“An ideal girl
is an American girl who is fair, tall (not taller than boys) and beautiful”
“An ideal boy
would be the one with 6 pack abs, muscles, fair and handsome”
The participants enjoyed
and had lot of fun with the ‘stop game’ where they danced, walked and did
variety of actions. This was followed by the mind mapping of ‘ideal body of the
boy”- he should be tall, pointed nose, six pack abs, good smile, impressive
beard, broad chest, bulging muscles, stylish hairstyle and yes someone like
bhaiya (our volunteer). Then we did mind mapping around ‘ideal body of the
girl’ should be tall (not taller than boys), long hairs, slim, fair, pink lips
like didi, beautiful eyes, blue eyes etc.
In the next activity,
the participants were asked to fill up questionnaire based on “how do they see
their body, do they like it or want to change it, how much does media affect
them in term of how they see their body etc” Out of 46 students, only 3 people were
not happy with the way they look and on the contrary more than 30 wanted to
change either their face or body parts. Almost for every student, the opinion
of other people about their body seemed important. 22 students felt
discriminated because of the way they look. 12 students have indulged in gyming
and dieting to get better look. Also when they watch television they see models
and actors, they want to have body like them. Interestingly 35 students agreed
that they constantly compare their body with others and come up short. This is
intriguing data considering the age they are in, the impact of body image seems
to seep into their roots.
A video “Lesser men”
was screened with an objective to share body image issues with the adolescents.
Taking cue from the mind map, questionnaire, discussion over the video,
facilitator shared his personal experiences of being judged because of how he
looks and what impact did it have on his self-esteem. We moved ahead by leaving
them with a thought that whenever someone say something about their body, they
must question back and see if it’s even true and let it not affect them.
For the next part of
the session on “peer pressure”- video on smoking was screened leading to a
discussion where the participants were invited to share their thoughts,
questions or anything that comes to their mind. Most of them felt that it’s
easier to fall into the bad company, to bunk classes so that their friends are
happy, friends make them spent lot of money etc.
“Yes” and “No” activity
showed how much important friends are to them that they don’t even think twice
before taking an action. Even during the activity, few of the participants were
seen accompanying their friends in giving the answers. From saying ‘Yes’ for
every plan friends make so that they are not upset to pressurizing parents to
buy new clothes when their friends buy to bunking classes to even making a
girlfriend to trusting the friends more than parents was pretty clear from the
student’s end. And there was a huge uproar when we gave them the statement “I
have been involved in fights because of friends”
A conversation was
initiated by defining peer pressure and its impact on one’s life and how
crucial it is to challenge it.
“I bunked my classes
with my friends and then we went to the river”
“We had a huge fight
once when my friend was beaten by other people”
“He forces me to do his
homework many a times even when I don’t want to do”
“I saw my friend
smoking, I tried stopping him but he ignored me and then hit me”
So, we engaged on the
fact that it’s important to have friends but to follow them blindly is not a
good idea, if you don’t like doing something you must tell them because if they
are your real friends they would understand otherwise it’s better to be alone
than to be in a bad company
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