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New Online Magazine to Urge CSUN Students to ‘Get REAL’

The messages are everywhere in the media: “If you were only thinner, you’d be happy.” “If you had the right muscle tone, your life would be great.” People are inundated with messages about the “ideal” body image.

To add a dose of reality to the conversation, students from Cal State Northridge’s Department of Journalism have teamed up with students from CSUN’s Department of Health Sciences and peer educators from the university’s Joint Advocates on Disordered Eating (JADE) in University Counseling Services to create an online magazine, REAL-part of an overall information “tool kit”-that promotes positive body images and healthy lifestyles.

“I know that the kit we created will provide students with the same empowerment I now feel when I look at media messages,” said journalism senior Karalyn Gabrielsen. “Along with getting the word out to CSUN students, our goal is to reveal the tie between media literacy and eating disorders to college students across America in hopes that they will benefit from the research we have gathered and the materials we have developed.”

The university will celebrate the launching of REAL on Tuesday, Oct. 27, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Matador Walk, located near the center of the campus at 18111 Nordhoff St. in Northridge.

The “Get REAL” event will feature a variety of activities-from games to free food and giveaways-designed to draw attention to the issues covered by the webzine and raise awareness about eating disorders by providing students with information and resources to help them or people they know who may be suffering with an eating disorder.

REAL, part of the university’s Body Media Image (BMI) Project, is designed to be a media literacy tool kit that includes fact sheets about eating disorders, first-person stories, tips about healthy eating and DVDs produced by students. One of the first DVDs the students produced, “Media Static,” contains interviews with CSUN students about how they feel about their bodies and the media’s pressure to be thin and have the “perfect” body. The video is being used by JADE peer educators in their campus-wide presentations.

“Media literacy is a cornerstone of the BMI Project,” said journalism professor Bobbie Eisenstock, co-coordinator of the project. “The goal is to use media to raise awareness of body image and eating disorders while helping students critically analyze the thousands of media messages and images they see, hear and read every day that can make it hard for them to feel good about their bodies and can lead to weight and food issues.”

Gabrielsen said working on REAL has changed the way she views the media.

“The knowledge I have gained about eating disorders and media literacy has given me self confidence and a sense of empowerment,” she said. “I no longer view stick-thin models in magazines as something I should strive to be, but rather as altered versions of what real people look like. Instead of looking at these models and saying I should lose five more pounds, I find myself pointing out which parts of the image have been visibly photoshopped.”

The project was the brainchild of Eisenstock, who approached Ellen Mayer, director of JADE in University Counseling Services, about creating a university “tool kit” for the JADE team. The original idea was to update the material JADE peer educators use for their campus presentations. The plan grew to include a partnership with health sciences professor Gretta Madjzoob and her students to create curriculum materials that underscore a holistic approach to eating, culture and coping that involved media education.

“The interdisciplinary mix of students led to creating a unique resource for college students about a critical public health issue that affects them,” Eisenstock said. “There’s nothing else around like this. Our students made this happen for the CSUN community.”

Mayer agreed. “The BMI tool kit has provided an innovative way to increase the effectiveness of the JADE presentations because the materials are so student-friendly and target their key concerns,” she said. “We’re excited to launch the webzine, and plan to make it available to colleges and universities across the country.”

The webzine REAL can be found at www.csun.edu/real.