Love Your Body day promotes positive self-image

The annual event began in 2002.

By Jimmy Hibsch

Published Oct. 8, 2010

The Love Your Body Committee encouraged all students to wake up on Thursday’s Love Your Body Day, look in the mirror and smile.

“It’s a day to be body-positive,” Women's Center adviser Suzy Day said. “It gives people a space to talk about how they define beauty and what they love about themselves versus what they are told beauty is. We only see a certain, narrow definition of beauty in the media, so today we’re reminding people that beauty looks all sorts of ways and that everyone is beautiful.”

Since October 2002, MU has hosted Love Your Body Day annually. In its earlier years, Center for Social Justice staff member Struby Struble said the event featured a speaker or smaller-scale events.

“There had been a lot of body-positive events in the past, but 2002 was the first time it was called Love Your Body Day,” Struble said.

The events had previously been scattered around campus, most frequently in Brady Commons or the Women’s Center, Struble said. Last year, Day brought the event to Lowry Mall, and with the relocation came an increase in participation.

“I think it’s always better to bring programming to the students instead of making students come to us,” Day said. “Having it on Lowry Mall makes it really accessible and it makes it fun. It’s more of a fair atmosphere.”

During the day Thursday, students trekking Lowry Mall had the opportunity to pick up free Love Your Body Day themed T-shirts, posters,'zines and customizable buttons. Day said offering tokens such as these was not only a strategy to increase participation, but to create a lasting impression as well.

“We want people to pick their own definition of beauty, so that’s why we like letting people make their own buttons,” Day said. “We want people to remember this message the whole year around.”

Thursday evening, Katie Spencer, staff psychologist at the Center of Sexual Health at the University of Minnesota and former MU Women’s Center staff member, spoke to more than 230 audience members for her presentation entitled “Body Empowerment! Living, Loving and Getting It On While Feeling Good in Your Skin.”

“We deserve love,” Spencer told the audience. “Our bodies are amazing and beautiful and wonderful and special and precious just the way we are, in this very moment. Loving your body, being in your body, knowing your fears and vulnerabilities and sharing them with others: That is revolutionary.”

Her presentation dabbled in topics ranging from body image to masturbation, all with the underlying message of the power of self-love.

“Imagine a world where we all listened to ourselves, trusted the wisdom of our bodies and could communicate with ourselves with moving boundaries,” Spencer said. “That would be liberating, right? The most fabulous part of it all is that we have the power to start that process right now by living and loving ourselves just the way we are.”

The energy in the audience after Spencer’s presentation is exactly what Day said she hopes Love Your Body Day inspires.

“Every great thing we do is surrounded by loving ourselves and having positive self esteem, whether that’s us thinking we're capable, smart or beautiful,” Day said. “We’re faced with so many messages that are negative, so it’s good to have at least one event a year that says, 'No, stop it. We’re fabulous.'"