What IS body image?
Or, what does it mean to you, and is that the same as what it means to me?
This question led to such an interesting conversation at yesterday’s BEYOND THE MIRROR focus group.
Each person present, as always, is dealing with their own issues, which creates their own particular perspective on the body image conversation. It was fascinating to start to understand the term through everyone’s different lenses.
One person, who is dealing with how her body is changing because of chronic illness, felt that body image was the wrong term for her experience as she has reached a point where how she feels is so much more important than how she looks. And the focus on body IMAGE is more about how one LOOKS.
This led to another person expressing that she would prefer to create a multimedia story that didn’t even reference her body, as she felt that would help to shift the focus from how she looks to who she is.
Yet another felt that the term expressed how our society tends to put so much focus on what our bodies look like, instead of how incredible our bodies actually are.
Some of the other questions we considered in our conversation were:
♡ Is your body image about you or others?
♡ Who holds the power to say which bodies are worthy?
♡ How can we, one person at a time, change the conversation so that we focus on the wonder of our bodies?
♡ How is our body shaped in response to our environment?
♡ What is the connection between body, mind and emotion?
As I work with each person who joins the project, we will unpack each different version and interpretation of the term, body image, through the creative power of storytelling. With the intention that by the end of each person’s unique process, they will reach a point where, whatever body image meant to them at the beginning, they are happier with themselves—mind, body and spirit!
