Transcript for
How to talk about body image with children and young people

Narrator (00:02): 

Welcome to the Emerging Minds Families Podcast. 

Alicia Ranford (Host) (00:05): 

Hi. I’m Alicia Ranford and you’re listening to an Emerging Minds Families podcast. Before we begin today’s episode, we would like to pay respect to the traditional custodians of the land on which this podcast is recorded, the Kaurna people of the Adelaide Plains. We also pay respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, their ancestors and elders past, present and emerging from the different First Nations across Australia. 

(00:29): 

When we’re little, we have no inhibitions. We aren’t born knowing what it means to be self-conscious. The true joy of watching children run under a sprinkler or dancing around the house dressed in a tutu and a toy fireman’s hat, it’s very hard not to be captivated and delighted by children’s innocence. They don’t judge or see shame in anyone’s bodies. They just want to dance and laugh and have fun. But somewhere along the way, we know that this changes. Today we’re talking to Dr. Zali Yager. Zali is an internationally recognised expert in body image with a background in health and physical education. She co-authored the book Embrace Kids with the 2023 Australian of the Year, Taryn Brumfitt, and was the expert advisor on the Embrace Kids film. She’s also co-founder of the Embrace Collective, a not-for-profit organisation leading the charge of a global body image movement to create safer body image environments for our children and young people. Welcome, Zali. I’m so thrilled to be sitting down with you today to talk about such an important subject. 

Zali Yager (Guest) (01:30): 

Thank you so much for having me. 

Alicia Ranford (Host) (01:32): 

Zali, you have been researching and exploring body image for over 20 years now. How did you first become interested in this space? 

Zali Yager (Guest) (01:40): 

Yeah. It’s a really interesting question. I guess I went to university to study to become a health and physical education teacher. And this is the first time that I remember being interested in it was whenever there was an option to choose a topic, to develop a lesson on or to do a presentation on, I would always choose body image. And I just became known as the person that would just choose that topic I guess. And later in life, when I’m now a little bit more reflective, I can realise that that’s because I had my own personal experience of feeling like I was in a larger body when I was a young child and then the people around me making it quite clear that that was not okay and then having that dissatisfaction and going through disordered eating and all of that sort of thing in my adolescence, which is what led me to go and become a health and PE teacher on some level. 

(02:35): 

But yeah, my own personal experience and then I guess I call it my learned experience as well of being in that health space. Really I just got to the point where I thought, “We could be doing so much better. It doesn’t have to be this way.” And that’s been the story ever since. 

Alicia Ranford (Host) (02:52): 

And your story is so similar to so many people and in particular women out there all around the world. 

Zali Yager (Guest) (03:00): 

Yeah. And that’s why I guess I didn’t talk about it for a long time because I was like, “Oh, it’s just the same as everyone else.” But then it was that point where I was like, “But it shouldn’t be the same for everyone. We don’t have to feel this way about our bodies. We don’t have to feel all of this pressure.” And that’s what led me then to create an organisation that has a vision for changing that. 

Alicia Ranford (Host) (03:22): 

And when we talk about body image, can you really explain to our listeners what you mean by this? 

Zali Yager (Guest) (03:29): 

Yeah. And it’s a really tricky term. Not a lot of people understand it. So if you don’t don’t know what it is, then that’s fine. But when we’re talking about body image, it’s really just the way you feel about the way you look. So it’s not your actual appearance. It’s not how you actually look in the mirror. It’s how you feel about it and the things that you would do as a result. So it’s that internal picture. And I have identical twin girls, and I say they both look very much the same except we did cut their hair to be different just so we could tell who was who, but they look very much the same, but they will have a very different internal idea of how they look and whether that’s okay or not. 

Alicia Ranford (Host) (04:08): 

So it’s really that internal dialogue that we have with ourselves? 

Zali Yager (Guest) (04:12): 

Yeah. And because it’s inside people, it’s very hard to see how they do feel about themselves, which does make it challenging when we are raising our kids, looking after clients, working with students. It’s very hard to tell how people feel about themselves. And that’s why we have to, I guess, have enough resources available so that we can keep people on that kind of feeling good side most of the time. 

Alicia Ranford (Host) (04:36): 

Yes. And I think that’s a really important point that you make is that we can never tell how someone’s feeling about themselves in their internal talk and what they’re saying to themselves. So is that why it’s so important that we be having these conversations around body image? 

