Nike has teamed up with beauty brand Dove to launch “Body Confident Sport,” a set of tools for coaching 11- to 17-year-old girls to help them build their body confidence through sports. Body Confident Sport was co-developed by Nike and Dove over the course of two years in collaboration with experts — including the UK-based Centre for Appearance Research (CAR) and the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport of the University of Minnesota — based on input from nearly 2,000 adolescents across France, India, Japan, Mexico, the UK and the US. Body Confident Sport is an online open-source tool that includes coaching steps scientifically proven to improve self-esteem and body confidence in clinical trials with more than 1,200 girls, said Nike.
Girls who participate in physical activity are more likely to develop high body confidence and experience positive health benefits throughout their lives. During puberty, however, and the body changes that go with it, girls often feel self-conscious about their appearance and vulnerable to judgment. Sports environments, both on and off the field, can even amplify this problem. Nearly half (45%) of teenage girls globally drop out of sport, twice the rate of boys. According to new research from Nike and Dove, the biggest reason girls drop out is the impact that the sports environment can have on their body confidence and self-esteem. Coaches are uniquely positioned to help positively influence girls’ perceptions of their bodies. Indeed, three out of four girls (74%) said their coach was the reason they felt more confident, Nike and Dove’s research has shown. The key notion is to shift attention from what their bodies look like to what their bodies can do, explained Nike. The Body Confident Sport online coaching tool is designed to reduce self-objectification and increase body-esteem.
The coaching tool is available, free of charge, at bodyconfidentsport.com.
