I’m not very optimistic. Particularly when the Chair of said National Body Image Advisory Group (Mia Freedman) has been taken to task repeatedly on her attitude to bodies outside of a very narrow band of what she considers “normal”.

Not while the “guidelines” are “voluntary”. Not while the aforementioned chair used the line:

“Use models that are clearly of a healthy weight.”

Rather than the statement issued by the advisory group which said

“Designers are being asked not to hire models with a dangerously low body mass index and also not to hire excessively muscular male models.”

Not while the Minister responsible for that portfolio, Kate Ellis MP, poses provocatively attired in Grazia and says she represents “real women”.

As a fellow Aussie fat acceptance blogger said recently, in our country, body image is for women who think they are fat, not women who actually are.

Personally I believe it is a whole pile of tokenism that while pieces of it do help, there are too many other factors they condone that cancel it all out.