In a culture obsessed with and driven by dieting, plastic surgery and conformity, the beauty ideal women and men alike are expected to strive for becomes increasingly narrow and unattainable.
With modern image-altering technology, advertising campaigns can foster misleading representations of true beauty and fail to deliver an accurate portrayal of the average woman or man. Love Your Body Day is a nationwide campaign striving to change individuals’ perceptions of beauty to encompass a diverse range of ambassadors of beauty, starting with their own bodies and selves.
Lauren Hickman, SMU Dining Services’ registered dietitian, believes that self-love, respect and the acceptance of your “temple” produce the foundation for a healthy outlook and lifestyle.
“It’s time we realize that there is not one ‘perfect’ body so that we can go on living our lives instead of attempting to attain the unattainable,” Hickman said.
This week, SMU is extending Love Your Body Day into a week-long series of events to challenge the notion that a woman or man’s value is measured through an ability to mold to society’s ever-changing standard of beauty.
The Love Your Body Committee is represented by the Women’s Center, the Health Center, the Dedman Center for Lifetime Sports and the Umphrey Lee Center, with each component focused on a different aspect of what it means to be beautiful. Speakers, presentations and exhibitions will be held across campus throughout the week to ensure that the majority of the student body is impacted in some form or another.
Women’s Center Director Karen Click is confident that this week’s events will encourage a reevaluation of what it means to maintain a healthy body image.
“It’s a week focused on celebrating our bodies being proud of our bodies, and accepting our bodies, because we spend so much of our time criticizing our bodies and being ashamed of them,” Click said.
One method the committee has implemented is covering the mirrors in campus bathrooms in alternating buildings throughout the week to shock students, faculty and staff into realizing how automatic it is to evaluate and critique one’s reflection without even realizing it.
Lisa Joyner, SMU’s health educator, explained the project’s intent to emphasize the beauty of the person over just the image in the mirror.
“We don’t want students to look in the mirror and ask am I pretty, am I fat, do I look right or whatever the issue may be,” Joyner said. “We want you to learn to love your body and
love yourself.”
In addition to this development, life-size cutouts of students and faculty members have been scattered around Hughes-Trigg, displaying signs “I love my body because” with individual personal messages. The Dedman Center for Lifetime Sports will also be hosting a speaker to confront the issue of loving your body through disease, as well as a resource for athletes to learn to define themselves beyond their bodies and being an athlete.
The biggest event this week, however, will be the Love Your Body Symposium Wednesday at 6 p.m. in Hughes-Trigg Ballroom East, at which three speakers will share their stories of how they came to love and accept their bodies.
“Love Your Body Week is really looking at all aspects of health,” Joyner said. “We’re not focusing on just one aspect of health, but our primary focus is body image and improving how you see yourself.”
