Level: Grades 3 to 7

Author: This lesson has been adapted from Teacher’s Resource Kit: A Teacher’s Lesson Plan Kit for the Prevention of Eating Disorders. National Eating Disorder Information Centre, © 1989. Adapted and updated 2002.

This lesson is part of USE, UNDERSTAND & ENGAGE: A Digital Media Literacy Framework for Canadian Schools.

Overview

This lesson lets students take a good look at our society’s pressures to conform to standards of beauty – particularly to be thin – and the related prejudice against being “overweight.” Through class discussion and activities, students begin to recognize how the media pressure us to achieve certain looks; how media images may lead to prejudice against those who don’t conform to their standards of attractiveness; and why the ideal body is different around the world and has changed over time.

Learning Outcomes

Students demonstrate:

• an awareness of the media’s role in dictating standards of attractiveness to society.
• an understanding of how media images can affect their own feelings towards their own bodies and towards others.
• an understanding of how unattainable these standards can be for much of the population

Click here to download the Ideal Bodies Across History presentation (ppt).

This lesson and all associated documents (handouts, overheads, backgrounders) is available in an easy-print, pdf kit version.