NOW Foundation Releases Survey Results on 15th Birthday of Love Your Body Day

When asked what action would make the most impact in promoting positive body images for women and girls, respondents to the Love Your Body Survey said they would most like to see magazines and advertisers stop using Photoshop to create unrealistic images.

“While NOW Foundation’s groundbreaking Love Your Body campaign has for 15 years been a national leader in demanding inclusion of realistic, positive images of women and girls in advertising and the media, the need for society to speak up and demand change won’t go away any time soon,” said Erin Matson, education vice president of the National Organization for Women Foundation.

The body type commonly portrayed as ideal in the media is naturally possessed by less than five percent of women and girls. While it is unusual to see positive portrayals of women of color, women of size and women with disabilities, it is overwhelmingly typical to see images of fragmented body parts, violence presented as normal and sexualized, and objectified women and girls.

“Wouldn’t it be great to see images on television that look like the women we know and the women in our families?” asks Allendra Letsome, secretary-treasurer of the NOW Foundation. “The Love Your Body campaign benefits not just women and girls, but also men and boys. Show us real people for a change!”

Additional survey results from the NOW Foundation Love Your Body Survey are available at: http://loveyourbody.nowfoundation.org/2012surveyresults.html.

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Contact: Caitlin Gullickson, media[at]now.org, 202-628-8669 ext 123