insideKENT Magazine Issue 29 - August 2014 | Page 81

HEALTH+WELLNESS

Dove Self-Esteem Project partners with
Susie Orbach to create booklet for mums to help
them foster body confidence in their daughters
Renowned psychoanalyst and author on women’s issues, Dr Susie Orbach, has partnered with the
Dove Self-Esteem Project to create Talk to Her, a short booklet aimed at mums and mentors.
Packed full of advice, guidance and tips on how to talk to young girls about body image, Talk to
Her has been created in response to research which shows how 47% of young girls are missing
out on everyday activities because they don’t like how they look*.

Dr Susie Orbach

Dr Orbach hosted a Dove self-esteem workshop
on Friday 30th May as part of the series of Dove
real beauty debates at Selfridges, whereby she
spoke to mums about how they can broach body
confidence issues with their children and help
them develop a better relationship with their
bodies. During the workshop, their daughters
joined a workshop led by Natasha Devon, cofounder of Body Gossip, and Lisa Lister, founder
of www.sassyology.com, designed to help raise
their self-esteem.
Dr Orbach says: “Mothers are a big influence on
daughters and we can affect them positively. The
more we can accept our own bodies, the more
natural it will feel to them to accept theirs. We
know how important beauty and being a particular
size has become and how it can be a struggle
for many of us. Keeping our own battles with
weight and poor body image away from our
daughters is important. We don’t want them
thinking that being female means constant
fretting.”
Dove research supports this, revealing that 40%
of British women believe their mothers have a
strong influence on their definition of beauty,
more so than celebrities (37%), models (36%)
and advertising (36%)**.

count and that all she cares about is her looks,
but she will also be listening and it can
penetrate.
2. Make it a habit to talk about people’s attributes
apart from their looks. It identifies different
values than those in the media, and they need
reinforcing when all around there is such peer
pressure to conform to certain looks.
3. Don’t drop casual negative comments about
your own body into your conversations. In fact,
see if you can go one step further and say
positive things about your body and the ways
in which it makes you feel happy. If you go to
the gym or do sports, pass a remark about
how much energy it gives you.
4. Try laughing with her about how amazing it is
that so many people’s energy – stylists,
hairdressers, make-up artists, photographers,
lighting technicians, dressmakers and fashion
designers – goes into creating that media
perfect look, and how maintaining the look is
a full-time job.

Tips and advice within the Talk to Her
booklet includes:

5. You don’t need to have an answer for
everything or to dispute what she says she
feels about herself. You can just listen and say
things like, 'that’s hard', and then maybe
sometime later you can smile and say, 'I hope
soon you’ll be able to see how lovely you are.'

1. Tell your daughter the ways in which you value
her and the things you feel proud about. Be
specific. She might say that those things don’t

Dove set up the Dove Self-Esteem Project to
encourage all women and girls to develop a
positive relationship with beauty, helping to raise

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their self-esteem and thereby enabling them to
realise their full potential. The Dove Self-Esteem
Project works with experts such as
psychotherapist Susie Orbach and Philippa
Diedrichs (Centre of Appearance, University of
West of England) to create materials and
resources that help raise self-esteem among
young people, with the aim being for girls to see
their beauty as a source of confidence, not anxiety.
A key part of the work of the Dove Self-Esteem
Project is working with mums and mentors, as
well as conducting workshop in schools.
Dove has an ambition to reach 15 million young
lives globally by 2015 with its self-esteem
resources and tools. To date, the Dove SelfEsteem Project has reached 13.2 million girls
globally and in the UK, it has reached more than
a million young people.
* Quantitative research was carried out by OnePoll with 500 UK
girls (aged 11-14) in September 2013
** Survey conducted with 1,000 UK women in
April 2014 by Toluna

For more information, or to download a copy
of Talk to Her, visit
www.selfesteem.dove.co.uk.