Zali Yager (Guest) (04:52): 

Yeah. And I just think the more that we can understand this area in general, the more that we can as the grownups in the room reflect on our own journey and maybe the things that might’ve made us feel not so great about ourselves and then start to just become okay to ask those curious questions. I think that when we approach this in just a really non-judgmental way, we’re not freaking out about it, we’re just like, “Oh, tell me more about that,” I just think that the more informed you are, the closer we get to really understanding what’s going on for young people. And it’s such a good point. We always say you can’t tell by looking at someone how they feel about their body and what they might be thinking about doing in terms of dieting, disordered eating, all of that sort of thing. 

Alicia Ranford (Host) (05:36): 

What does the research tell us about children and body image and how their depiction of their body image perhaps changes over time? 

Zali Yager (Guest) (05:47): 

I could talk for a long time about this, but I guess it was many years ago now in Melbourne, I was part of a study where we were doing interviews with three to five-year-olds, and it was a play-based interview. We would sit and read a story and talk about someone’s broken this vase, which child broke the vase, and they would have to point at a picture of a child and they were in different sized bodies. And what we found was that the three-year-olds already had really clear ideas that it was the child in the larger body that had broken the vase that didn’t have any friends that think of any negative kind of social situation. And so it’s already that categorization and what we would call weight stigma when it’s in an adult, but there were already those rigid ideas about that thin is basically good and that fat is basically bad from that very early age. 

(06:36): 

And what we know about that is that if that continues over time and that becomes the internal story that young people are telling themselves, then if their body is growing larger just because of the way that their genetics mean that they will be, then they start to think that they’re not a good person because that’s that internal categorization and rigidity that they might have. So that’s a very long way of answering the question, but basically it starts much earlier than you think, that young people start to have those ideas. By the time they get to around nine developmentally, they start to compare themselves to their peers. So they start to look at their own body, compare that to other people, compare that to media and what they see. And then we see that around 14, 15 is still that key time for eating disorders, but the rates of eating disorders in five to nine-year-olds has doubled. So it is starting to be seen a lot younger as well. 

Alicia Ranford (Host) (07:30): 

Wow. That is so fascinating that from such an early age, even young children who seemingly are carefree, and as a mother myself, I think not thinking about those sorts of things, clearly the messages are getting through to them about this. And I heard from what you’re saying that it’s not just from home. It’s about media and the way we are portraying people in the media. Is that right? 

Zali Yager (Guest) (07:56): 

Yeah. So we would typically say that parents or families, peers and the media are the three key influences. And back 20 years ago when I started, those three things were distinct and separate, but now with social media, we see that the peer influence and the media influence is very much blended together, but families are still the key influence on young people’s body image we think up until that age of nine or 10 and then it does start to switch over. And so a lot of parents feel very much like this is something that you just put in that basket of things I can’t control, but actually there are 10 years of those very early influences where young people are soaking up all of the attitudes and all of the things that they hear from us, even when we don’t think that we’re teaching them things. So they’re soaking all of that up across those early years and then it does start to become something that social media influences much more. 

Alicia Ranford (Host) (08:48): 

So what can parents be doing right from birth to make sure that we’re talking about this in the right way and projecting the right thinking and feeling about body image to our children? 

Zali Yager (Guest) (09:00): 

So I think that the main thing that we can do is actually to stop speaking about our own bodies in certain ways and even just by becoming a little bit more aware of the things that we’re saying about our bodies, about other people’s bodies and even the unspoken things, the face that you might pull in the mirror while you’re trying something on, those are the sorts of things that really from a very early age, we want to just practice just being a little bit kinder to ourselves and really talking about the functionality of our bodies instead of what our bodies look like. 

(09:32): 

Because overall then we’re saying less negative things about our body, that’s a really direct role modelling of attitudes, but then also if we’re just talking about, “Oh, I really love my legs are so strong because it meant that I could run after you into the ocean today,” saying those little things, then I think they do build up over time and gives our kids this idea that actually you’re so much more than what you look like because you’re here and you’re doing things, you’re being a whole human in the world and just the outer shell part is not as important as some people may think it is. 

Alicia Ranford (Host) (10:09): 

Yeah. Absolutely. And I love that message. And I was listening to a podcast by your colleague, Taryn, and one of the wonderful things that she said, which is very similar to what you said, is about arms and that, “These are the arms that embrace my family and tell them that I love them.” And I think that language around your body is just such a beautiful thing to be teaching children from such a young age. 

