Booths focus on positive body images

Students can learn to appreciate their bodies through a day of events focused on positive self-image.

Counseling and Psychological Services staff will have different booths today at multiple locations around campus as part of Celebrate Your Body Day. Activities include “fat talk,” which demonstrates how students criticize their bodies. Students will then be able express on notecards what they appreciate about their bodies. These notecards will be put up for a display.  

DeeDee Dayhoff, clinical social worker for CAPS and chair of Celebrate Your Body Day, said the appreciation cards give students a chance to focus on a positive self-image. 

“These students can tune into what they are normally saying about themselves and to make a shift onto what they appreciate about their bodies,” Dayhoff said.

Three years ago, CAPS offered eating disorder screenings to raise awareness for National Eating Disorder Month in February. Chris Meno, psychologist and outreach coordinator for CAPS, said the disorder screenings were taken away and the emphasis changed to body celebration to target a wider group of students.

“Things about the college experience make body image a huge concern,” Meno said. “One thing is that students live together in large groups and spend more time sharing clothes and spending time together, which makes it easier to compare your body with other people, men and women.”

Meno said college brings a lot of change in life, and concerns about fitting in and high expectations to look good can put more pressure on students to look a certain way.

She said 75 percent of women and 54 percent of men are dissatisfied with their bodies. Eating disorders can begin with dissatisfaction with the body, extreme exercise, dieting, use of diet pills, vomiting and use of protein supplements. Those  activities can become out of control and turn into an eating disorder, she said.

Meno said many people confuse the term “eating disorder,” which describes anorexia, bulimia and binge eating, with disordered eating. Disordered eating includes all three disorders as well as other serious eating and over-exercise symptoms.

About 30 percent of people who have eating disorders are classified as having anorexia and 70 percent are classified as having bulimia, Meno said. Anyone in this group can be overweight, underweight or at a normal weight.

“Seventy-five percent of women age 18 to 35 believe they are fat, and only 25 percent are overweight by medical standards,” she said. “Fifty-four percent of women would rather be hit by a truck than be fat.”

Meno also said men are more likely to over-exercise, and this can quickly become a disorder. The IU Health Center offers physicians, dieticians and counselors who have specific training in these issues, Meno said.

IU freshman Andrew Blank said his eating and exercise habits both changed in college because of the unhealthy food.

“I think people realize it’s easier to let go,” he said.

Blank said eating unhealthy foods also motivates him to exercise. 

For freshman Xia Liu, a transfer student from China, it was not a fear but an expectation that she would gain weight.

Liu said her friends told her she would gain 30 pounds when she came to the United States because of the food. She said women in the United States are more inclined to want to be both skinny and “fit.”  

“In China, I’m considered big, but here people tell me I’m small. In China, if a girl is skinny, she doesn’t work out,” Liu said. “Girls here are thin but muscular, and they always work out.”

Instead, she has found something about her body to celebrate.
“I like the way my fingers are short,” Liu said. “They look cute.”