Friday, January 30, 2015

Body image and gender stereotyping are topics which receive quite a lot of coverage on Newsround. Here, for instance, Newsround reported on what boys and girls prefer to be when they grow up.

And in this report Natasha Devon talks to Ricky about the importance of self-esteem.

Those topics are also central to some of CBBC's My Life series of documentaries :

"I Am Leo" featured Leo, who was born a female called Lily, but who wants to be recognised as a boy in society. Leo hated looking like a girl.

10-year-old Kai is a friend of Leo's, and they play football together.

Leo: The only difference between our life and er ..

Kai: .. a boy's life

Leo: .. yeah, a born-male boy's life, is we're trapped in this awful body and we have to do loads of medical stuff.

"What's a Girl?" followed Shelby on her quest to find out what it is exactly that makes a girl a girl. Shelby, too, doesn't conform with many people's idea of a typical girl but, unlike Leo, Shelby is happy to have been born female.

Shelby: I'm a girl. But some people think I that I want to be a boy because of the way that I look. I'm really happy being a girl and my life is pretty normal. ... I like being who I am. I wouldn't change it for anything.

Shelby visits a primary school where she finds out how young children respond to gender stereotypes - for example, hair length and clothing. As an experiment the children were asked to dress up in their own choice of costume.

Although CBBC documentaries have covered children growing with in a wide range of situations, we've yet to see a programme about being lesbian, gay or bisexual. However being gay was mentioned briefly as part of an episode of Our School, broadcast last November.

LGBT History Month starts this Sunday.

No comments: