Body Activism

I just read an interesting article in Time Magazine about a new way teen girls are speaking out about unrealistic, thin body images in the media…”body activism.”

Researcher Eric Stice created the Body Project to empower high school and college students to stand up to the notion that you have to be thin to be happy or successful. Participating girls explore different media (magazines, TV shows, advertisements) and then write critiques about how women are portrayed.

From the article: “These people who promote the perfect body really don’t care about you at all,” says Kelsey Hertel, a high school junior and Body Project veteran in Eugene, Or. “They purposefully make you feel like less of a person so you’ll buy their stuff and they’ll make money.”

After critiquing negative body images in the media, Body Project participants move on to “body activism,” where they are challenged to come up with creative ways to speak out against unhealthy body images, like “slipping notes saying ‘Love your body the way it is’ into dieting books at stores like Borders and writing letters to Mattel, makers of the impossibly proportioned Barbie doll.”

According to the article, Kelsey Hertel and a friend posted signs in a school bathroom saying YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL. DON’T BE SOMEONE THAT YOU’RE NOT. BE YOURSELF.

How cool is that?

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On a similar note, Seventeen Magazine wants to empower girls to come to peace with their bodies through their Body Peace Project. This project features a Body Peace Treaty, which encourages girls to vow to do things like:

• Remember that the sun will still rise tomorrow even if I had one too many slices of pizza or an extra scoop of ice cream tonight.
• Never blame my body for the bad day I’m having.
• Stop joining in when my friends compare and trash their own bodies.
• Never allow a dirty look from someone else to influence how I feel about my appearance.
• Quit judging a person solely by how his or her body looks — even if it seems harmless — because I’d never want anyone to do that to me.

While I love the idea of this Body Peace Treaty, I have to be honest and say that I feel Seventeen Magazine is seriously guilty of sending the wrong messages to girls through the page after page of ads and articles featuring impossibly thin girls. I like that they’re trying to unite girls around embracing healthy body image, but it might mean more if they took a real stand in what they featured inside the magazine. What do you think? Visit the Body Peace Project website and see for yourself. Would love to hear your thoughts!

XOXO Debbie