Newsletter Contents

• Publisher's Pen
• Empowering Parents and Teachers
• Empowering K.I.D.S. (Kids In Daily Situations)

Publisher's Pen: Real Kids, Real Beauty

“Beauty is how you feel inside, and it reflects in your eyes. It is not something physical.”                                                                              Sophia Loren.

Walk into a drug store in the cosmetics section and you will see a poster on the “Campaign for Real Beauty,” by the manufacturer of Dove soap. Real women pose for the camera and discuss how they feel about their bodies and their inner selves in an effort to promote higher self-esteem among girls in the midst of the pressure to attain beauty as our culture falsely defines it.

My granddaughter, who is five years old, recently asked me if I thought she was getting fat. Children are extremely sensitive to the aggressive advertising touting the illusion of beauty. But we can do something about it. We can talk to our children about the truth of real beauty, the beauty that comes from within.

In the United States, the Dove Self-Esteem Fund works through the Unilever Foundation to sponsor uniquely ME!, a program partnership with Girl Scouts of the USA  uniquely ME! was designed in 2002 to foster self-esteem in girls, ages 8–14, in the US and Puerto Rico. It has been a successful program.   

An excerpt from their web site:

Whether it's models that wear a size 2 or movie stars with exceptional curves, beauty pressures are everywhere. And when young girls find it hard to keep up, low self-esteem can take over and lead to introversion, a withdrawal from normal life, and a waste of potential. For example, a recent survey in the United Kingdom indicated that 6 out of 10 girls thought they'd "be happier if they were thinner."

Check out the above links, along with the Campaign for Real Beauty site:

http://www.campaignforrealbeauty.com/inside_campaign.asp

May we foster the highest self-esteem in our children, thereby automatically fostering their highest potential.

Smiles,

Elaine

Empowering Parents and Teachers:

Develop a wall of quotes of what kids think is beautiful in the women within their family, guardian or support group that has to do with any characteristic except physical beauty. Then go to the site listed below to add your quotes to the 3,000 quotes collected already.

Here are some ideas to help you get started:

Whether they care about what others think
Whether they help others
The kind of person they are
If they stand up for what they believe in
If they are honest
If they are caring
What they think about themselves

Come up with more ideas on your own.

The site to list your quote:

http://www.campaignforrealbeauty.com/flat3.asp?id=2091

Empowering K.I.D.S. (Kids In Daily Situations):

Read what girls all over the nation are saying about real beauty and share your views.

Go here to read what girls said:

http://www.campaignforrealbeauty.com/essay/photo_essay_winners.asp?essayID=10

Go here to share your views:

http://www.campaignforrealbeauty.com/share.asp?section=share

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