Teach Secondary Issue 14.7

18 months ago, few people had any concept of there being such a thing as a ‘weight loss jab’. Today, it’s all anyone ever seems to talk about. Every celebrity has apparently been jabbing themselves senseless. It’s impossible to open a newspaper without some columnist eulogising about their ‘jab journey’. Grand claims are being made about the superpowers of these treatments. They don’t just help you lose weight, apparently – they’ll also cure your alcoholism and slow the ageing process, too. Even politicians are at it. Wes Streeting recently claimed in an interviewwith LBC that ‘half the House of Commons’ are on them. ‘Effortless’weight loss I have no doubt that for those whose weight or relationship with food is causing them significant health issues, these jabs can be revolutionary. The problem is, we all know that’s not the way in which they’re being used. I’ve heard and read numerous stories of people who have acquired jabs via private prescriptions to attain certain weight goals before a big holiday or social event. Most of the celebrities either rumoured or confirmed to have been using themhaven’t been anything close to obese before starting their treatments. The jabs have simply come to be seen as an ‘effortless’ way to lose a few pounds. The net result has been the re- emergence of a beauty standard we thought we’d left behind in the 1990s. Anyone who lived through that decade will shudder to hear the words ‘heroin chic’, and remember how disordered eating and exercise habits were normalised in pursuit of the kind of hip bones that low-slung jeans would hang precariously from. Yes, 90s fashions are back – whichmight partly explain why teachers have been sharing stories with me about pupils Photoshopping images of themselves and lying about their weight in order to obtain jabs. Reductivemessaging Anorexia and bulimia were endemic amongst my peers in the 90s. We knowingly took terrible risks with our health to attain an unrealistically slender ideal aggressively sold to us as the only route to success and happiness. A key difference betweenmy adolescence and the experiences of teenagers today, however, is that messages around thinness have been conflated with health advice, ostensibly in a bid to reduce obesity. Young people are absorbing hugely reductive messaging from influencers, and even some public health bodies, that deem anything other than thinness as inherently unhealthy. Yet the truth is far more nuanced than ‘thin = healthy’ and ‘fat = unhealthy’. If we were to state that ‘Yellow teeth cause cancer’, we’d be confusing correlation with causation, since it’s smoking that significantly increases the risk of cancer; the yellow teeth are just a by-product. Yes, sedentary lifestyles and poor diets are provably bad for our health. At the same time, though, there are numerous other factors that determine an individual’s weight, most of them genetic. A person can eat a nutrition- rich diet, engage in regular exercise, and yet still be heavier than someone who does neither of these things. The reasons as to why a personmight not be able to access high quality food or maintain an active lifestyle can be highly complex and varied. Shut out the noise Inmy body image sessions for teenagers, I try to untangle some of this. I explain that they should concentrate on engaging in healthy behaviours, rather than believing health has one narrowly prescribed look. I also speak about body neutrality, which removes the pressure to love everything about one’s body and instead focuses on acceptance. Diversity is key. There’s evidence to show that being surrounded by a variety of different body types improves howwe feel about our own. Teachers can help facilitate this by ensuring there’s visual diversity on classroomwalls and in their lesson resources. Ultimately, however, the most crucial thing any adult wishing to instil positive body image in young people can do is address any of their own issues. What we say can have a huge impact on impressionable young people trying to make sense of their relationships with their own bodies, in a world determined to overcomplicate this. Attempting to shut out some of the unnecessary noise around weight loss jabs might be a good start for all of us. The re-emergence of artificially constructed beauty standards that young people aspire to calls to mind one of the most damaging cultural trends of the 1990s... Natasha Devon Natasha Devon is a writer, broadcaster and campaigner on issues relating to education and mental health; to find out more, visit natashadevon.com or follow @_NatashaDevon “Whatwe say can haveahuge impact on impressionable youngpeople” 19 teachwire.net/secondary S C H O O L O F T H O U G H T