Gather your kids and learn
This second look at the controversial topic of body image of women is less confronting in its nudity, but James Croot finds Taryn Brumfitt’s doco still invites plenty of discussion.
It was the educational 2016 film the Australian censors didn’t want parents to see with their teens and tweens. Aiming to highlight the lack of diversity in media imagery of women and promote self-love and self-acceptance, body image activist Taryn Brumfitt’s Embrace was filled with sometimes confronting imagery of the female form in a wide variety of shapes and sizes.
The authorities across the Tasman slapped a restriction on it that meant only those 15 and over could view it. Here the censor’s M rating left it up to individuals to decide whether it was appropriate fare. The Classification Office noted that the ‘‘wellmade, thought-provoking and uplifting’’ film was ‘‘of high importance in terms of its unique exploration of the issues it addresses and also for giving agency to a diverse range of people about issues of bodies and representations of bodies.’’
Now, six years on, Brumfitt is back, with a follow-up that’s far more family-friendly viewing but no less important.
Concerned that today’s youth are being exposed to an onslaught of ideas about the ideal body image at a younger age – thanks largely to social media – Embrace Kids aims to teach young teens and tweens (and their parents and teachers) to see through the looking glass, celebrate difference and advocate change at a personal level.
Cleverly, Brumfitt is even more of a peripheral figure here than in the original. She hands over the platform to a range of voices to tell their sometimes inspiring and often entertaining stories in a lighter, but no less enlightening tone.
The areas discussed are also far wider. As well as body image, discrimination, gender identity and neuro-diversity also get plenty of air time.
One of the stars of Netflix’s new Heartbreak High reboot, autistic actor, author and motivational speaker Chloe Hayden, winningly advocates that ‘‘no-one has ever made a change by fitting in’’ and ‘‘that it’s what we do with challenges in our life that defines us’’.
The non-binary Audrey Mason-Hyde
(52 Tuesdays) opens up about everything from wanting to go to a 4-year-old’s birthday party as Spider-Man, to obsessively rejecting femininity and eventually learning that ‘‘biological sex and gender are not the same thing – your body does not equal your identity’’.
Yes, there are some ideas and concepts that older audiences may struggle with, but maybe that makes viewing this with your kids a two-way educational experience. A segment on Australian
AFL star Erin Phillips solidifies what we have seen here with the Black Ferns in how far interest and acceptance of women competing in top-level sport has come, although it doesn’t really address what needs to be done to ensure its sustainability. Perhaps that was a downside of trying to cover so many topics in the slim, sub-80-minute running time – not everything is black and white.
On Brumfitt’s core concern though – body image – Embrace Kids couldn’t be clearer: Magazines, TV, Instagram and TikTok have been teaching us that ‘‘we’re broken’’, and promote impossible physical ideals that have often been manipulated via Photoshop or other digital tools.
Australian comedian Celeste Barber provides plenty of laughs with a selection of her magnificent influencer image parodies but others offer a more sobering, thought-provoking take.
‘‘Happy people don’t buy stuff,’’ British actor Jameela Jamil explains as the nefarious reason why such imagery is used so ubiquitously online.
Detailing her own struggle with body image, which began at age 11 when she discovered she was the tallest and heaviest in her class, Jamil laments now how ‘‘a quick descent into a 2-year obsession robbed her of her youth’’.
And having presented a 250,000-signature petition to Facebook and Instagram-owner Meta asking it to stop celebrities promoting toxic diet products on those platforms, hers is the voice that is likely to resonate the most as she urges us to take back the word influencer – ensuring you ‘‘lock, mute and delete’’ those sending the wrong messages.
Embrace Kids is now available to rent from Neon, iTunes and GooglePlay.