Latest / Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families / #691 Body Image with 2023 Australian of the Year, Taryn Brumfitt

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#691 Body Image with 2023 Australian of the Year, Taryn Brumfitt · Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: It's the Happy Families Podcast.
• 0:05
  Speaker 2: It's the podcast for.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: The time poor parent who just wants answers Now. Hello,
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: this is doctor Justin Colson.
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much for choosing to listen to the
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: Happy Families Podcast today. Tarren Brumfort, you may be familiar
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: with the name after last week's announcement of the Australian
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: of the Year.
• 0:23
  Speaker 3: It's about the way that we feel about all of ourselves,
• 0:26
  Speaker 3: our skin color, our height, our age, our gender. When
• 0:31
  Speaker 3: you take your final breath on this earth, what thoughts
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  Speaker 3: will be going through your mind? And no one has
• 0:37
  Speaker 3: ever said to me the size of their bum.
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: Tarren Brumfort, an Adelaide documentary maker and activist, has been
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: not just nominated, but actually proclaimed.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: To the Australian of the Year because of her work.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: Around the way we view our bodies. What you may
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: not know is that Taran joined me just over a
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: year ago to talk about this very topic in the
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: Misconnection Summit. You can find the sum online and you
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: can purchase it and listen to all of the amazing content,
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: the incredible talks to help you if you're raising a
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: teenage girl today with the weld, the everyday challenges that
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: we're facing. But in the Misconnection Summit, I was talking
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: with Tara and about all the stuff that she's now
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: the Australian of the Year four and we started off
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: our conversation by talking about how difficult body image challenges
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: are right now for young people and how they're different
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  Speaker 2: for boys and girls.
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  Speaker 1: This is what she had to say.
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  Speaker 3: Gosh, well, it's not great when you look at the
• 1:33
  Speaker 3: situation that is, but it's also actually no surprise either
• 1:37
  Speaker 3: because we live in a world that really doesn't support
• 1:40
  Speaker 3: anyone to have a positive relationship with their body. But
• 1:44
  Speaker 3: I don't want to paint a disastrous picture here because
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  Speaker 3: I want us to feel a little light and with
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  Speaker 3: some hope when we leave this call. It's not like
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: we've got this big problem and we don't have any
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  Speaker 3: solutions to it, like we actually do. I think for
• 2:01
  Speaker 3: us to change and for us to navigate this landscape,
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  Speaker 3: we need to understand what is going on out there and.
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  Speaker 4: What's at play.
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  Speaker 3: We have these industries that are preying on our insecurities.
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  Speaker 3: Is their trillion dollar industries beauty, cosmetic, diet, and what
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  Speaker 3: they're doing is they're setting us up to have problems
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  Speaker 3: and for our girls as well. And you know, these
• 2:27
  Speaker 3: problems that I refer to, they aren't actually problems in
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: the first place. But these industries are offering products to
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: problems that don't exist.
• 2:36
  Speaker 4: And it's all about the dollar. And I think if we.
• 2:40
  Speaker 3: Can understand what's at play, who's delivering the messages, the
• 2:45
  Speaker 3: why behind the messages, it makes it a whole lot
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  Speaker 3: less powerful when.
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  Speaker 4: They're coming at us, if we can see it for
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  Speaker 4: what it is.
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  Speaker 3: So I think if we lived in a world that
• 2:56
  Speaker 3: celebrated bodies and different shapes and sizes and abilities, we
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  Speaker 3: wouldn't have these issues. So I think the first thing
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  Speaker 3: that we really need to do is go, yes, it's
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  Speaker 3: a big problem.
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  Speaker 4: You only need to walk down.
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  Speaker 3: A shopping mall, which I do on occasion with my
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  Speaker 3: own kids, and I remember when they were younger, I
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: almost just wanted to cover their eyes and like, don't
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  Speaker 3: look at this, but we needed to go shopping.
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  Speaker 4: But it's just we do get bombarded by these images.
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  Speaker 3: I think the key is to understand where they're coming
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  Speaker 3: from and the why that sits behind them.
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  Speaker 4: And it's the dollar. It's money they're making money from
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  Speaker 4: making us feel crap.
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  Speaker 3: I guess what I really want people to walk away
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  Speaker 3: after watching this knowing is that we weren't born into
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  Speaker 3: the world hating our bodies. We have learned this as
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  Speaker 3: a behavior. It wasn't meant to be our life purpose.
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  Speaker 3: To hate on our body.
