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.

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 a certain looks and how media images may lead to prejudice against those who don’t conform to their standards of attractiveness.

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.

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