Zali Yager (Guest) (10:34): 

Yeah. And all of the research in this space shows that appreciating our body functionality is going to be so helpful in improving body image. And a lot of that is something that we do need to practice ourselves because as people who have grown up through the ’80s and ’90s, we were really subjected to some pretty horrific negative attitudes around bodies, and there’s a lot of unlearning that we have to do. And part of that is just thinking about those areas of ourselves that we think should be, and I’m doing inverted comments because this is audio, we think it should be a certain way, but then actually did a lot of this work with mothers after they’d given birth, just actually being so appreciative of their stomach, even though it didn’t look how it should look because of the things that it was able to bring into the world. And it’s just that whole perspective of the function and the things that our body’s actually here for. It’s not here just for show. 

Alicia Ranford (Host) (11:31): 

That’s a great point. I feel like it’s important we have conversations with other people who are caring for our kids as well because they did grow up in a different generation where the body image was spoken about in such a different way. How do you think parents can do this without shaming that older generation? 

Zali Yager (Guest) (11:50): 

Yeah. It’s a really tough one because we get asked this a lot actually. People say, “Well, I’m doing the right thing, but I just can’t stop my great-aunt from saying these things.” And I think that I’ve tried to create different resources for grandparents to be like, “Things have changed. We don’t really talk about stuff like that anymore.” And I think that it can just be about… I think they understand that the world is moving on and some things you don’t say anymore. So I think you can just put it like that. 

(12:17): 

But then also I think once our kids get to a certain age where, and it’s the age where they might start to take those things on a little bit more around nine and up, but if someone says something, you don’t have to have this great big moment at the time. I never know what to say in those moments either. And so normally it will be after I’ve had a little think about it and I’m maybe in the car home, you’re just like, “Oh, do you remember when so-and-so said that thing today?” And they’ll be like, “Yeah.” And you’re just like, “That’s not really what I think,” or you can just unpack it a little bit and really make sure that what they’re taking away from the situation is what you would have rather that person said. 

Alicia Ranford (Host) (12:54): 

Absolutely. And important to be having those conversations because from your experience and all the research that you’ve done, what do we know about the relation between body image and mental health and wellbeing? 

Zali Yager (Guest) (13:07): 

This is something that’s only happened really recently that we’ve got some really big studies all came out and said basically the same thing a couple of years ago, which was that actually there is a really strong relationship between body dissatisfaction or feeling not so good about your body and depression. And so prior to that, people sort of thought body image was just this superficial thing and that if you didn’t like the way you looked, then that wasn’t such a big deal, but we just have such strong evidence now that actually they are related and usually it’s the body dissatisfaction that will come first. So the negative feelings about the body actually predicted the onset of depressive symptoms. And the statistic is that young people who are dissatisfied with their bodies are actually 24 times more likely to experience depression. And that’s depression at the same time as body dissatisfaction. But I guess it does really bring home how important this issue is and why it does need to be considered in the context of mental health in general, because for a long time it was seen as a separate thing. 

Alicia Ranford (Host) (14:15): 

What can parents do who recognise that perhaps they haven’t been talking about their bodies or body image in their family in a way that now they perhaps might like to? What would you say to those families who perhaps now wanted to take a different approach from hearing our conversation today? 

Zali Yager (Guest) (14:32): 

Yeah. And I think it is just about you can’t be perfect overnight. And so we always say this is no-shoulds, no-shame approach. We don’t want to make people feel bad about… making people feel bad. It’s just this whole cycle. So I do think that just becoming aware of it is definitely the first step. And even if you are still saying the negative things about your own body, which can be hard to change after 40 or 50 years of living in it, even if you’re saying that if you’re a little bit aware of it, you can actually come back around in that later conversation, be like, “Oh, remember earlier when I said this? What I actually meant was that I was just feeling really frustrated with my situation.” So you can explain a little bit more about the context. 

(15:16): 

I always try to talk about Red Riding Hood approach, which is if your child comes up and pokes your belly or something and it’s wobbly and so normally you’d say something self-deprecating like… And then they’re like, “Why is it so wobbly?” And you’re like, “Well, because you were in there. Because I ate a lot of cake,” or something. If that’s what you would normally say and you can stop yourself halfway through, then you can add in something about functionality. So, “It’s because I was eating a lot of cake or had a big dinner or something. And also, I really appreciate that this is the space that I was able to carry you in.” And it’s a very different kind of feeling then so that young people can take away, “Well, there’s function and there’s appearance and one isn’t necessarily more important than the other.” 

