Many common New Year’s resolutions include losing weight, hitting the gym, or going on highly restrictive diets. But instead of trying to be thinner or achieve a certain look, what if everyone made a New Year’s resolution to simply embrace the bodies that they have?
On Thursday, Feb. 1, the Health and Counseling Center will host a screening of “Embrace” at 7 p.m. in the Mehling ballroom. A group discussion about body image will follow the screening.
Embrace is a documentary that follows Taryn Brumfitt’s journey as she travels around the world talking to different women about body image and self-acceptance. According to the trailer for Embrace, 91% of women hate their bodies.
Body image issues affect college students as well. In 2012, according to the Industrial Psychiatry Journal, a body image study was conducted using 96 study samples of female college students. Overall, 13.54% were dissatisfied with their body image.
It’s also important for students to know that “Embrace” deals with a lot of serious issues and includes trigger warnings for sexual assault, eating disorders and body image issues.
“This isn’t meant to be a type of graphic film,” said Tiger Simpson, wellness education and prevention coordinator. “But those types of things are brought up and that’s something we want people to be aware of... I hope people walk away from this saying I deserve to be valued and in order to do that I need to value myself as well.”
While this film focuses specifically on a woman’s journey with body image, this event is open to all UP students of all genders.
“It does a disservice to everybody when we only address just one population that struggles with this,” Simpson said. “We want to break down that barrier because when it comes to topics like these we are all on the same team and we want to heal on the same team as well.”
Embrace will be screened at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 1, in the Mehling Ballroom. Watch the trailer here:
