What’s your Body Image

What’s your Body Image

With a lot of talk in the world of women’s health focusing on staying in shape through the holiday season, we’d like to examine what exactly “a Healthy Body” is. We’re tired of the unrealistic expectations that girls learn about what a woman’s body looks like and how that message carries into adulthood like a bad habit you can’t seem to kick.

We think it’s time for a change, and we’d like to acknowledge some campaigns and women who are taking a stand for real beauty and real health.

In June 2005, Dove®launched an advertising campaigncalled The Dove® Campaign for Real Beauty featuring real women with real bodies and real curves. They continued this campaign establishing the Dove® Self-Esteem Fund, the Beauty Comes of Age Campaign and have widened their reach by putting out some genius commercials, including their Evolution of Beauty and Real Beauty Sketches. All these campaigns have one common goal: to inspire and educate girls and women about a wider definition of beauty.

From the time that this original campaign was launched the ripple effect of debunking the stereotype of “beauty” has had an amazing impact. With numerous videos and photos showing the before and after effects of airbrushing along with some very brave women sharing their personal views of what a sad state of unrealistic expectations we are putting on ourselves and our young women.

Samantha Thrall is an incredible “real” woman who we’d like to take a moment and recognize her courage. This very brave mother, photographer and artist posted a photo of her post-partum stomach with a genius phrase “For every woman unhappy with her postpartum marks, is another woman who wishes she had them.”

She reminds us that some of the most beautiful things a woman’s body is capable of doing isn’t featured in our media enough. In an interview she say’s “More than anything I am just so in awe at what my body was capable of doing! I created another human being and I am feeding that little human milk I created from my body. That is so amazing and something not to be taken for granted! I do love my body. (And the part of my belly where all the stretch marks are is so soft! Lol)

Love that last line, it’s a great perspective!

Another inspiring interview was aired by Yahoo with Jennifer Lawrence. She responds to a question from the audience on the topic of body image saying:

“You look how you look and you have to be comfortable, like what are you going to do? Be hungry every single day to make other people happy? That’s just dumb.”

She goes on to talk about the influence of the media saying, “Shows like the fashion police and things like that are just showing these generations of young people to judge … they put values on all the things that are wrong and that it’s ok to just point at people and call them fat and they call it “fun” and “welcome to the real world” and it’s like, that shouldn’t be the real world. It’s going to keep being the real world if you keep it that way. It’s not until we stop treating each other like that and just stop calling each other fat …”

And finally, we’d like to share the interview with the beautiful Robyn Lawley on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, she addresses the nasty names she’s been called. She talks with Ellen about the horrible place we’ve come to with body image, stating the insanity of the fact that “Cindy Crawford today couldn’t even model a cat walk because she’s too curvy. That’s the point that it’s got to.”

We love her attitude towards her beautiful body! In her interview she says: “I love my body as it is. It’s rare to hear woman say I love my body and I’m comfortable with that, but saying it works. It has a positive rebound effect.” She goes on to say “Food is not the problem it’s society, it’s all other issues. We’re all hating on so many things, but we should all be accepting our natural size…. they should be putting different sizes and diff ages on these cat walks…. I’m more about, finding your set natural weight and be happy at that weight.”

And isn’t that the point? We need to be HEALTHY, let’s absorb that word: healthy. Find your natural weight: eat smart and stay active but don’t try to be a body type you’re not!