(16:04): 

So it is a process to start to recognise those things and catch yourself, I guess. And in a society where the way that bodies have been spoken about for such a long time has been so negative, particularly larger bodies, then it’s really hard to steer the ship, but it’s really worth it to steer the ship. 

Alicia Ranford (Host) (16:24): 

What terminology should we be using about our bodies in terms? I’ve heard you say larger bodies, smaller bodies. What is the right way? Or should we just, like you said, not be talking about the size of a person’s body? 

Zali Yager (Guest) (16:37): 

Yeah. I mean, there’s no right answer, but what we do know now is that some terms for people’s bodies are quite stigmatising because they have a negative connotation that’s been attached to them over time. And so words like overweight and obese are medical categorization terms, and that’s what they were intended to be, but then they’ve sort of filtered into regular language and can be used in a really negative way. So, in general, if we’re using any words and they do have that negative feeling behind them, then we could stop and reflect on whether we really need to be saying that, but it’s hard because sometimes you might need to use medical terms, then you can use them in that context. If you’re referring to the research around that space, you can use them in that context. But I just generally prefer people living in larger bodies or people in larger bodies, I need to talk about that. And then the opposite is true as well. People in smaller bodies works in general. It’s just a lot less emotive, a bit more neutral, which is what we’re aiming for. 

Alicia Ranford (Host) (17:38): 

Absolutely. And I feel like the culmination of your life’s work seems to have led you to starting the Embrace Collective. Can you tell us a bit more about that and how that came about? 

Zali Yager (Guest) (17:50): 

Yeah. I was a researcher and had been for quite some time, working so hard trying to figure out what worked to help people feel better about their bodies, but I’d never really thought about what would happen if I found something. And it got to the point where I was on a bus and was doing all this work on women in the post-partum period and their body image and I was talking to this man. He’s like, “My wife’s just had a baby. She’s really struggling. What can you give me for that?” And I was just like, “Oh, I wrote some papers for other researchers.” And he looked at me and I was like, “Oh, I’ve got nothing to actually help people,” which was what I’d gone into the whole thing aiming to do. And so really started to think about actually, we do know enough in the research and in the science so far. We have 20, 30 years that we could start to tell people some things that could actually start to make a difference. 

(18:43): 

And so in the Embrace Collective, the aim is really just to create this world where all of the things that happened to us, all of those things that that person said at school, all of the things that happened when that teacher did a lesson or when that grandparent said something, if we could just make those things not happen, then we could create this world where people don’t feel so much shame about their bodies. 

(19:09): 

And our current focus is on really arming all of those people around the young people, the educators, the parents, the sports coaches. We’ve just gone for those people who interact with young people most days and try to arm them with the resources to be able to create an environment that just feels more safe and supportive for young people around their bodies, so that we’re not saying things that might trigger any sort of shame. We’re not allowing any sort of appearance-based bullying, commentary, teasing, shaming, all of that sort of stuff to happen between peers. And I just think about all the things I would love to erase from the environment that we grew up in. And that’s what we’re trying to create as the future for our kids. 

Alicia Ranford (Host) (19:51): 

What’s available to parents and teachers through the Embrace Collective? 

Zali Yager (Guest) (19:55): 

We’re currently busily creating a whole range of resources where we’re really translating all of that research and evidence into actual fun, creative things that people might want to engage with. And this is where Taryn and myself coming together. We really started to realise, “Hey. There’s something in this,” because I was trying to make things that were really dry and based on science and no one actually wanted to look at them. And then Taryn has this way of really engaging people, communicating and really making people feel things, as well as learn things. And through all of the resources we’ve been able to create together, the first one I advised on the Embrace Kids film. And that’s something that actually people don’t even know that they’re learning something because they’re so engaged, entertained along the way. 

(20:42): 

So we’re creating all of these resources we’ve got for educators. A lot of is available already. We have the Embrace Kids Classroom program that’s for year five and six and year seven and eight kids. And that really takes the best of that film and breaks it into classroom pieces. We also have a teacher masterclass, and the aim of that is really… It’s a very short 15 minute video. A lot of the time the teachers that would come to our professional learning sessions are the one teacher in the school who’s really passionate about this and they’re going to be the champion. And what we’re asking is that that champion might take this video to their staff meeting and play that for all of the teachers, because if all of the teachers can just understand this really small snapshot around some of the language shifts that we might need to make and some of the changes to the Australian curriculum that might inform the activities that we do around food, bodies, weight and health, then it’s just going to make such a difference across the whole school. 

