Summary Of Girls, Worms And Body Image By Kate Lyman
490 Words2 Pages
Kate Lyman, the author of the article" Girls, Worms and Body Image", who is a second and third grade teacher. In the beginning of the article, She was shocked by two of her female students. Those two student were discussing they need to lose weight. That two girls were fighting over a piece of paper that held the name of a fitness video they used in gym class. This conversation recall Lyman her memories about her obsession with her own body image when she was a teenager. Lyman was very surprised and confused that why second and third grade girls would care about their weight. In order to help her students to change their mind, she decided to change her teaching content in her women’s history class.
Lyman discovered that her young students were aware of gender stereotypes from a class activity. For instance, women should be responsible for take care of their children, and take care of their home, men earn a higher salary or women are more sensitive than men. Lyman felt disappointed and realized that gender stereotypes have not changed since 1950's when she was still a child. Lyman wants to change her student's mind about the stereotypes, thus she decided to act.…show more content… They started with Barbie, as Barbie is the best friend of girls. Students quickly realized the doll are not resemble “real” women. The students said women in the reality looked totally different from a Barbie doll. Lyman went on to ask her students why the Barbie company would designed "Barbie" toll in this way, and her students answered that because men like women looks like a Barbie. They are skinny, with long legs and large chest. From this activity, Lyman wanted her students to realize the hidden messages and illusions advertisers use to sell their