Category: Body Image

On Wednesday, Oct.19, the NOW Foundation will host a Love Your Body Day blog carnival, featuring voices from across the Internet – and you’re invited to add yours.

Body shame is being forced upon women with a pernicious and overwhelmingly toxic media that uses unrealistic images and messages of beauty and body, and that overemphasizes the role of beauty and body in a woman’s life. Systematically women are trained to believe that we are worth less if we do not look “perfect,” and when in turn we acknowledge it, we are given a message that is almost equally insidious: it is our fault. It’s not.

A sliver-thin few of the one in five dead 20 years after anorexia begins are put on pedestals, while very specific instructions of what they ate, how they exercised and their height and weight upon death are published to “raise awareness.”

There has been a lot of discussion within feminist circles about the lack of choices for Halloween costumes for women and girls. Almost every female costume is sexy — whether it’s sexy kitten, sexy cop, sexy nurse, or sexy ________ fill in the blank. There is nothing creative about these costumes that encourage women to fulfill male fantasies.

At the National NOW headquarters in Washington, D.C., we celebrated Love Your Body Day by reaching out to the community through art. In Franklin Park, we set up a table and created visual representations of what we love about our bodies and how we express that love. I love my stomach, it is my core.I am beautiful, and I embrace my body.