“OK, children, does anyone have a question?” the TV show’s host, Jannik Schow, asked. Only a few in the audience of 11 to 13-year-olds raised their hands. “Remember, you can’t do anything wrong,” he said. “There are no bad questions.”
You can’t blame the children if their thoughts were elsewhere. On a stage before them in a heated studio in Copenhagen stood five adults in bathrobes. There was a brief moment of silence, as faces turned serious. Having discussed it for days before in school, the children knew what was coming next. Schow gave a little nod, and the adults cast off their robes.
Facing the children, and the cameras, they stood completely naked, like statues, with their hands and arms folded behind their backs.
And so began a recording of the latest episode of an award-winning Danish children’s programme, Ultra Strips Down, which is shown on Ultra, the on-demand children’s channel of the national broadcaster, DR The topic today: skin and hair.
The show’s producers say the programme is meant as an educational tool to fight body shaming and encourage body positivity. And so first reluctantly, later enthusiastically, the children from the Orestad School in Copenhagen asked the adults questions like: “At what age did you grow hair on the lower part of your body?” “Do you consider removing your tattoos?” “Are you pleased with your private parts?”
One of the adults, Martin, answered that he had never had “negative thoughts” about his private parts. Another adult, also named Martin, admitted that when he was young he had worried about size. “But the relationship with myself has changed over time,” he said. With serious looks on their faces, the children nodded.
Schow, 29, who helped develop the concept of the show after a producer came up with the idea, said the point was also to counter the daily bombardment of young people with images of perfect — unrealistic — bodies. The adults are not actors, but volunteers.
“This is how we educate our children,” said Sofie Münster, a nationally recognised expert in “Nordic Parenting”. “We show them reality as it is.”
Asked during the programme on skin and hair why she decided to take part, one of the adults, Ule, 76, said she wanted to show the children that perfect bodies were rare and that what they see on social media is often misleading. “On Facebook or Instagram, many people are fashion models,” she said. “Us here, we have ordinary bodies. I hope you will understand that normal bodies look like this,” she told the audience, pointing at her naked self.
Shame of being imperfect comes from social media, Schow said. “Ninety per cent of the bodies you see on social media are perfect, but that is not how 90 per cent of the world looks,” he said. “We have extra fat, or hair, or pimples. We want to show children from an early age that this is fine.”
The recorded episodes feature adults with different body types — white, Black, fat, thin, short, tall, old and young. There was John, a person with dwarfism, and Muffe, a man who had small horns implanted under the skin of his bald head. Complete inclusiveness is one of the show’s key objectives, which is why the children were also introduced to Rei, who is transgender, had a vasectomy and testosterone treatment.
After the show, three children sat cross-legged in the grass outside the TV studio to discuss the experience.
“It was funny,” said Theodore Knightley, 11. “I liked the advice they gave us.” Sonya Chakrabarthy Geckler, 11, said she hadn’t been sure what to expect. But, she said, she “felt more confident about her own body now”.
New York Times News Service
