City Unveils Campaign to Improve Girls’ Self-Esteem
Mr. Bloomberg is taking on the popular, unattainable notions of beauty promoted by professional image-makers with a campaign that tells girls that they are beautiful the way they are.
Mainly through bus and subway ads, the campaign aims to reach girls from about 7 to 12 years old, who are at risk of negative body images that can lead to eating disorders, drinking, acting out sexually, suicide and bullying. But unlike Mr. Bloomberg’s ads to combat teenage pregnancy, smoking and soda-drinking, which are often ugly, revolting or sad, these ads are uniformly upbeat and positive.
“I’m a girl. I’m funny, playful, daring, strong, curious, smart, brave, healthy, friendly and caring,” one ad, featuring DeVoray Wigfall, a robust, laughing 12-year-old from University Heights in the Bronx, says. The ads show girls of different races and sizes, some playing sports and one in a wheelchair. Each one ends with the campaign’s overall slogan: “I’m beautiful the way I am.”
City officials and experts in adolescent health said it was the first campaign aimed at female body image that they knew of to be carried out by a major city. Ads began going up on buses and in subways now.
“I think being a woman in this society, it’s sort of impossible to not be aware of the pressures there are around appearance, around weight, around trying to always look a certain way,” Ms. Levine said.
The idea so resonated among her colleagues that all 21 girls pictured in the campaign are the daughters of city workers, friends and friends of friends, who believed it was important to participate. None are professional models. All but one, who lives on Long Island, live in New York City, she said. beauty
DeVoray, the girl in one of the ads, who aspires to be either police commissioner or the first black female president, said in an interview on Monday that some of her friends asked her if they were pretty. “I say you’re beautiful even if somebody tells you you’re not,” she said. “You have to keep your head up, don’t let anybody bring you down.”