UK population in body confidence crisis

The government have today launched a new information service to help parents talk to their children about body images and representation in the media. This is to help them the child to talk about how they feel about themselves, what they see as pretty and similar things.

However, they are getting wrong in so many ways. Children do not need to be encouraged to talk about these things, they do it all the time. Did you see what this person was wearing at the weekend on TV, did you see this person in this magazine, have you seen what she's wearing - are all comments that even very young children make in our society.

They talk about social images, media and looks all the time. They go to primary school with designer brands, with branded products like Playboy and other similar things - getting a child to alk about how they think they look, is the least of our concern. Our greater concern should no doubt be more explaining that Playboy isn't something that a child of 10 should have on their pencil case because it's all about women and their looks.

Looking at the wider picture is more important. Especially as some parents seem to even struggle to find the time to teach their own children basic maths or English, there is little chance they will sit down and discuss body image with them.

But also, perhaps instead of a parent just talking about it, they should do something about it. Consider the magazines that their child buys more carefully, think about whether the TV they are watching is suitable, refuse to buy products that should not be aimed at children and consider whether a child of 10 needs a programme like Photoshop available to them.

And of course, there is also another issue - the fact that young people probably can tell more when an image has been altered than an adult, in some cases. But a parent making a child aware that a magazine has altered certain images doesn't mean much to a child. Because the images are still altered to try to make everybody look more perfect and precise.

Before the government considers telling parents to talk about how body images are viewed by a child, they should be investing money in stopping the media industry from altering the images and instead encouraging people to look more natural, normal and unique.

Until the government and other areas of society are willing to acknowledge that children talk about body image and get so concerned about it because of the way everybody acts - nothing will be done about it. The problem is not just in primary school children, people in high schools, colleges, universities and work - at all ages - are doing things to enhance their body and alter their appearance. Society just assumes this is purely down to images presented to us in the media, not just the entire population having a body confidence crisis.