(21:38): 

We have for early childhood educators, a program that they can engage with this, seven, five minute videos. So it’s a total of 30 minutes to just have a look at how they can really start right back at the beginning with those three-year-olds or even the zero-year-olds and how to build those positive relationships with food, bodies right from the very beginning. And then for parents, we have a mini masterclass. Parents told us, “I can’t listen to hours of content. I don’t have time for all of this.” So we’ve made it three minutes. And I did this survey once with parents and I was like, “How long could something be? And when do you have time pockets in your day?” And the mothers were like, “I have about 60 seconds and it’s when I’m on the toilet.” And someone answered the survey saying, “I’m on the toilet right now answering this survey.” So we’ve tried to make it something that you don’t have to listen to it in the bathroom, but… 

Alicia Ranford (Host) (22:33): 

You can if you want to. 

Zali Yager (Guest) (22:35): 

It’s that kind of length of time. It’s like, “I’ve pulled up at school pick up and I’ve got roughly three minutes and 59 seconds.” You’ve got enough time to watch the masterclass. So we’ve really brought it together and, yeah, again just tried to pack it all in. Very exciting Embrace Magazine, where we’ve really… Again, instead of… Because we wrote a book. You have to write it all down in a book. And that came out a few years ago, but then it’s like, “Oh, all of those words. How can we actually show people instead of telling people?” So we’ve really focused on bringing those stories to life. And I’m really excited about the magazine. It’s a very exciting resource for parents. We’ve just tried to create things that we would want to engage with and that we can really break down the information. And the magazine as well is something that I really think that we also created that because it’s like you can pass that on to that great-aunt. You can pass it on to the grandparents like, “Oh, you’re babysitting today. You might want to read this.” It’s very shareable. 

(23:36): 

And I think that any of these things that mean that more people can just understand, once we get that critical mass of people not saying the things, not doing the things, then that’s when we’re going to see that sort of generational shift. 

Alicia Ranford (Host) (23:49): 

And where can families access the magazine? 

Zali Yager (Guest) (23:52): 

Everything for everyone is accessible through bodyimageresources.com. And if you tick the box to say you’re a parent, then you’ll get sent things around parenting. If you tick the box to say you’re a sports coach, then you’ll get sent those things. So make sure you tick all the boxes that relate to you and your situation, and then we’ll send you everything. Everything is free this year. So we really just want to get things out to as many people as possible. 

Alicia Ranford (Host) (24:19): 

And for anyone who hasn’t already seen it, I would really encourage you to go out and watch Embrace Kids. It’s fantastic. It’s fantastic to watch with your children as well. It is free on some streaming services. So a quick Google can tell you where to find that. Yeah. It’s really fantastic. If listeners took away nothing else from our conversation today, what would be the one thing you’d want them to remember? 

Zali Yager (Guest) (24:40): 

I mean, we always say the one thing you can do is to say less negative things about your own body, but I guess what you want people to remember is slightly different because actually what I want people to take away from this is a feeling of hope, and it’s a feeling that actually a lot of people feel like, “There’s nothing we can do because social media exists, so our kid’s body image is doomed,” whereas actually what I would like people to take away is the feeling that, “Actually we can do a lot and there’s a lot we can change, especially if we all work together.” 

Alicia Ranford (Host) (25:12): 

Oh, that’s fantastic, Zali. And we’ll have links to all these resources in our show notes for anyone who would like more information. So thank you so much for joining us today. It’s been an absolute pleasure and fascinating to hear about the research and how fantastic that we’re moving in a different direction with all of this. So I take my hat off. What a great initiative you’ve started in the Embrace Collective. 

Zali Yager (Guest) (25:35): 

Thank you. 

Alicia Ranford (Host) (25:36): 

And thank you to our listeners for joining us. If you would like to keep up-to-date with our latest conversations, we’d love it if you liked and subscribed to our Emerging Minds Families podcast channel. You can also find us on Instagram @emergingmindsau or on Facebook at Emerging Minds Families. You have been listening to an Emerging Minds Families podcast. If anything spoken about in today’s episode has been distressing for you or you find yourself struggling, please reach out for help. You can call Lifeline on 13114 or more resources for support can be found in our show notes. 

Narrator (26:10): 

Visit our website at www.emergingminds.com.au/families for a wide range of free information and resources to help support child and family mental health. Emerging Minds leads to the National Workforce Centre for Child Mental Health. The Centre is funded by the Australian Government Department of Health under the National Support for Child and Youth Mental Health Program.