Beauty Industry

Parents, please do not tell your child they are fat. I recently had a mother tell me she wanted to buy my book on parenting girls as she suspected she…

Along with all the spray tans and fancy frocks comes advice for girls that ranges from well intentioned but misguided, to outright dangerous.

“Would madam prefer to have blood drawn from her veins and then smeared across her face, or to have her brow scraped with a razor-sharp scalpel blade?” Welcome to mdern…

Since 2003, Enlighten Education’s in-school workshops for teen girls have been at the forefront of promoting positive body image. We know that despite the fact that girls are excelling in…

In the early 1990s, prominent feminists argued there was a media-driven backlash against the women’s movement, and it risked losing some of the momentum gained in the 1970s. Then along…

I was pleased to have had the opportunity to provide a context for why young girls might chose to send their images to online Instagram pages that invite others to…

Physical beauty is a mathematical equation. Symmetry. Proportion. Scale. When we look at a traditionally beautiful person and admire his or her face, we are really admiring a perfection equation;…

I had the opportunity to discuss this issue on ABC Radio, Gold Coast, with Nicole Dyer. The following is from the ABC web site. The audio may be listened to…

‘Selfie’ was the Oxford Dictionary’s word of the year in 2013 for a reason. Celebrities take them, politicians take them – but the biggest fans of the self-portrait are teenage…

The Illawarra Women’s Health Centre was the the charity recipient for this year’s Illawarra International Women’s Day committee event for their project “Empowering Young Women of the Illawarra.” The Project…

Successful model Cameron Russell recently gave an incredibly powerful TED Talk on why looks aren’t everything, and on how in reality, she is merely the lucky recipient of a genetic…

When I was a toddler I was burnt; I have a very noticeable third degree burn scar on my right arm. Although as a self–conscious teen I would have given…

I first read the following post on US site Off Beat Mama. I was not alone in being stunned by its powerful message and the exquisite writing; within days the…

This week’s guest post is by Lydia Jade Turner. Ms Turner is a psychotherapist and the Managing Director of BodyMatters Australasia. In this research article she explores the connections between…

I have noticed a trend in the quest to promote positive body image that I really think needs to be critiqued and nipped in the bud. Fast. It is typified…

In the final instalment of Susan Johnson’s exceptional piece on teens and body image that we have been running here for the past few weeks, teen girls speak frankly about…

In part 2 of Susan Johnson’s excellent investigative piece on teens and body image that I introduced here last week, she looks at the effects of the unprecedented pressure on…

I am excited to be able to share with you an outstanding article on teens and body image, for which Australian journalist Susan Johnson extensively interviewed leading experts and kids…

Nina Funnell and I wrote the following Opinion piece, which was also featured in The Age newspaper today. Accusing Lynx of peddling sexist advertisements is like informing Kyle Sandilands that…

All school children should take part in compulsory body image and self-esteem lessons. This is the finding of a three-month inquiry by the British government into young people, body image…

Vaginal aesthetics are in the news again this week. I’ve discussed on this blog before the increasing pressure on girls and women to have genitals that conform to a false…

The countdown has begun! Ever since my book on raising teen girls — The Butterfly Effect — came out, mothers and daughters have been telling me they wish there was…

There is a whole world of nonsense out there in the marketing of haircare products to women. There are wild claims, like “unlocks the power of nature to give you…

I didn’t have pimples very often as a teen but when I did get them, they were huge. Naturally, on the day we were having school photos one year, right…