The ASSU executive cabinet wants the student body to celebrate students’ bodies this week with its first annual “Love Your Body Week.”
Since Monday, the event has showcased events such as cross-cultural discussions, a healthy eating seminar and film showings meant to create safe environments where students can openly discuss issues regarding body image and how these struggles affect life at Stanford. The main goal of this week’s activities is to create awareness and encourage support for Stanford students — particularly women — who struggle with body image issues and eating disorders.
Viviana Arcia ‘13, ASSU executive chair of women’s issues and coordinator of the week’s events, was inspired by her work with “Mirror, Mirror,” a series of monologues produced by the Stanford Theatre Activist Mobilization Project. As assistant producer, she moderated dorm discussions where many students voiced their frustration with the University’s perceived lack of support for body-image issues, she said. She has encountered similar sentiments from University administrators.
“Most [of the administrators] saw body-image struggles as one of the most significant issues affecting women on campus, particularly because it is not an issue that is openly discussed,” Arcia wrote in an e-mail to The Daily. “They, too, spoke of a need that was not being met and of a dialogue that was not being had.”
According to the National Organization for Women (NOW), more than 25 million Americans suffer from some type of binge-eating disorder, and 86 percent of people with eating disorders report the onset of the illness by the time they reach age 20. These struggles are not limited to any gender, ethnicity or sexual orientation.
ASSU timed the event to happen near NOW’s annual “Love Your Body Day” on Oct. 20. According to Arcia, the week also is positioned to expose freshmen to the variety of psychological and health-related services available to them on campus.
“We wanted to have the event early on in the quarter to capitalize on momentum from NSO and the general excitement of a new school year, particularly since we are targeting freshmen and new students who may not be educated enough on the issues and who may not be familiar with the many resources offered at Stanford,” she said.
On Wednesday, more than thirty students attended a lunch seminar on “mindful eating” led by psychologist Laurel Zappert of Counseling and Psychological Services. The seminar discussed eating as an “experience” that should be savored, according to Taylor Winfield ’13, ASSU executive chair of health and wellness.
“We also had a discussion about mindful eating: how to remain mindful during stressful times [such as] busy days and lunch meetings,” she wrote in an e-mail to The Daily.
The week also includes film showing of “Do I Look Fat?,” a documentary exploring eating disorders and body image issues within the LGBT community, this Thursday at the Women’s Community Center, and a Spoken Word Show focusing on experiences with body image this Friday night at the CoHo.
According to Arcia, the overall objective of the week is to remind students that their worth does not come from their physical attributes.
“It is our hope that the week encourages a greater body of positivity and the realization that people aren’t people as a result of how they look or how fit they are,” she said. “That is, your measure as a human being is not dependent on what you eat or how you look.”