Promoting self confidence in teenagers

Following on from my post on Friday (what do you mean “what post?”  It is here  Ranty Friday.  Go read it.  I will wait for you to come back) where I had a full blown rant about a teacher’s attitude I thought I would follow it up with the exact opposite.    Something that just by its very nature promotes positivity in body image.

I am waffling.  Let me rein it in and explain

I am all about promoting positive body image and not “doing down” anybody on the basis of how they look.   I think everybody has the right to feel good about themselves, and in fact should feel good about themselves.   On the whole I don’t about myself, but I am a grown up.   Teenagers and young children, are not grown ups and need as much support and encouragement to love their bodies as is possible.

For all sorts of reasons.   Primarily because the media does all it can to tell us that anything over a size 10 is obese and not worthy of attention.   That we must look at the pictures of the latest celeb who is back to her pre baby delivery weight within four minutes of delivery.   That the DVD of the season is the soap star who was an “enormous size 16” is now the smallest they have ever been and will share with us “their secrets”.

And secondly because if we respect our own bodies we will respect the boundaries of our bodies and that others cannot tell us what to do with it.   Be that smoke, put drugs in them, sleep around etc etc.

With all that in mind you can imagine how excited I was to hear about a new product being launched by the amazingly talented Julia Boggio called “Innocent and Wild”.    Julia is a very talented photographer (and dancer at her own wedding.  Google her) who has a studio in Wimbledon.     Earlier this year Julia hit on the idea that she believes is unique in the UK.   A fashion shoot for teenagers in the safety of her studio.    The result being they get the most incredible set of photographs, are not exploited by some creep in a room above a takeaway restaurant, and in the process have THE most incredible experience.

Then a few weeks later they see photographs of themselves looking fabulous.   But importantly, naturally fabulous.    And crucially, themselves.    They won’t be covered in make up and have their hair style changed, they will be them, and the photographer will capture them being them and looking gorgeous.

So when they have a down day they can look at the pictures and feel good about themselves.

You can imagine my delight then when I was invited to take my two teenage girls to try out the Innocent and Wild Photoshoot for ourselves.   I will blog about it more over the next few weeks because I want to share the incredible photos we took away with us.

My girls are confident in themselves, without being arrogant but they are both very individual and the only nerves they had ahead of the day were those of “I am not wearing a dress”.    They really needn’t have worried.   They were told again and again this was about them.   So C who is “not really into fashion” and E who is “into goth clothing” and what she calls “death music” brought along a selection of their own clothes and then over the afternoon had their hair and make up done gradually as they worked through several different settings for photos.

They say pictures speak a thousand words so have a look at these

How stunning?

As I say, I will blog about this more in the next week or two but I wanted to share these now.  If you are thinking of what to get a difficult to buy for teen for Christmas, can I really suggest you look at getting a gift voucher for one of these sessions.   Not only is it great fun but the feeling they will leave with will stay with them for a long time.  Probably for as long as they as keep looking at the pictures.

For more information on Julia Boggio studios all the contact info is here:

Julia Boggio Studios

Innocent and Wild Photography

Innocent and Wild on Facebook

Innocent and Wild on Twitter