Overcoming Body Image Issues

Bodies are neither good nor bad. Body image, however, can’t say the same. Good, bad, or somewhere in between, body image isn’t really about your body at all. It’s about the thoughts, feelings, and perceptions you have about it. Positive thoughts and feelings? Good body image. Negative thoughts and feelings? Bad body image.  For most…

You’ve probably heard the saying about beach body images. The one that goes like this: If you want a beach body, go to the beach. With your body. Now you have a beach body! Sigh. If only we were all socialized to feel that eeezy breezy. But we’re not. We feel self conscious. If we…

Bikini-prepping, Keto dieting, scales, tape measures, photo filters, celebrity icons, and constant self-evaluation in the company of a mirror. We may know it’s not healthy, yet somehow society has developed a collective “not-surprised” numbness to girls and body image issues.  But what about guys?  Why don’t we hear about male body image issues the way…

Helicopter parents, listen up! You may risk hearing, “I hate you!” followed by a slamming door as your teenager storms away. But this is an important credential to add to your (so your child thinks) overprotective parenting resumé. Social media and body image research are on screen-time overdrive for kids. And you ought to be…

You’re aware. Of darn near everything. It doesn’t matter if it’s outside of you or inside of you, it doesn’t get by you. And by golly, that goes for your body, too. Thanks to Diet Culture, feeling badly about your own body is more common than not. Add in the heightened awareness and depth of…

She wiggles and giggles and waves and kicks, catching fingers and toes for chewing as they pass her angelic face. She delights in the perfection of herself and the perfection of being alive. There is nothing to improve. “Body image,” in the purity of her infancy, isn’t something to be learned, let alone grappled with…

The reflection you see in the mirror may seem straightforward for a quick passing. “Good hair day,” “bad hair day,” “looking good,” “just not feeling it.” But, in truth, what you see is more than visual. It’s deeper and more complex than that. Your “acceptance” or “rejection” of a moment’s reflection in a mirror is…

Whatever your child’s age or gender, body image is a topic that belongs in your daily teaching and communication. If body image is a sensitive or confusing topic for you as an adult, imagine how it can impact a child’s impressionable mind. Information about body image in the media will help you become more comfortable…

Open up any social media app, and you’ll see it – in ads, in videos, in your friends’ posts and photos. Turn on the TV or open a magazine, and you’ll see it – in commercials, in programs, in fashion and makeup ads. You really can’t escape the countless normalized examples of how media affects…

Healthy body image role models are tough to find, let alone meet. Especially in Diet Culture. Diet Culture is a system of false beliefs that we’re taught. Despite their glaring untruths, they’re almost universally endorsed in Western culture — so much so that we often can’t distinguish fact from myth. Diet Culture is dangerous. It…