact, it is hard not to feel that young women are simply being hoodwinked further into buying clothes – a commercial activity from which the Kardashian sisters and their backers will undoubtedly benefit.

Not all is lost, however. The editor of Reveal magazine, Jane Ennis, begins her editorial with the words: “Do not believe the Kardashian hype”. She points out that rather than lauding Kim Kardashian as an “ambassador for normal-shaped women”, we should remember that there is “nothing normal about this woman, her family or her body”. She points to her personal £22 million fortune and her unusual shape: “Most people with her sized bottom don’t have her tiny waist, long toned legs, perfect bust and chiselled features”.

A word of warning for us all lies in Ms Ennis’ final words: “Don’t be fooled. Whatever Kim or her publicity machine says, she is just another unattainable icon being dangled before us who we have no chance of emulating. Buy her dresses if they suit you. Why not? But please realise that she is the champion of clever marketing – not plus-size girls.”

This is Positive Image month. Let the wool fall from over our eyes. And if the editor of one of our women’s magazines is telling us this too, then maybe there is hope for all of us yet.

 

Nov 20

Why being in the ‘cool’ group is far from ‘cool’

This week I have been attending the annual Girls’ Schools Association Heads’ conference, which this year is in Liverpool, and – as ever – it has been a great opportunity to reflect on wider issues concerning the education and development of girls. The speakers have been stimulating, and none more so than Professor Carrie Paechter, who spoke on Monday about the dynamics between girls, and how these could affect their wellbeing. Her comments were reported widely in the press; she said that research has shown that sociable and apparently successful girls were often not as happy as we might imagine them to be – the pressure on them to be ‘perfect’ undid any perceived advantage or status they might seem to have. It is in fact entirely untrue that it is ‘cool’ to be ‘cool’.

I agree entirely – and said as much in the Daily Mail, in one of the pieces where Professor Paechter was quoted. It is a complete myth that being part of a clique – even one that appears to be desired by other girls – is a route to happiness. This myth is fed by teenage Hollywood films and our cult of celebrity, which centres on the Queen Bee and her entourage. Life around a Queen Bee looks good from the outside – it looks glamorous and ‘happening’ but on scratching the surface, very quickly we realise what underpins these relationships: insecurity, a fear of rejection, and a deep worry that favoured members of the group will drop out of favour and lose their place. It is no wonder that such cliques foster unhealthy competition, unkindness, and even cruelty. The relationships are essentially dysfunctional and harmful.

You will recognise the description of this kind of girl-girl relationship, for it is widely accepted that girls can be, and are, mean to one another in groups. Ponder for a moment on how we have come to a point in our society where we find this kind of behaviour by girls both admirable and repugnant – where, arguably, society lauds and encourages it in order to be able to say, with mock piety, that girls can’t get on with other girls …

In fact, as Professor Paecheter pointed out, girls are perfectly able to get on with one another, and from my own experience as the Head of a girls’ school, I can testify to the amazing depth of lifelong friendships that emerge from the crucible of teenagehood. Meanness and cruelty are not inevitable in female friendships, and it is harmful to girls to suggest that they are. Of course girls need structure and guidance in their friendship groupings – what young person doesn’t? Schools can help by creating strong structures to support these groupings – a clear ethos that everyone is equal, and that individual differences are valued, and practical steps such as ensuring that teachers, not pupils, decide who they will sit and work with.

For the sake of our daughters, we need to dismantle the myth of the ‘cool’ clique and replace it with the truth of the richness of varied human relationships. Professor Paechter’s research has helped us along the way.

 

Nov 17

Violent video games DO make teenagers more aggressive

A recent study by researchers at Brock University in Canada, reported in The Telegraph, found that teenagers who play violent video games over an extended period of years do in fact become more aggressive themselves. The longtitudinal study involved 1,492 adolescents from eight High Schools in Ontario, with the participants 14 or 15 at the start, and 17 or 18 at the end, and it compared how use of video games correlated with behaviour in the real world. Regular players of violent games were found to be more likely to react aggressively to unintentional provocation in real life, while those who played non-violent games did not show increased aggressive tendencies. To clarify their findings, the researchers found no evidence that more aggressive teenagers were more likely to play violent video games in the first place; there really did appear to be a causal link between the games and external aggressive behaviour.

