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Love Your Body Month 2007
The 2007 Be A Better You: Love Your Body Month Committee:

 

  • Monica Adkins

  • Alisa Bartel

  • Mary Buchwalder, MD

  • Judy Caruso

  • Melissa Cash

  • Becky Cook, PhD

  • Jamie Eastman

  • Bridget Hadley

  • Kate Henry

  • Mary Helme

  • Kathleen Molnar

  • Pattie Waugh

  • Michelle Whelan

 

 

“Looks, girls learn early, collapse into a metaphor for everything else. They quickly become the defining criteria for our status and our worth. And somewhere along the  line, we stop believing in the power of our minds and our bodies.”
                                                                                                                                     
    - Susan Jane Gilman

Primarily girls are told by advertisers what is most important to them is their perfume, their clothing, their bodies, their beauty. Their “essence” is their underwear. Girls of all ages get the message that they must be flawlessly beautiful and, about all  these days,  they must be thin. Even more destructively,  they get the message that this is possible, that, with enough effort and self-sacrifice, they can  achieve this ideal. Thus many girls spend enormous amounts of time and energy attempting  to achieve something that is only trivial but also  completely unattainable."
                                                                                  
- Jean Kilbourne, From the book: Can’t Buy My Lov
e

2007 Love Your Body Month focuses on self-acceptance and health matters

 Page          According to the National Organization for Women (NOW) Foundation, 80% of women in  the United States are dissatisfied with their appearance. This boils down to only one out of every five women having a positive body image. To counter this, the UD Women’s Center has dedicated the entire month of October to building a positive self image. The theme, Be a Better You: Love your Body Month will focus this year on prevention.  The Women’s Center and other UD departments are sponsoring many events on campus to inspire women to take comfort in and love their bodies.

                  
A number of activities revolve around The Body Image Project in Roesch Library.  The exhibit is an art display of sculptures made from real people and is meant to show beauty as a relative concept.  The artist, Larry Kirkwood will discuss his sculptures in a presentation on October the 4th at 7:00 pm.   Also a reception will be held with discussion led by Becky Cook, PhD on October 3 at 8:00 pm.  Both of these events occur in Roesch Library while on Oct 4th the Women’s Leadership House will have dinner and discussion with the artist. 

                 
The book read for this year is You: The Smart Patient by Drs. Michael and Mehmet Oz.  This fun and witty book imparts tips for active participation in your own healthcare and receiving better treatment.  For the second year in a row the Women’s Center is providing books free to the first twenty participants.  Participants will read the book then gather on Oct. 17 to discuss the text and exchange ideas.

               
Taking place all month will be a series of Brown Bag presentations.  The Human Resources department is presenting a Ceridian Program called Silencing the Inner Critic-Building Self-Esteem on Oct. 25.  Also the UD Wellness program offers Laser-the Light that Heals on Oct 4 and Coping with “What Is.

                 
 
Violence against women is the topic of several forums this year.  The Artemis Walk kicks off the Love Your Body Month on September 30 at 3:00 at Wegerzyn Gardens.  Then Tony Porter is issuing a Call to Men at several locations around Dayton, while the campus group One in Four will be visiting and training at the University of Dayton.  The Women’s Center will be showing the exhibit Out of the Shadow, a photographic display of domestic violence survivors’ triumphant recoveries.
    
                
Residence halls are also joining in on “Love Your Body Month” by offering many different programs. Students are encouraged to attend floor programs such as movies with healthy snacks and a post card project in honor of Love Your Body Day on October 18 with discussions of the TV series Ugly Betty and Grey’s Anatomy.”

Check out the Women’s Center’s website for a complete calendar of Love Your Body Month events.  (www.womenscenter.udayton.edu/ calendar)

  •  Pattie Waugh, Be A Better You: Love Your Body Month Committee Chair

Love Yourself, Invest in Yourself

                 As a woman, I am very much aware of the social pressures placed upon women to uphold a standard of youth, beauty, and motherhood.

                As a psychologist in training, I am also very aware of how these social expectations of women can have a very detrimental effect on women’s self-worth and overall  happiness. As a feminist, I can envision how things could possibly be different through  consciousness raising and  providing support through sisterhood.

                 Many people believe that the social expectations for women to be young and beautiful and also mothers are fading. I would argue that many of these expectations have simply taken on a different form. For instance, many women can look and see how restrictive and oppressive corsets and girdles were to the women who were expected to wear them. The popularity of these items has decreased, but with their decline there has not been a decline in a thin ideal.

                I truly feel as though thong underwear is the new corset of the day. If you think about it, the increasingly shrinking undergarments leave women feeling as though they must be able to wear them and look sexy doing it. The same expectations are present with thongs as with corsets— to be attractive and to be thin.

                Overall, the social expectations of beauty are still constricting women even if it is not in the literal sense. Women do not experience these expectations in isolation and it may be helpful to begin a dialogue with other women in our lives about how these expectations make us feel. During Love Your Body Month, it is especially pertinent that we begin to talk with other women about our own bodies and how we can begin to feel proud of our bodies, as well  as of our womanhood. Loving one’s body can be difficult at times but it is important that we  provide ourselves  time each day to truly invest in who we are. These do not have to be large grandiose investments. They can be as simple as learning a new word each day or as complex as teaching yourself to play an instrument. I

                I propose that we, as women, begin to support ourselves and each other in loving ourselves as well as loving our bodies.

  • Birthany Pawloski, Psychology Trainee, Counseling Center