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Advocate: Claire Mysko, author and co-founder of Inside Beauty
Websites: Inside Beauty, ClaireMysko.com
About: Claire’s outreach program, Inside Beauty, gives girls and women a reality check on the messages they receive from the media and their peers. She works with model and recovered bulimic Magali Amadei to speak at schools and conferences about eating disorder prevention and media literacy. Claire is also the author of You’re Amazing! A No Pressure Guide to Being Your Best Self. She lives in Brooklyn.

Respect Rx: What inspired you to get involved in girl advocacy?
Claire: I suffered with disordered eating for many years, starting in middle school. My work in body image has a lot to do with wanting to use my own personal experience to do something positive. Middle school stands out in my mind as one of the most difficult and challenging times in my life and that’s also when I started my first diet. So I feel very closely connected to that age range. It’s been a wonderful opportunity to write a book targeted at teens and tweens because I think girls need a lot of support at that time.

What strikes you as the most pressing issue facing girls today?
One of the common issues with body image and disordered eating is perfectionism, and my book is about empowering girls to feel good about who they are. With disordered eating, there are many different factors—media influence, family influence, peer pressure to be thin, and research shows there are some biological components as well. So I don’t think we can say one particular thing causes eating disorders. The solution has to be a holistic approach. There’s so much pressure on girls to be perfect, and a big part of that is tied up with how they feel about their looks. Girls need to have strong support systems, to be able to reach out to the caring adults in their lives, and to approach media messages with a critical eye.

A lot of girls feel that they will be happier if they’re thinner or have the right look. They spend so much time and energy on it and sometimes put their physical health at risk. We have girls skipping meals on a regular basis. I use the term “disordered eating” because I hear many girls say they’re not anorexic—but their approach to food, weight and eating is not healthy. The quality of their lives is impacted by their obsession with food, weight and the desire to fit a physical mold. In magazines, anorexia is always attached to a picture of a very emaciated woman. Yet there are so many people who have problems and you would never know it by looking at them.

What advocacy accomplishment are you most proud of?
What’s most rewarding to me is to be able to hear girls’ experiences and talk to them one-on-one. I interviewed a lot of girls for the book, and being able to give them a forum to express themselves is so important. Once you put these issues on the table and say it’s OK to talk about them, it opens the doors for others and builds connections between girls. Girls find it very comforting to know they’re not alone.

If you could talk to yourself as a young girl, what would you say?
Give yourself a break more often. Don’t be so hard on yourself. You don’t have to be perfect all the time. In fact, that fear of making mistakes is so limiting. There’s such a value in taking healthy risks in life. As I got older, I learned that more. The fear of not being perfect can really rob you of some great experiences and exciting new adventures. You might mess up and you might not be the best at everything all the time, but you can have a lot of fun and learn a lot along the way.

Comments (1) | by Courtney on August 11

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