Morning, noon and night, we are surrounded by the ‘looking perfect’ culture, whether the focus is on flattering clothes, diets or fitness plans you need to get that ‘ideal’ body and look.
hatever the perfect body is, we all want one, and have no doubt about that I include myself, even if I should know better at this age of my life.
But, of course, nothing is perfect, no matter what social media tells you.
The images that float about online of what are termed ‘perfect bodies’ in bikinis depress me, and then I remember that they are edited inside and out to create a perfect image. I know that now, but at 18 I did not.
With age comes confidence, hopefully, and an understanding that there there is no such thing as perfect.
That is why a Leaving Cert question is causing consternation.
Stefanie Preissner took to Twitter to criticise the Home Economics question: “It’s absolutely ridiculous that the Leaving Cert Home Ec paper asked ‘discuss how colour can be used to flatter body size and shape’”, she said.
"As if thousands of students sitting exams don’t ALREADY have eating disorders and body sensitivities. The question is basically ‘how to look thin’.”
The question, in essence, asked what colour flatters body size and shape, black being the answer, apparently.
There has been a shift away from diet culture to a more positive look at living a healthy life and creating a positive body image. We've walked a tight rope between encouraging a healthy weight in light of an increasing obesity issue in Ireland while not creating an obsession with the ‘perfect’ body. Great strides were being made, one would have thought through education primarily.
This is what makes the Leaving Cert Home Economics question more depressing as it immediately sends out the idea that there is value in finding clothes that ‘flatter your body size and shape’. Why exactly do you have to do this?
For me the world ‘flatter’ is where it went wrong – who decides that we need to flatter ourselves? The fashion world, and the models and online promoters who support it.
The whole fashion world is built on the premise of flattering ourselves which actually means looking perfect or what we perceive as perfect, a perception that mainly centres on weight.
In defence of the question, the State Examination Board required students to show their understanding of colour as an element of design and how this can be used to flatter body shape and size. It is about the fashion and, let's be fair, the fashion world is about making us look good.
But who decides what good is, and why do we have to flatter ourselves? It could have been phrased differently and still kept the essence of the question. How about something along the lines of ‘What role does colour play in clothes design?’
Speaking to The Kerryman this week, Chrissie Kelly, principal of Presentation Secondary School in Tralee and herself a Home Economics teacher, said it was a question that was, potentially, quite damaging to students out there who suffer with body-image issues.
"I'm a Home Economics teacher myself, and I was just do disappointed and dismayed to see a question like that appear, especially with what the students are going through now after COVID and the mental-health issues they have...then to have this question there in front of them to compound it, it was just something that would have caused a lot of distress for the girls", she said.
She is right.
The question is, as Stephanie also said, about how to look thin or at least how to ‘flatter’ yourself if you don't already fit in with the perfect perception.
We are all perfect in our own way, so flatter yourself by telling yourself just that – you are already perfect!
It won’t be the first time or the last that Leaving Cert has been criticised for its line of questioning, but public debate around this issue might lead to more consideration of the effect these questions may have on the student population. And, maybe, it will be another step in the right direction as we continue to move away from an ideal image that can't be realised.
