Embrace Your Body!

Let me just preface this post by stating that I am not the greatest writer and I will probably have many gramatical and punctuation errors, so please forgive me. But I have to get this off my chest. My life has been changed forever and hopefully what I write will make a difference in your life.

I have been at Center for Change for the last few weeks fulfilling nursing school clinical hours.
While I was at the center, I was introduced to one of the Clinical Directors, Nicole Hawkins. She has a PhD in Clinical/Counseling Psychology from USU and is a well respected and sought after speaker. I was able to attend one of her body image sessions with some of the patients at the center and I recently attended one of her lectures at UVU. Can I just tell you that I was very enlightened and with this enlightment I became outraged!

Nicoles's lecture was focused towards the media and how it has distorted our (women's) perceptions of how our bodies should look. Many of the photos that we see in fashion magazines and of celebrities are air brushed to enhance their appearance. By air brushing you can enhance any photograph. To see how this is done veiw this video made by Dove. Necks, eyes, waists, hips, any part of the body can be digitally manipulated to make the person look "perfect".

Nicole gave examples of celebrities who have had their photos manipulated to enhance their bodies. Apparently when Jennifer Aniston was working on the show "Friends", she worked out for 8 hours a day, to keep her body in what she thought was "top shape". After all of her work, it still wasn't good enough because Jennifer did a photo shoot for the cover of a popular magazine (I don't remember which one) and they ended up using her head but not her bodyand the same thing happened with Kate Winslet. They both tried to sue the responsible people, but couldn't because of some legal clause. Another example given, was when Katie Couric was introduced as the new anchor woman for the CBS Evening News. When Katie was shown the photo that was to be published, it was her photo alright, but it had been airbrushed to make her look thinner. She was upset about this and demanded that they use her original photo.

Nicole also shared some staggering figures. She said that our kids see 400-600 images per day from TV and magazines and that by the age of 12 will have seen 77, 546 commercials. All showing images of bodies, that have been manipulated, to instill in the minds of our children what the "perfect" body should look like.

This was news to me and I am outraged! If you could spend a day in a place like Center for Change and see what these patients struggle with and how their perceptions of themselves are so negative, you would be outraged too. So I share this with you, because as mothers we need to come together and make sure that we are not contributing to this distorted perception of what are bodies should look like. I hope by now we all realize that there is no such thing as the "perfect" body and that we are okay with that. Let's communicate this to our children. It is important for us to teach them to embrace their bodies and to be thankful for it no matter what. Their body is perfect for them and nobody has the right to tell them otherwise. The message to our children should be that they feel good, both physically and mentally. It is our responsibility to teach them how to properly take care of their bodies. We need to teach by example! It is important that we ourselves do not obsess over dieting or constantly point out what we think our body imperfections might me. We must teach them how to feed their minds and bodies properly. We need to serve healthy meals and snacks and fill their minds with good words. Teach them the importance of exercise by participating in it yourself. Through this process their self worth will be strong and they will be in the right frame of mind and in a good place to ward off any bad influences and situations that may suggest to them anything different. Life is to short and to magnificent for our children to be bogged down by all of this junk. It is our responsibilitiy as their mothers to teach them and to give them the power to avoid it. Let's do it!

To my 4 wonderful daughters I want to say I love you!