Love Your Body Day promotes healthy self-image

The Love Your Body celebration will return for a week in the spring.

By Megan Donohue

Published Oct. 23, 2009

Tuesday the Craft Studio, the Women's Center and several other organizations set up tables in Lowry Mall to celebrate the national movement known as Love Your Body Day.

"It's just a day to celebrate yourself and to really appreciate what your body does for you every day and also kind of to raise awareness that daily we are kind of put down about our bodies," Women's Center adviser Suzy Day said. "It's just a day to celebrate you, not only how you look but how you feel and all of the things your body does."

The tables in Lowry Mall offered hula hooping, button making, T-shirts, posters, a mindful eating workshop and other activities.

"We chose to get involved with this event because Suzy Day, who was running Love Your Body Day, wanted to do some DIY type of things to make it interactive and exciting," Craft Studio Coordinator Kelsey Hammond said.

Kim Webb, Health Promotions Professional and Eating Disorders Task Force Chairwoman, helped plan a lot of the unusual physical activities, such as hula hooping.

"I think what we really wanted to do was encourage people to kind of think outside of that box and when they think of fitness or doing something to think of something fun that they enjoy doing instead of thinking that they have to go to the gym and get on the treadmill or get on the elliptical machine," Webb said. "There are other ways to move and to think that involve fitness that are fun that we kind of tend to forget about."

Love Your Body Day was arranged not only to express appreciation of your body, but also to serve as a safe space and a reminder to do so, Day said.

"I think a lot of women do have positive thoughts about their body, but they are never given a space to say them," Day said.

One need for a national day, such as this is society's judgmental stance toward body shape, Webb said.

"I think that most women tend to judge their bodies and I think that there's a lot of media influence and societal influence that tells us that we need to be judgmental," Webb said. "I think that it's a struggle in this society."

Love Your Body Day had a very pleasing turn out, with hundreds of people attending, Day said.

"I thought it was great," Webb said. "The people who came by really seemed to enjoy it and I hope that they got a lot out of it."

There will be a Love Your Body Week in the spring, during which Day and Webb said they hope to bring in a speaker, air a movie and host more daily events that have to do with outreach to the campus and community.

"I think everybody is unique and beautiful, and we are constantly bombarded by messages that we are not beautiful, or our uniqueness is what's not beautiful," Day said. "We're supposed to look a certain way, a certain size, shape, weight, color, hair style and I just think loving your body is important because what makes the world beautiful is that we are all different and we all do different types of work and that our bodies are the portals that let us do the work."