This is of course no surprise to those of us in education, who help see many thousands – hundreds of thousands – of young people through the exciting, turbulent, demanding, vulnerable and impressionable years of their childhood and teenagehood. We know the importance of role models and of modelling sensible, socially appropriate behaviour; we are reminded frequently that a young child is a blank canvas, upon which will be marked a unique mixture of genes, circumstances, family, friends and experiences, and out of which will come a fully-formed adult different to none another, yet with much in common with many or most. We understand that prevailing cultures – be they in the classroom, in the community, or in the media – have an enormous impact on young people, and that a considerable amount of our energy as educators is spent trying to guide our charges through the conflicting messages they receive, doing our best to balance their development as individuals who will determine their own thoughts and feelings, with their development as social beings who need to learn how to appreciate the world around them, and to contribute to it.

Video games have much going for them – the development of mental and manual dexterity, for instance – and we should certainly not put them all on the ‘do not touch’ pile of socially unacceptable activities. But we do have to be critical about their content, and not be afraid to speak out about – and, if necessary, regulate – content which can be potentially harmful to individuals, especially young people (for whom we all have a particular responsibility), and which can be equally harmful to our society. Studies such as this one are helpful in giving a greater impetus to our task.

Don’t be afraid to look at – and be vocal about – the content of your teenager’s video gaming choices.

 

Nov 14

Do not judge people by their outward appearance. The words of the girls of St Mary’s Calne.

This is the text of today’s Assembly at St Mary’s Calne – written, led and delivered passionately by the girls. It struck me that Positive Image Month is working – for these are the thought leaders of the future, and this is what they are thinking. I offer especial thanks to Ellys Airey for allowing me to reproduce her words here:

Do not judge people by their outward appearance.

Our society nowadays is used to judging people on their appearance first and on their personality second. Ugliness itself is a personal perception, just as beauty lies in the eye of the beholder. Nowadays people spend a lot of time making sure we look good on the outside, but what are we doing to make sure we look good on the inside? Beauty in the way society perceives it is not always a blessing. Even the most outwardly stunning people can have selfish, mean traits, which make them ugly. In Samuels 16:7 the Bible says “the Lord does not look at the things man looks at.  Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”

It is the easiest thing in the world to judge someone without getting to know them. In a recent survey of the nation, three fifths of people said they form their opinion of someone within just 5 seconds of meeting them and more than a third said appearance was everything when forming first impression. 37% of Londoners reported that they ‘always’ judge someone by their appearance when meeting them for the first time, whereas we are thankfully among the less judgmental of people, as those who live in the south west are the most forgiving with only 17 per cent forming their opinion about someone purely on their appearance.

‘Outer beauty attracts, but inner beauty captivates.’ If you can look at yourself and love the way you are now, then nothing can stop your inner beauty shinning through. Audrey Hepburn was deemed one of the most beautiful women to date, but it wasn’t her sheer outwardly attraction that was truly stunning but her inner beauty. Years ago when she was asked about her beauty secrets, she replied with remarkable grace: “for lovely eyes, seek out the good in people. For a slim figure, share your food with the hungry. For beautiful hair, let a child run his or her fingers through it once a day.”

As Eleanor Roosevelt so rightly said, “No matter how plain a woman may be, if truth and honesty are written across her face, she will be beautiful.” The ability to believe in yourself, listen to others, exercise forgiveness and most importantly have confidence in all you do and in what you want to achieve, will essentially give you your inner beauty, because after all you cannot hide your inner self under a layer of makeup forever.

This lifted my heart this morning – girls, well done!! Onwards!

 

Nov 13

Why I am teaching my children about porn

The media last week was full of comment and reports that the National Association of Head Teachers had called for children to be taught about porn as part of the sex education lessons (see, for example, this report on the BBC News website). Inevitably this was misinterpreted in some quarters as something of tremendous danger to young children, as if the intention was to corrupt them and warp their understanding of the world by placing them in front of uninterrupted scenes from hard core porn movies for hours on end, and leaving it to them to work out what was right and what wasn’t.

