Redefining beauty at North High School

Two teachers at North High School facilitated a three-session initiative last month to address girls’ self worth, a program that is in its fourth year at the school.

“All girls at any age have body issues,” said Vanessa Coppeto, who teaches home and career skills. Social media and sexualized marketing continue to compound the issue, she said. Her co-facilitator, special education teacher Laura Byrne, agreed. She noted the impact of new technology on young girls’ views of themselves.

“They have the ability to make themselves look different to other people now, which is scary,” Byrne said of photo-editing websites like Instagram.

Coppeto and Byrne decided to bring the Beautiful Me program to North after Coppeto read a book by Jackie Hance, the mother of three young girls killed in a car crash on the Taconic State Parkway in July 2009. The Hance family started a foundation to provide educational programs for children of all ages and abilities as a way to honor their daughters.

The program’s three sessions focused on redefining beauty, acknowledging each girl’s unique qualities and accepting compliments — something that women of all ages struggle with, Byrne said. The foundation trained teachers to implement the program, which Coppeto and Byrne said was an eye-opening experience.

During the training, teachers were instructed to say, “I am beautiful,” as well as reveal their favorite body part from the neck down.

“As women, that’s difficult,” Byrne said. Many female faculty members at the session deflected compliments and had difficulty speaking in a way that made them vulnerable, Byrne and Coppeto said.

“I don’t think it’s just an eighth grade issue,” said Coppeto. According to the Hance Family Foundation, only 2 percent of women believe they are beautiful. Byrne is 54 and Coppeto is 37, and neither said they remembered having access to a program like their’s when they were in high school.

“There wasn’t even really special education at that time,” Byrne said.

Coppeto, who graduated from North in 1995, said there was very little emphasis on the notion of inner beauty or self-esteem. She said that reactions from students who participate in her program indicate that it is an area that needs more attention.

“What we’re doing now is right on point,” Byrne said, adding that her 25-year-old daughter still struggles with body image issues. She and Coppeto said that their roles as parents affected their decision to bring the program to the school.

Coppeto said that in her experience, boys, who also participated in the program, also suffer with body image issues but are much more reluctant to talk about them. Boys were instructed to compare descriptions of themselves with descriptions of how others perceive them, which Coppeto said was a valuable exercise.

Boys and girls have participated separately, but both teachers said they were interested in combining the genders in future sessions. Additionally, the Hance Family Foundation has a seminar designed for parents, which Coppeto hopes to bring to the district as well.

The program is run twice a year at North — one for each half-semester course that Coppeto teaches — but many students have told the teachers that they wish it occurred more frequently. Coppeto said that some students have expressed their wish that there was an entire class devoted to the topic.

“You are such a unique person who isn’t afraid to share,” said one eighth-grader, Aaliya, reading a compliment from one of her peers. She smiled. “You are beautiful.”