Size Me Up

Music video can be such a short form of media that it sometimes seems hard to create believable and fleshed out characters to inhabit that world, but it definitely happens, and the videos we saw on Wednesday definitely highlighted some of the best of them.
The report about children and body image was really interesting. Its definitely noticeable that many characters in children's media are fairly skinny, and the ones that may have a larger weight are generally the butt of the jokes. I know as a kid I never had much insecurity about my own body but that was mostly because I had trouble putting on weight, not vice versa. Still, thinking back on it, I feel there was a lot of social pressure to not be overweight. Media is a very influential tool in our society, especially to young children who see what is considered 'normal' in the world on television. Normal is definitely not the Disney princess waistline. I do think there are the occasional steps in the right direction though. One example that comes to mind is the character of Zlabya from the French animated film The Rabbi's Cat. She is one of the healthiest looking characters I've seen in an animated film in a long while. Her waist is just as big, if not bigger in some shots, than her head, and she is praised in the film as being desireable and beautiful by most of the characters. And she really does look beautiful (at least to me). I feel like if more films went in this direction we would have a better influence for children.