The six girls sitting in the church basement come here every Thursday to learn the 101’s of sewing and pattern making, but tonight they are in for a very different lesson.

“Do any of you watch the media or watch TV and say ‘I want to be that person and if I don’t dress like her I don’t feel good about myself?’” asks Kerstin Collett, who leads the class in Holy Cross Church in Chicago’s Back of the Yards.

A resounding “noooooooo, no, no, no,” reverberates across the room.

Today the sewing machines have been put away and instead drawn on the board are three shapes: the hourglass, the triangle and the inverted triangle. They represent the variety of shapes that women come in, and Collett hopes they will provide a frame of reference for the girls to categorize their own figures.

Measuring tapes are brought out and the students, ages 12 to 16, take their measurements in preparation for the patterns they will create for themselves. No sizes and no brands, just their ideas and their bodies.

A growing population at risk

While these girls are adamant that the allure of stick-thin models has no hold on them, their age and demographic tell a different story.

The 2000 U.S. Census shows that the largest group of minority girls is Latinas ages 5 to 17. And according to the Center for Disease Control’s 2007 national Youth Risk Behavior Survey of grades nine through 12, Latino students were the most likely to go 24 hours without eating to lose weight or to keep from gaining weight.

This is even larger than shown in a 1999 study by the National Coalition of Hispanic Health and Human Services Organizations, which showed that 46 percent of Latinas reported to having been on a diet, compared with 52 percent of non-Latino white girls, 45 percent of Asian Americans and 38 percent of African Americans.

Latinas also have the highest rate of attempted suicide among youths.

The CDC shows that 14 percent of Latina students in grades nine through 12 reported having attempted suicide, compared with 7.7 percent of white girls and 9.9 percent of black girls.

Jenifer Waite Wollenburg, a lead experiential therapist at Rogers Memorial Hospital in Milwaukee who exclusively treats patients with eating disorders, said she is seeing an increasing number of Latino men and women coming in for treatment. She added that the statistics on suicide are important because when dealing with eating disorders “you are also dealing with depression and anxiety.”

Jenny Cervantes, 16, tries to assure Collett that she and the other five girls sitting in the room have a very different outlook on themselves and the value they place on weight. “It’s all in your mind, we think with our heads,” Cervantes says.

But experts said that what often comes out of girls’ mouths is not necessarily what they believe.
“Kids learn what is the line to use in their peer groups,” said Diane E. Levin, a professor of early childhood education at Wheelock College in Massachusetts, and the co-author of “So Sexy So Soon: The New Sexualized Childhood and How Parents Can Protect Their Kids.”

As Collett explains the different types of figures, Adriana Roman, 13, asks: “Is there a rectangle shape -- for people that are big in every way?”

Once the measuring tapes come out, Collett goes over the three most important dimensions they will need: bust, waist and hips.

Grisel Rangel, 16, retreats into a corner and directs her friend to create a human shield. With the physique of a string bean, Rangel is visibly dismayed about having to measure her bust.

“Flat, flat, flat,” she says, shaking her head.

Theodore Weltzin, medical director of eating disorder services at Rogers Memorial Hospital, said, “It is shortsighted to think that people who live in our society are not susceptible to these consumer driven messages.”

More than simple sewing

While the class began as a simple sewing 101 course financed by a portion of a larger grant awarded to Holy Cross by the state, it has become much more than just learning the basics.

Angie Kolacinski, program director for Holy Cross, said she hopes the class will teach the girls to celebrate their bodies in a healthy way and know what looks good on their figures.

“The important thing is to stay positive. Most girls don’t have a positive body image,” Kolacinski said. “It is important to work with what you have and learn to enhance your best features and feel good about yourself.”

While it is hard to know if any of the girls who participate in the class have deeply rooted issues with their bodies, the fact that they are confronting the reality of their shape as well as gaining skills in the process holds incredible value, Levin said.

“Sewing is a good antidote to the second-hand experience,” said Levin, who believes that children are being provided with fewer and fewer first-hand experiences (think fast food and prepared food).

Beyond the process of taking something from conception to completion, Levin said developing skills and interests provide an effective barrier against self-destructive thoughts.

“We must try to help children develop a broad range of interests and skills so that these [negative] thoughts are a smaller proportion of what is in their minds,” Levin said.

Knowing your shape

As the measuring continues, some girls peel off layers while others remain fully clothed. Obstructing wrinkles are smoothed and sagging pants are hiked as they run their hands over the peaks and valleys of their developing figures.

In addition to the positive spin-offs of well-fitting clothes and the skill it takes to make them, sewing can act as a form of therapy that experts say is connected to cultivating a more positive self-image.

“Art therapy and experiential therapy is helpful for body image because it puts people in a situation where they have to see their body image and how it relates to self image and self perception,” Weltzin said.

Wollenburg, the experiential therapist who works with eating disorder patients’ ages eight to 18, says experiential art therapy is critical to the recovery process and developing a healthy self-perception.

For all of her patients, Wollenburg has them participate in a three-phase, life-size body tracing exercise that involves integrating their perceived self-image with their actual image, an important reconciliation.

Wollenburg has eating disorder patients create a life-size drawn outline of their body based entirely on how they imagine themselves. She calls this a “full-perception” drawing.

The second phase of this process is another life-size drawing in which the patient draws half her body as she imagines it and Wollenburg draws an actual trace of the other half. The perception side is then matched with the accurate trace so the patient can compare the imagined image with reality.

The final phase is a full trace done by Wollenburg. She hopes that by this phase the patient is ready to confront the full reality of their shape.

In many ways what the girls at Holy Cross Church are doing by measuring themselves, creating patterns specific to their bodies, and then constructing garments tailor made for them, mirrors Wollenburg’s exercise.

Kolacinski said the class’s primary goal is to teach the girls to “stay positive about [body image] and learn how to observe those things. As well as ask themselves, ‘what kind of lines do I need?’”

Not those belonging to Tyra Banks.