I preferred to interpret it differently, namely as a call to pre-empt the almost inevitable, ie that children will see porn at some stage in their teenage lives, and we as their parents and teachers should prepare them to reject its harmful elements, and to put it into a values-laden context. A significant proportion of children will view porn, sometimes by accident and sometimes because through curiosity they have sought it out; they are often not prepared, however, for the fact that it can prove distressing and damaging, and they are certainly not prepared – given the vast weight of sexualised material they see around them every day – to be able to distinguish that women in porn are overwhelmingly presented in an objectified manner.

So – forewarned is forearmed. I have already started to explain to my pre-teen eldest child that there are bad things on the internet, and that despite the filters we put in place to stop this stuff getting through, he may encounter inappropriate images. I am trying to give him strategies – not to be afraid to tell, to navigate away from sites, to recognise that this is not real, and that the way in which women are portrayed is harmful to both men and to women, because everyone should be equal in the world. I am starting to explain that this is not always about love, which is what all great relationships should be built on.

There is of course a danger in telling children about porn – ie that they will go and actively seek it out. But no parent or school can ever protect children forever from the fact that bad things happen, and that women are presented in degrading ways in the internet. At least by preparing our children to know that it exists, to know that it is unreal, and to know that it can be extremely harmful to women, we stand a chance of being able to communicate to children that this is not what sex is all about, and we have the opportunity to share some of our values around sex, love, and how men and women should be treated equally in all aspects of life.

 

Nov 10

Why I love my legs

Every Saturday I read, avidly, Melanie Reid’s column in The Times magazine. Melanie was already an award-winning journalist when, in April 2010, she suffered a dreadful fall from her horse and broke her neck and her back, an accident which left her paralysed and without the use of her limbs. Each week she catalogues her slow and painful recovery, as she comes to terms with what she can and can’t do, and how- inspiringly – she is gaining use again of her legs and other parts of her body.

Reading her column makes me appreciate my legs even more. I love my legs, because not only do they take me to wherever I want to go, but they enable me to do one of the activities that I most enjoy – brisk, fresh, early morning walks. My legs are strong, capable and amazingly responsive. My brain tells them to go faster and they do, powering me on, raising my heart rate, keeping me fit, lifting my mood and clearing my thoughts. A fast, determined walk in the early hours of the day is the perfect way to set me up for a productive and wonderful rest of the day. My legs make this happen and I am proud of them. We should all be proud of our legs.

So it was rather depressing to read an article in the Daily Mail earlier this week entitled ‘The secret of lovely pins‘. This article reported the results of 12 years’ worth of analysis by a plastic surgeon, to work out what makes for the ‘perfect’ leg. What was notable about this article was that it concentrated entirely on the aesthetic – the appearance of the legs – and not one jot on their ability and usefulness. Moreover, the purpose of the study was explicitly in order to find “an ‘ideal aesthetic model’ on which to base surgery in the future”. Not content with reducing legs to their superficial outward aspect, the whole drift of the article encouraged its readers – primarily, I would guess, women – to question whether their legs were good-looking enough, and to think about changing them.

Well, our legs are beautiful as they are, because – quite simply – they are our legs. They transport us, they power us, they enable us to do whatever we want to do. If we lose the use of legs we soon appreciate them all the more, and we can still love them for what they can do for us. They are a part of us.

This is Positive Image month. This is the month when we need to tear up articles that make us question our marvellous and unique bodies. This is the month when we need to love our bodies because they are central to who we are.

I love my legs. Love yours.

 

Nov 07

Why teaching is like being on a log flume: new teachers take note!

Earlier today I had the privilege of addressing a group of NQTs (Newly Qualified Teachers) at a post-qualification training day. All of them are in post and all of them are working towards their final accreditation as teachers; support and training days like this one are designed to invigorate their thinking, give them time to reflect on their practice, and allow them to meet and connect with other colleagues.

