I’m having such a great time presenting at Love Your Body week at Dickinson college this week!  I feel just like that joyful little baby elephant up there.  The students are enthusiastic and I too am learning a lot!

I was invited to speak for the college’s “Love Your Body Week” and I’m just one part of an amazing number of fun and meaningful activities.  I”ve been impressed with the “Love Your Body Week” theme and it’s a great tool for the college campus for a number of reasons.  Here are a few:

1.  I think it’s inclusive.  It’s not love fat people week or love think people week.  It’s not just for boys or girls.  It’s not just for athletes or artists.  It’s love your body week.  Everybody with a body is included.

2.  It’s positive.  Rather than telling us what not to do, it’s telling us what TO do.   This is the Health At Every Size (R) way, which tends to focus on positive, definitive, loving and nurturing things that you can do for yourself.  It’s hard to think of something more positive and nurturing than loving your body.

3.  It brings attention to eating disorders on college campuses.  There is a LOT of disordered eating on college campuses.  This is a serious and dangerous problem for both men and women.  Love Your Body Week brings attention to eating disorders in a very gentle way, which does not call people out or shame them for disordered eating, but rather allows everybody access to this important information.

4.  It’s joyful.  See?  Look at the baby elephant.  That’s how I feel!  We’ve talked about some very serious subjects this week.  But we also chatted, laughed, sang, played and danced together this week at Dickinson College.  An awful lot of this was fun.  And I’m hoping that fun will bring young men and women back for more year after year.

5.  It’s planting an important seed.  I am not naive or egotistical enough to believe that I can change anybody’s mind about body love, self acceptance, size acceptance or Health At Every Size with one speech.  But I can say I wish somebody told me about it back when I was a college kid.  I had to wait until age 30 to even be exposed to this idea.  Love Your Body Week allows us to plant the seed of why it’s so important to love your body at every size among young people.  Nobody knows when or if that seed will bloom.  But at least the seed has been planted.

That, my dears, is why I love “Love Your Body Week”.  Are you having a “Love Your Body Week” at your college campus or workplace?  If not, why not institute one of your own.  Let’s work together to make every week “Love Your Body Week!”

Love,

The Fat Chick