Status of Women committee  I think that's an excellent question. The first thing is it has to be clear that this is a health issue. We have to use some of the techniques that were used in terms of second-hand smoke, such as public safety advertising, potentially looking at warning labels, or at least incr

Status of Women committee  I'm not familiar with them specifically, but laboratory studies on body image often involve showing women. They evaluate women's attitudes about their bodies and then show them images and then evaluate them again afterwards. It has been reinforced that women who view so-called av

Status of Women committee  Yes, I've heard and read in a National Institutes of Health study on LGBT people and eating disorders that initially the assumption was you would see more eating disorders in gay men because there is more pressure to conform to a beauty ideal, and that you would see less in lesbi

Status of Women committee  Absolutely parents have a very important role to play. If elements of that can be built into parenting programs or parent and kid programs in communities, that would be fantastic. It's something that you can't rely on happening, but it should be encouraged, absolutely. Also, in

Status of Women committee  Yes, I think there needs to be general awareness, as well as school-based programs. Some things that this can look like is more government recognition, and supporting the activists, advocates, and non-profits working on these issues. In terms of what school-based programs or educ

Status of Women committee  Sure. That's sort of what I was getting into with those two programs. Again, as I said, just to reinforce that successful programs aren't one-offs.... They involve discussion. The message is reinforced over time. In addition to the treatment, there are things that we desperately

Status of Women committee  Fundamentally, it needs to start in schools, but you're right: it is a big problem. That's part of the reason studies have shown that one-off interventions don't work. When you watch a short video, you're still bombarded with these messages all the time on billboards, on TV. You

Status of Women committee  There has been a real lack of any kind of research in Canada on eating disorders over the last little while. The most recent detailed calculation done by Statistics Canada of how many people we're looking at in Canada was done in 1993. That's part of the reason you see huge varia

Status of Women committee  Thank you to the committee for inviting me to appear today. My name is Jarrah Hodge and l'm a feminist blogger and activist from Vancouver. I run a multi-author feminist blog called Gender Focus. One of our main goals is to analyze the ways in which women are represented in m