I had three messages for them:

First, teaching is fun and deeply rewarding. There is no other profession like it, in fact. Teaching stretches your brain, develops all your competencies and grows your emotional intelligence. A deep satisfaction results from working with and for people, changing their lives, and helping prepare them for their future. As a teacher, if you throw yourself into your profession headfirst, immersing yourself in it, then you become a better person yourself. I compared teaching to the experience of going on a log flume at a theme park: you wait with nervous anticipation before launching yourself forward, at which point you speed exhilaratingly downwards, get drenched in water – and laugh with joy and exhaustion. Teachers – especially new teachers – should never underestimate the joy of teaching.

Secondly, teachers – in fact, all of us – learn best when they learn and work with others, and they are not on their own. In actual fact, they must not be in this on their own, because teaching is all about encircling each child with a collaborating group of teachers and coaches, so that he or she can grow and learn. Teaching is all about the child; it is essential for teachers to work together, not only to improve their own practice, but to understand the child from many different angles. Every teacher has unique perspectives on a child, and all teachers should learn from one another – there is much experience out there to learn from.

And thirdly, what teachers are doing really, really matters. Our society needs teachers to educate the young people of today so that they can go out and contribute fruitfully and positively to their society and to the world. Over a billion people in the world live in poverty; 1 in 3 girls do not receive a secondary education. Look around at our society and you will see so many areas which we need to combat – the self-esteem of our young people, their understanding of their role in the world, the requirement upon us all to create a harmonious, fair, peaceful place in which we can all live. Our young people need to learn to think critically about themselves and their responsibilities. Teachers can make a tremendous difference to our world.

Teachers teach so children can learn. They are teaching a child, not a subject. Their role is one of the most important we could possibly imagine. To all the new teachers out there, we should say: thank you, and bon courage.

 

Nov 04

A moving morning, and a strong energy to make a difference: Positive Image Month continues

Last Thursday’s launch of Positive Image Month, the fantastic initiative driven by the determined Kate Hardcastle, was incredibly moving. One after another, people told their stories – stories of being made to feel inadequate because of what they wore or how they looked, and dreadful stories of bullying so commonplace that it has almost become regarded as a right of passage. The message to emerge was strong and uncompromising: no-one has the right to be cruel or unkind to another, and we have to learn to value our differences and multiple beauties. And where this starts is with the self: a positive image begins with the individual standing up, casting off the shackles of media-manipulated expectations of what we ‘should’ look like, and saying “I like me”.

Early in the day, the fabulous Jenni Trent Hughes read to us from a number of daily newspapers and magazines, picking out the articles about image, weight, appearance and how much people wanted to change what they look like. She was not short of material – she had a bundle of articles, and I could have added to it from the magazines and newspapers I had collected en route, to explore the depressing nature of the messages that people are receiving from the media. It has been shown that a few minutes after reading fashion or ‘women’s’ magazines, women’s moods drop, and they feel less good about themselves; this is not at all surprising, when you look at the uniform – but artificial – ‘perfection’ of image after image after image in these publications.

So Ms Trent Hughes tore them up. There, in front of us, she tore them up and said, quite simply, “Stop reading these. They make us feel bad about ourselves, and we are better than that. Stop reading them.”

Positive Image Month is about seeking to make a difference – for ourselves and for others – and to learn to feel good about who we are. If we don’t feel good about ourselves, our capacity to act and do good in the world is restricted – crippled, even – and it is for this reason that I am a Voice in this campaign. Our young women in particular suffer from the pressures placed upon them to look and act in certain ways, and this affects even the most self-aware and grounded of them. Scratch beneath the surface of an intelligent and able 18 year old, and you will discover feelings of inadequacy – of not looking good or ‘hot’ enough. We have to change this. We have to liberate young people to just be themselves, and to be free to spread that positivity into all spheres of their life.

Throw away the negativity; embrace the positive. And do something today to help someone else see the light and make a difference.