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  Speaker 4: And be at war with our body is just not
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  Speaker 4: the way it's meant to be.
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  Speaker 3: So if we can just take a moment, take it
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  Speaker 3: step back, think about is the relationship that I have
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  Speaker 3: I'm having with my body is it serving me? Do
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  Speaker 3: I feel good when I go out into the world.
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  Speaker 3: And if the answer is no, then what are you
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  Speaker 3: going to do differently? And I think taking taking stock
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  Speaker 3: of what's going on will help. Now you gave me
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  Speaker 3: a double barrel question, which I think is quite cruel.
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  Speaker 3: For the first question, and just before we started, everyone
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  Speaker 3: Justin's like, are you shuffling papers? I'm like, oh gosh,
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: yes I am, because I always have to take notes
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  Speaker 3: because I've got so much I want to I want
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  Speaker 3: to say, so occasionally you're going to hear a little
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  Speaker 3: paper shuffle everyone, but just just go with me. The
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  Speaker 3: second point of that question was about boys and girls.
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  Speaker 3: There are different pressures. Boys have this pressure to be
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  Speaker 3: to be manly, to be tall, to be strong and
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  Speaker 3: girls to be pretty. I remember at the Adelaide Airport once.
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  Speaker 3: I remember walking through and there was a surfwear label
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  Speaker 3: and there was two advertisements, both promoting the same piece
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  Speaker 3: of clothing.
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  Speaker 4: And for the guys they were doing on the.
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  Speaker 3: Surfboard, and for the girls they were like looking at
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  Speaker 3: the surfboard but looking pretty. And I just I stopped
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  Speaker 3: in my tracks and I looked at this, and I
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  Speaker 3: was like, and there is the problem. We teach our
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  Speaker 3: boys often to do and be adventurous, and we often
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  Speaker 3: tell our girls to look a certain way. So it's
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  Speaker 3: no surprise that we've sort of ended up where we've
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: ended up.
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  Speaker 2: That's really interesting. I hadn't thought of it like that before,
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  Speaker 2: and I've done a lot of thinking around this area.
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  Speaker 2: But it's actually as a different message, isn't it. Guys
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  Speaker 2: are always active, Guys are using their bodies. Girls don't
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  Speaker 2: use their bodies except in an ornamental way. They have
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  Speaker 2: to look particularly. I'm not trying to do this for
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  Speaker 2: product place, but everyone knows that I've written the book,
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  Speaker 2: so I'm not trying to sort of give myself a
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  Speaker 2: plug here, but I'd love to share something.
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  Speaker 1: As I was listening to what you said.
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  Speaker 2: I really when I wrote this book, I talked to
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  Speaker 2: more than four hundred Australian girls about what it is
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  Speaker 2: to be a teenager. And given there it's been a
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  Speaker 2: long time since I was a teenager and I've never
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  Speaker 2: been a girl, this was really eye opening for me,
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  Speaker 2: even though I'm raising six daughters of my own. And
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  Speaker 2: when the body image questions came up, I developed three rules.
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  Speaker 2: They're not one hundred percent iron clad, but they're pretty
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  Speaker 2: close and I'd love to hear what you think about them.
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  Speaker 2: Based on what you've just said in my data and
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  Speaker 2: what I heard in my conversations where body image was
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  Speaker 2: raised as an issue, these three themes consistently showed up.
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  Speaker 2: Number One, a girl's body predicts which social groups she
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  Speaker 2: can belong to. If you want to be popular, you
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  Speaker 2: have to be hot. Number two, the combination of a
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  Speaker 2: girl's body and her social group impacts her identity. In
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  Speaker 2: other words, I'll feel good about myself and who I'm
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  Speaker 2: becoming if my body is hot and I'm in the
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  Speaker 2: cool group. And number three, social media and media the
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  Speaker 2: superpermore generally, which would include surf shops that have got
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  Speaker 2: these big billboards and what have you. They set the
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  Speaker 2: standard for what's hot, and therefore who's popular, and therefore
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  Speaker 2: what a girl should feel about herself. Does that resonate
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  Speaker 2: for you?
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  Speaker 4: Absolutely it does. I mean, here's the thing about if.
