Press Conference - Presentation to winner of 'Every Body's GORGEOUS'
PHELPS: Good afternoon everyone, and thank you very much for coming. I am very pleased to be here today to announce the winner of the AMA Diners Club Public Health Community Service Announcement Video Competition. First, I'd like to introduce Georgie Farmer, from Diners Club, who are the joint sponsors of the competition for the third year running. There were more than twenty entries this year from film and television students from around the country, and the standard, of course, as in previous years, was very high. But, of course, the judges had to come up with a clear winner, I was joined on the judging panel by Kaz Cooke, cartoonist and author, and by the chairman of our public health committee, psychiatrist Dr Bill Pring.
This year we wanted to focus on a major public health problem, and one that we wanted to get a very strong message out to the community about, and that is about body image - and so the theme of this year's competition was 'Every Body's Gorgeous'. Entrants were asked to produce a thirty second video, a community service announcement, to promote positive body image. By this I mean people thinking positively about the body they have, and staying healthy, not madly aspiring to a false body image that is promoted in some media, film and advertising, and becoming unhealthy as a result of that. Today, the average Australian weighs much more than they did twenty years ago, and yet the perceived ideal body image has been getting thinner and thinner. Young people are dieting, and they are expressing dissatisfaction with their bodies at an increasingly young age, and this is wrong. As we know, excessive and un-supervised dieting can lead to eating disorders, and eating disorders now have the third highest mortality rate for adolescents, and are a major contributor to serious psychiatric disorders. Doctors play our part in addressing the problems, and in educating patients, but a whole community approach is what is needed. Competitions like this help, because we can get the message out to the broader community, and our winner this year is a perfect example. Our winner, I'd like to introduce her to you, is Saskia Moore. Saskia has a story to tell, and I'll let her tell it to you shortly, but let me just say that she, for seven years, suffered from anorexia and bulimia, and has come out of it with a healthier and more positive outlook on life. And I think that her own personal experience certainly added a great deal of poignancy to the message that you will see shortly, in her community service announcement. Let me say that her winning video is proof of the very personal message that I think needs to get across to the community about body image. Congratulations, Saskia, and I'll now ask Saskia to come forward, and I'll make the presentation to her.
MOORE: Hello everybody. My name is Saskia. I'm twenty one years old. I suffered from anorexia, and then bulimia for, as Kerryn said, seven years. I'd like to say I am officially over it, and I can honestly say that now, and to be honest, the final hurdle has been overcome by this competition, interestingly enough. I started, I saw this competition up at uni, and I was quite excited by it, because I thought 'oh hang on, communications student, body image', and I thought, 'hang on, this could be good because I have had anorexia and bulimia', and I thought 'hey, I have got a personal insight on this one'. So I thought about it and I came up with the idea of giving yourself permission to be who you are, and to be not only just who you are, but basically what was inside, and giving yourself permission to shine, literally. To say, 'this is me, this is who I am, I'm big, I'm small, but I am a gorgeous person inside, I've got a big heart, and that's more important than a waistline and a bustline, and, you know, how big your thighs are on any given day really'. That was basically the message I wanted to give out - that every body is gorgeous, regardless of whatever they look like, which is so not important at all.
QUESTION: Saskia, you were saying that making this ad was the final hurdle in overcoming the anorexia and bulimia. Can you expand on that a little bit.
MOORE: Yes, I was getting better from my bulimia, because I was in therapy for most of last year. I was negating uni studies and stuff, but I have actually finished. I managed to catch it all up over the holidays, and stuff. My final hurdle was I couldn't give myself permission, it sounds incredibly silly, but I couldn't give myself permission to say I am over this - I can eat what I want, I can be free in the body that I have, and feel comfortable with it. And that was a big problem for me, because I was still, although I had sort of gotten rid of the physical side of the bulimia, I hadn't really dealt with the head issues as such. Which were a lot better but I hadn't sort of finally given myself permission to say 'look, this is me, you know, take me or leave me', sort of thing. So, I sat down and I thought 'I can't give myself permission, why can't I?' So what I actually did was, sounds really silly, but it worked, I wrote out a permission note, which had a brief history of my… my name is Saskia, I have suffered from this for seven years… and I sent it out to all of my friends and all my family, this permission note, saying 'please give me permission to, you know, regain my boobs and my bottom, and just love myself for who I am'. And I got every single one of those permission notes back, which was amazing, and they all came back and said, 'look, we don't care anyway, we love you for who you are', and I went 'ohhh, so it really didn't matter that I had a size six bottom, you didn't care, right'. So, after that, once I had this permission, it was sort of an uphill thing from there, like no one matters and everyone knows now that I have got this, and that I can deal with it, so if I put on an extra two dress sizes, which I have since I've finished making that video actually, and I am perfectly happy with it, too, may I add. So, after I did that, I could then begin to make this ad, because it is giving yourself permission, letting yourself be who you want to be, and that beautiful music by Bachelor Girl, 'Permission to Shine', just seemed perfect to put in there. So, yeah, that is sort of how I came about finishing it off.
QUESTION: What would your advice be to people, particularly to young women, who were not as far ahead in the process as you, this was the last step for you, young women who are suffering anorexia or bulimia at this time, what would you say?
MOORE: It is so hard, to be honest, if you had said that to me, if I was to, if someone like me was to give myself a message a year and a half ago. I don't think I would have listened. And that is really, it is one of the major problems in a way, because it is a constant state of denial - no I am fine, I don't have this, you don't need to tell me that I am doing things wrong, that I should eat this or whatever. What I'd say to young girls is give yourself permission, it sounds ridiculous, but give yourself permission to be able to accept yourself, and say 'this is me, and I can contribute as a wonderful, and loving person to society, just by being me', not because 'I am a size four, and that is the way I define myself'. Define yourself by other things, look at yourself not from an aesthetic point, but look at who you are from inside.
PHELPS: Thank you all very much for coming today. As you can see, Saskia has really, I think, created a wonderful community service announcement, and one that will, I think, in the true sense of the word, be a community service, and we hope that it will give other young people permission to shine as well.
Ends