 

Nov 02

The artists, the exhibition and their enriching legacy: what our former pupils bring to our schools

This has been an astonishingly creative week, as the St Mary’s Calne Art department moved to Cork Street, London, for a most beautiful Art exhibition. Pupils present and past exhibited, and the range of media and array of subjects was amazing. I could devote a blog a day from now on to each of the incredible artists, and I would still be here in several months’ time, eulogising. One of the (many) highlights was a work by artist Endellion Lycett-Green, who was a pupil at St Mary’s Calne in the 1990’s, and who had come back to the school a couple of years ago to talk about how she creates her works (see here for a report on her talk) but she was not alone – so many incredible artists, with so many astonishing works.

It seems almost unfair to select just one artist or group of artists, because every work was amazing (and – although I may be biased – the exhibition as a whole was by far the best in Cork Street this week) but I will say that the old girls who exhibited added an especially symbolic dimension to the event. Old Girls are hugely important in a school, and it has been one of my real joys that over the past few years the Old Girls’ Association at St Mary’s Calne – now renamed, most appropriately, just the “Calne Girls’ Association”, as testimony to the enduring, ‘forever’ nature of being a pupil at the school – has grown more and more entwined with the school as it is at present. More and more old girls (of all eras) have come back to school for reunions and to give lectures, and our communication channels with old girls – both ways – have grown better and better.

Former pupils are so very important in schools. They hold memories of the school’s history, they are useful guardians of the past, and they bear witness to the eternal strands of education that have woven their ways through the centuries of the school’s existence. Without former pupils, a school is only a shadow of itself, or of how it can be. A school is richer with the involvement of all those who have ever been part of the community – in fact, I would argue that once a member of the community, always a member of the community. The ties that are made with a school – a great place of learning and growth – can never be abandoned entirely, even though, without careful nurturing, they may loosen with the passing of the years.

The Cork Street Exhibition was fantastic, and each piece of work owed some of its beauty to the educational and life experience that its creator had at school. Equally, each piece of work has now contributed through its beauty and as a result of the educational and life experience of its creator to the depth of creativity that is present in the school today. It is a wonderfully virtuous circle, and it happens when former pupils remain engaged, and schools honour their involvement.

Long live our Old Girls.

 

Oct 29

Positive Image Month launches on 1st November!

If you have a moment between now and Thursday, look at this website. Positive Image Month is the brainchild of Kate Hardcastle, the well-known entrepreneur and businesswoman, who just felt that collectively, we had to do something to try to rebalance the terrible weight on people in our society (especially young people, and especially women) to look, appear and act in certain ways. Poor self-image is at the root of so much unnecessary agonising, and it stands to reason that the poor self-esteem that results is a limiting factor on people achieving their full potential.

Consider some of the facts:

  • More than 90 percent of girls – 15 to 17 years – want to change at least one aspect of their physical appearance, with body weight ranking the highest.
  • Girls’ self-esteem peaks when they are 9 years old – just 9!
  • 80% of children who are 10 years old are afraid of being fat.
  • Obese boys and girls have significantly lower self-esteem than their non-obese peers.
  • Nearly a quarter of girls age 15-17 would consider undergoing plastic surgery – a frightening thought.
  • 13 percent of girls age 15-17 acknowledge having an eating disorder.
  • 7 in 10 girls believe they are not good enough or do not measure up in some way including their looks, performance in school and relationships.
  • 80% of 10-year-old girls have dieted.
  • Young girls are more afraid of becoming fat than they are of nuclear war, cancer, or losing their parents

Jo Swinson MP’s All Parliamentary Body Confidence Report, which came out earlier this year, concluded that “Body Image dissatisfaction in the UK has never been higher”, and it is blighting the lives of hundreds of thousands of people a year. We do not want this – no sane society can possibly want this – and we have to do something about it.

This coming month, let us step up to the mark and do something positive for our body image and the body image of others. Let us help ourselves and others realise that it is what we do and who we are that really matters, not what we look like. It is time to break free of the shackles of negative self-perception and realise our true potential.

Enjoy just being you this month … and do your bit to help others just enjoy being who they really are. Spread the word.