• 7:18
  Speaker 3: We unpack it, this was going to come later, I
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  Speaker 3: think in the conversation, but I think it's good to
• 7:22
  Speaker 3: go there now, this whole beauty ideal. And again I'm
• 7:27
  Speaker 3: doing the same, I'm not plugging. A lot of people
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  Speaker 3: would have seen Embrace the documentary, and it's free on
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  Speaker 3: Netflix right now. We go through beauty through the ages,
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  Speaker 3: what it was like to be a woman in her
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  Speaker 3: twenties in nineteen twenties, sorry not in her twenties, when
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  Speaker 3: the pressure was to be thinned straight up and down,
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  Speaker 3: small breasts, and then in the nineteen fifties it was
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  Speaker 3: about having a voluptuous body and larger breasts and a
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  Speaker 3: cinched waist. And then in the eighties it was the
• 7:56
  Speaker 3: supermodel where it was very athletic bodies, and there was
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  Speaker 3: the nineties the waife.
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  Speaker 4: Look, if you stop.
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  Speaker 3: To think about how preposterous it is that somebody, you know,
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  Speaker 3: these industries are like, well, this is what we're going
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  Speaker 3: to determine this decade to be beautiful, and to everybody
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  Speaker 3: who doesn't fall into this construct, you're not going to
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  Speaker 3: be very happy with your body because you know this
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  Speaker 3: is where it's at. And I just I liken that too,
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: sort of when people get on TV and they're like, well,
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  Speaker 3: this season you should wear, It's like, I'm just gonna
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  Speaker 3: wear what I want this season. Like I'm not a sheep.
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  Speaker 3: I'm not going to follow someone else's trend. And I
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  Speaker 3: think if we can encourage our girls and really challenge
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  Speaker 3: ourselves as human beings as to why we perhaps like
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  Speaker 3: something then and then challenge our girls to really pave
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  Speaker 3: their own way and make up their own rules, it's
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  Speaker 3: like see it and I'm sorry I digress here, but
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  Speaker 3: I've been very much in creative mode. I think visually
• 8:59
  Speaker 3: is everybody but Sea would have been told to have
• 9:04
  Speaker 3: taken the wig off by a thousand different people it will.
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  Speaker 4: Ruin your career, and she didn't. She did it her way.
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  Speaker 3: And I think there is such power in defining what
• 9:15
  Speaker 3: beauty means to you. And when I was in New
• 9:18
  Speaker 3: York filming a few years ago, I met some of
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  Speaker 3: the Victoria's Secrets models, and I have.
• 9:26
  Speaker 4: To say when I chatted with them, and only a couple.
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  Speaker 3: I'm not sort of saying this broadly, but these were
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  Speaker 3: women that people would look at on Instagram and be like,
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  Speaker 3: oh my.
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  Speaker 4: Gosh, you are so beautiful.
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  Speaker 3: And I tell you what, I didn't have one beautiful
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  Speaker 3: word come out of their mouth, or there was no
• 9:45
  Speaker 3: interaction with them that was nice in any way, shape
• 9:49
  Speaker 3: or form. It was just it was very cold and
• 9:52
  Speaker 3: just not beautiful, if you know what I'm saying. So
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  Speaker 3: I think we really need to turn upside down this
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  Speaker 3: notion of what beauty actually means. And it has nothing
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  Speaker 3: to do with how someone looks. It's got to do
• 10:05
  Speaker 3: with the energy exchange and how someone makes you feel.
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  Speaker 2: I really love. We need to actually rediscover that concept
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: of what beauty is. I might even get weepy when
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: I think about this, but my wife's smiling at me.
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: That's beauty. Looking at her eyes, I just go, oh,
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  Speaker 2: this is magic to me, this is gorgeous. I've got
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: footage of my kids up until about the age of
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: eight or nine, So as I mentioned six daughters, I've
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: got footage of them and photos of them running around
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: the pool. They're playing their goofing off up until the
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: age of nine or ten. They don't even think about
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: how they look. They've got the sticky addy tummies. They're
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: wearing what it is comfortable, or they're not wearing anything
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: at all, because like when they're kids, who cares, right,
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: their hair's crazy, they're living life. Young kids, they don't
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: even think about what beauty is, and there's someone affected
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: by how they look and they just stoked about what
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  Speaker 2: their bodies can do.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: What have you seen about.
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  Speaker 2: When kids start to lose this and start to think
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: about beauty and how do we stop them from losing it?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, I've done a lot of thinking on this, and
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  Speaker 3: I think and this is anecdotally, this is from my
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: experience in my circles and knowing exactly what.
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  Speaker 4: You're talking about, and there's a great sense of loss.
