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Self Esteem Assembly

Ages: This assembly has been designed for lower school years (ages 11-14) however feel free to adapt it for older ones!

Items Needed: Laptop, Projector, Speakers, Dove: Fabricating Beauty Video – YouTube link, PowerPoint (Click to download)

Aims: To explore the idea of self esteem and think about what the world tells us and how we can go against that and feel good about who we are.

 

As students come in: Have ‘Everybody’s Free to wear sunscreen’ by Baz Lurman playing

Introduction: Introduce yourself, what you do etc.

Explain: This morning we’re going to be thinking about self esteem and body image…can anyone give me some suggestions of what they might mean? – the way we look, the way we feel about ourselves, how much we like ourselves.

Our self esteem and body image are things based on how we feel about ourselves…whether we like ourselves or not…whether we find it easy to find good things about ourselves or not and whether we like the way we look or not

A lot of the things we see in the media that tell us how we should be in particular with looks are fake…lots of the photos we see are airbrushed to look especially good or sometimes especially bad.

Game: We’re going to play a game called ‘Guess the airbrush’. I have a series of airbrushed photos of Radio 1 presenters and you need to guess which one is fake.

Play the game

Explain: I don’t know about you but they felt pretty easy to me and maybe that’s because when we’re consciously looking for something that’s fake we know what a real person looks like.

A lot of the pictures we see in magazines and on the internet of celebrities we desire to look like are fake and sometimes the changes are really small on their own but when all done together make a big difference…have a look at this Dove advert from a few years back.

Video: Dove Advert – Fabricating Beauty

Explain: ‘No wonder our perception of beauty is distorted’

Often what we see when we look in the mirror or see a photo of us is distorted, it’s a bit like one of those fairground mirrors…It’s not the real thing it’s simply our perception and too often we worry about the way we look when really we don’t need to.

Here’s a few quotes about beauty and looks…

Use the quotes from PowerPoint

Explain: There’s some good advice and some good things for us to take on board in those quotes. As a Christian I believe everyone is worthwhile because we are God’s creation and all those other quotes give us a real reason to like ourselves

We need to make sure that we focus on the good things about ourselves and that can be really difficult…it’s almost cool when someone tells us we look good to play it down and say something like ‘not really…I just threw this on’ or something but actually we should remember those comments and cling onto them.

We need to remember that a lot of what we see in magazines or on the internet simply isn’t true…people don’t always look as the picture says and likewise we don’t always look the same way we see ourselves in the mirror.

And we can help each other to feel good too and I want to challenge you as you go today and it’s a really simple challenge…I want you to compliment 2 people by the end of the day.

It might be someone in your class has got their hair done or someone plays really well in games or it might even be your brother, sister, Mum or Dad when you get home but I’d like you to give it a go…let’s tell people what’s good about them and help each other to feel good about ourselves.