By Kevyn Price
Bellarmine facilitators for The Body Project held the first session of the program as part of National Eating Disorder Awareness week last month to talk with students about positive body image. A second session will be held March 12.
Emily Werner, the associate director of campus wellness, said that it is a peer-facilitated, group-base intervention used to confront appearance ideals about body image.
“We offer it because it is research-backed and studies have shown that the participants that go through it build their positive body image, which can in turn decrease the risk of eating disorders,” Werner said.
The program is designed to be intimate, allowing participants to build relationships with one another. Werner said five people joined the first session.
Bellarmine senior Jameelah Lockhart was one of those who joined, and it was her first time participating. Lockhart said that she always wanted to participate because she thinks women need to be taught about body image.
“I feel like us as women need a class or need something for us to know that our bodies are healthy and not just society’s ideal. It is really scary how much society is affecting women and girls’ bodies more than we know,” Lockhart said.
Lockhart said that it has been a good experience getting to learn about the other participants in the group.
“Just talking to the other women and hearing their ideas and hearing how comfortable they are with telling us about their insecurities and things like that because I feel like The Body Project should be a safe place for us women to talk about things such as this,” Lockhart said.
Each session discusses different topics around body image and includes activities. Bellarmine senior Lauren Upchurch said her favorite part of the first session was the exercises they did.
“It was really cool to sort of go through the motions of it. We did a self-talk exercise where we had to list of the typical negative things that they would say about themselves, and we sort of talked through those examples and how those are harmful and problematic to self-esteem and self-worth, and I think that talking through those and doing those activities were really helpful and put a lot of things into perspective for me,” Upchurch said.
For more information or to participate in the March 12 session, email Grace Baker at gbaker@bellarmine.edu or Emily Werner at ewerner@bellarmine.edu