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  Speaker 3: Especially when you've seen your own kids, where you're like,
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  Speaker 3: something's changing.
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  Speaker 4: Now.
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  Speaker 3: My kids are now fifteen, thirteen, eleven, and nine, so
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  Speaker 3: I'm kind of right in the spot of seeing changes
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  Speaker 3: in changes, praying for changes not to happen from the
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  Speaker 3: younger ones.
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  Speaker 4: But it does.
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  Speaker 3: I wonder whether it's because as their parents, we are
• 11:43
  Speaker 3: their kings and queens and they are taking everything that
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: we say and do in there, they're like sponges and
• 11:49
  Speaker 3: they're absorbing.
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  Speaker 4: I wonder whether they.
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  Speaker 3: Adopt some of our philosophies as adults, because having spent
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: a lot of time with adults, I find that there's
• 12:04
  Speaker 3: the missing part for a lot of people's lives. Is
• 12:06
  Speaker 3: the joy, is the play, is the sparkle, is the
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: having fun. And we seem too as adults, go, oh,
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: we can't do certain things because of some strange rules
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: that says that you're too old to wear that, or
• 12:21
  Speaker 3: you're too old to do that. And I wonder as
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: kids get wiser and older, they're starting to tap into it.
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  Speaker 3: So when I think about this and that loss, I
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: mean justin you're you're the parenting expert here, but I
• 12:38
  Speaker 3: would suggest they've got a lot going on in their
• 12:40
  Speaker 3: brains that they're trying to navigate at that same time
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: as well.
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  Speaker 4: And this might seem like a little bit of fluffy advice,
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  Speaker 4: but I.
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  Speaker 3: Really think it can walk alongside the guidance that you
• 12:52
  Speaker 3: would give.
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  Speaker 4: But it's be the role model for fun. Fun is infectious.
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  Speaker 3: You know, get the kids out there having adventures and
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: doing things with their bodies. I think when we're doing
• 13:05
  Speaker 3: have you ever heard of the big Wedgie. It's a slide,
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: like it's a massive water slide.
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: I haven't heard of it, but it sounds awful.
• 13:14
  Speaker 4: Yeah it does.
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  Speaker 3: And when they say big big Weggie, they really mean it.
• 13:18
  Speaker 4: It's really big weggie.
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  Speaker 3: But I took my kids there recently and instead of
• 13:25
  Speaker 3: the three of them heading off and going down, and
• 13:27
  Speaker 3: I was like, I'm coming as well. And as I
• 13:31
  Speaker 3: was sliding down, because I'm really heightened to how they're feeling.
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  Speaker 4: And you know, as a parent, you are like, is
• 13:37
  Speaker 4: everyone okay? I'm probably that parent. Everyone every fun is
• 13:41
  Speaker 4: everything perfect to Harwood. But I was looking at my child.
• 13:44
  Speaker 3: As he was sliding down, and I was like, oh, right,
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  Speaker 3: there is the joy.
• 13:49
  Speaker 4: There is the moment.
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: And he was not, and nor was my daughter thinking
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: about their tummy or their thighs, or the fact that
• 13:57
  Speaker 3: one was short.
• 13:57
  Speaker 4: He wanted to be talld nothing in that moment. So
• 14:00
  Speaker 4: I think if we can be very aware as.
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: Parents to make the time for adventure and what I
• 14:09
  Speaker 3: call sparkle activities, which is the things that you do
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: that give you a rush, I think it will have
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: an impact.
• 14:15
  Speaker 5: Diyaking, that is the Australian of the Year for twenty
• 14:24
  Speaker 5: twenty three, Taran Brumfort.
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: Taran joined me for the mis Connection Summit.
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: You can hear the entire conversation by going to Happy
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: Families dot com dot Au and downloading the Misconnection Summit.
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: Just google it and it will pop up in your feed.
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: Loads of great conversations with inspiring and pretty incredible people,
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: just like our Australian of the Year, Tarran Brumfort joining
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: us on the Happy Families podcast. Thank you so much
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: for listening today. I can't wait to be with you
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: again tomorrow as we talk about more things sort of
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: food and body related. I'm going to be catching up
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: with deb Blakely from Kids Dig Food talking about what
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: to do about kids fussiness over lunchboxes. The Happy Families
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: Podcast is produced by Justin Rowland from Bridge Media.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: Craig Bruce is our executive producer.
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: For more information about making your family happier, check us
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: out at Happy families dot com dot Au.