What is Body Image?
According to the National Eating Disorder Association, body image includes:
- How you picture yourself in your mind
- What you believe about your own appearance
- How you feel about your body, including your height, shape, and weight
- How you sense and control your body as you move
- How you feel in your body, not just about your body
Body image is influenced by a variety of factors:
- Comments from family, friends and others about our, their, and other people's bodies
- Ideals that we develop about physical appearance
- The frequency with which we compare ourselves to others
- Exposure to images of idealized versus normal bodies
- The experience of physical activity
- The experience of abuse, including sexual, physical, and emotional abuse
- The experience of prejudice and discrimination based on race, ethnicity, religion, ability, sexual orientation or gender identity
- Sensory experiences, including pleasure, pain and illness
Individuals can have a negative body image-a distorted perception of their shape, or feelings of discomfort, shame, or anxiety about your body-or a positive body image-a true perception of your appearance, seeing yourself as you really are and liking
what you see.
For most people, body image is fluid, meaning it falls on a spectrum rather than being 100 percent positive or negative. Your perception of your
body image can change on a daily basis or even multiple times in one day.
Love Your Body
There is so much that you can do to love your body. Below are a few suggestions.
- Appreciate all that your body can do
- Keep a top-10 list of things you like about yourself
- Remember, true beauty is not simply skin deep
- Look at yourself as a whole person
- Surround yourself with positive people
- Shut down negative voices in your head
- Wear comfortable clothes
- Become a critical viewer of social and media messages
- Stay off the scale
- De-emphasize numbers, such as weight and BMI
- Realize that you cannot change your body type
- Avoid comparing yourself to others
- Recognize that size prejudice is a form of discrimination
Take a Body Positive Approach
Taking a body positive approach means you should:
- Re-envision your beauty as a creative, dynamic process
- Create your own beauty definitions
- Take power away from the external messages you receive about what beauty is supposed to look like, and decide for yourself what constitutes real beauty
- Remind yourself: beauty ideals are social constructs, not truth
- Don't confuse physical self-care with a desire to transform your body to fit someone else's definition of beauty
For more information, visit The Body Positive.