The Body Positive, a nonprofit based in Berkeley, California, is working to dispel negative associations with body types that do not fit the media’s beauty standards.
The nonprofit holds that because this planet’s people are diverse, beauty is diverse, and we deserve to see and experience all different types. This outlook can help prevent harmful eating disorders and risky cosmetic procedures, according to Elizabeth Scott, co-founder of The Body Positive.
“TV and social media represent our very sick culture,” Scott, a psychotherapist and the nonprofit’s director of training, told The Epoch Times. “Recognize and own your own beauty, rather than trying to attain a social caste ideal of beauty.”
According to the organization, the beauty and weight loss industries use heavily photoshopped images of people in ads and on TV, leading people to desire an unrealistic look and fail to appreciate their own unique beauty.
Pursuit of a narrow beauty ideal can lead people to develop eating disorders or get potentially dangerous procedures like weight loss surgery, breast implants, and liposuction.
Scott said that in her experience of treating eating disorders, she’s seen two people die of anorexia.
Some people who start down the road of restrictive eating become compelled to continue losing weight. In Scott’s experience, this trend is hard to reverse, which is why prevention is so important.
She said, “The ideals of beauty may not be realistic for your body.”
A research article published in PLOS Global Public Health found evidence from 50 studies in 17 countries indicating that social media usage led to body image concerns, eating disorders or disordered eating outcomes, poor mental health via social comparison, thin or fit ideal internalization, and self-objectification.
Scott said that people can remedy dissatisfaction with their bodies by developing five skills: reclaiming health, practicing intuitive self-care, cultivating self-love, declaring one’s own authentic beauty, and building community.
These skills are discussed in the book “Embody: Learning to Love Your Unique Body (and Quiet That Critical Voice!),” written by Connie Sobczak, co-founder and executive director of The Body Positive.
Research from Stanford University found that The Body Positive’s leadership course resulted in improvements in terms of participants’ feelings of guilt and body satisfaction. The changes were still detected in participants eight months later.
Scott said that how we experience living in our bodies is powerfully affected by our social location and our social environment.
“When the environment is socially disrupted, when there’s violence directed against you, when there’s violations, when there’s a lack of autonomy and freedom and self-care, people tend to have a screwed-up relationship to their bodies,” she said.
According to Scott, this can show up as anorexia, bulimia, compulsive overeating, body hatred, body dysmorphia, self-harm, or suicidal thoughts.
She said The Body Positive’s approach is to train people to transform the environments they are in, including middle schools, high schools, colleges, social groups, and sports teams.
“If you are constantly distracted by noise about what’s wrong with your body, it’s going to erode your quality of life tremendously,” she said, noting that it’s important to have a functional relationship with your body. You don’t even have to love it, she added, you can just be OK with it.
Empowered Point of View
Jessica Diaz France, a board member for The Body Positive and a social worker in the mental health field, told The Epoch Times that The Body Positive helped her at a critical time.
According to Diaz France, critical body comments from friends and family can be more harmful than the media’s messages.
“It’s often the people that we love the most or that we’re the closest to who can do a lot of damage by showing how much they hate their own body and saying that around you or commenting on your body,” she said.
Diaz France said she first joined a support group for The Body Positive 23 years ago, as a freshman in high school. She noted that the group provided a space for students to talk about their bodies, body image, and eating habits without judgment. The group also encouraged them to love their bodies.
After that life-changing experience, Diaz France has been working with the organization ever since. She said she’s helped as a peer educator, workshop facilitator, and curriculum contributor.
Diaz France said she started struggling with body image in elementary school, when she read magazines that talked about exercise and beauty, pushing a narrow ideal.
She noted that as a Puerto Rican and Filipino woman, she has broad shoulders. Because she came from a different ethnicity and culture than her school peers, she felt that her body was different.
“I definitely was having thoughts about my body, about it being different and not as good as other people,” she said. She has since come to understand that people from different parts of the world can come in different shapes—and that those shapes are beautiful too.
“I’ve been really fortunate to have [The Body Positive] in my life since I was a teenager,” she said. “I learned such valuable skills that were able to carry me throughout my life in really important transitions, like high school, and college, and raising a family.”
Susan Lopeman, a resident of El Dorado County in Northern California, told The Epoch Times that she’s had to deal with a lot of negative comments and mental abuse about her weight throughout her life.
She said she would try things to lose weight, but it was never good enough for her ex-husband.
Also, when she attended a party just after having her first child in the 1980s, she said she was introduced to a lady who hit her stomach and said, “You haven’t lost it all, have you?”
Lopeman said that after enduring a lot of negative comments and what she went through with her ex-husband, it took her a long time to build up her self-confidence.
Now if people say anything negative, “I just take it with a grain of salt, because I know what I’m worth inside,” she said.
She mentioned that her biggest supporter in life was always her dad. She said he would tell her that as long as she was happy with how she felt and how she looked, that should be the most important thing.
“My feeling is that women should be able to not have to constantly worry about their weight. If they’re comfortable with what their weight is, then that should be no problem,” she said.
For Lopeman, finding her worth helped her deal with incidents later in life. Once, she met up with an old friend from school, and they went to In-N-Out Burger together. She ordered a root beer, but he thought she should have ordered water.
“All the way home, in his truck, he belittled me. He said, ‘Why did you order a root beer?’” she said.
She added that you can decide whether you want to let that person bully you. She said the only person who can bully you is yourself, inside, and she’s gotten past that.
“I am not going to be one to judge anybody. It doesn’t look good, it doesn’t sound good, and I don’t want to be rude,” she said. “Don’t just look at somebody and say, ‘Wow, she’s overweight,’ or ‘He’s overweight,’ without knowing the consequences of what they’re going through.”
She said she doesn’t try to go along with what society dictates.
“This is my life, my body, myself, and I’m just going to do what I feel is right for me,” she said.
