Welcome

Welcome to the Vassar Better Body Image Project blog.

"In an environment increasingly occupied with appearances, BBIP seeks to promote healthy body image on campus, and to foster a spirit of community without judgment. We feel that college is a time of experimentation, adjustment, and discovery not only of an intellectual nature, but also in terms of our bodies. In working with the Office of Health Education, our mission is to help students pursue health in the most comprehensive sense, striving toward a state of physical and psychological well-being."
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So. Hello Everyone! Our mission statement, above, is the most formal expression of our goals as a group. However, we want this blog to be as fun as it is serious, a place for reflection but also for recreation. We would love to hear whatever you have to say about any issues pertaining to body image - which, we know, is a huge (limitless?) area. What we're really interested in, for the most part, are your personal stories. Everyone lives with a "body image," and encounters millions more everyday. What does that feel like? When have you been made hyper-aware of it?

Submission steps:
1. Email your experience to bbipvassar@gmail.com
2. You can email us anything related to body image issues. This is HUGE; it covers almost anything. Stories, photos, features, links, your own writing... Get creative (or not)!
3. Please DO NOT use real names (except your own if you are comfortable with that.) You can make up pseudonyms instead, which is more fun anyway. We have the rights to edit out anyone's name if we deem it necessary.
4. Now go have fun and think about something other than bodies.

- BBIP

Post Secret and Body Image

It is no secret among my friends that I love post secret. It's the first thing I check when I get to the library on Sundays (after facebook, duh). It is such a great way to begin the week. Anyway, there is an old post secret that I found really interesting and saved to my computer. In honor of sunday (aka post secret day, at least in my planner), I thought I'd share it with you all. Does anyone else feel this way? I had never really though about it until I read it:

love you all & your beautiful bodies,
Brianna

Beautiful

Food as Medicine

I really like this article because it goes back to basics: explains that we are part of nature, a beautiful nature, that is, and so are our bodies. It also  shows that one should perhaps try to thinking of food as a medicine, and something we need rather than something that will make us gain a pound or lose a pound or make us look "fat" to others.

It's about appreciating your body type as a work of art.

Where was this when I was in high school?

PBS will be premiering a documentary entitled "A Girl's Life" that follows teenage girls and their issues with body image, violence, drugs, and relationships. The documentary is hosted by Rachel Simmons, author of Odd Girl Out and The Curse of the Good Girl.

Continue reading here via the-f-word.org and watch via PBS

enjoy :)

Your Weight is Ravishing!

Via one of my favorite blogs, the-f-word.org (seriously, check it out!):

The best scales ever at Target !

Dubbed "YAY" scales, these scales tell you you are ravishing, beautiful, and stunning instead of giving you a number. How fun is that???

They come from a company known as VolupuArt, and on their website you can find even more styles of these great scales!

Things on campus

that make me smile are things like this:

Source: Bathroom by the media cloisters

Once upon a time

a silly me was a junior in high school. In my school, sophomores, juniors and seniors were all allowed to go to the prom at the end of the school year. Freshmen were allowed upon invitation from an upperclassmen. 

I was wearing a great dress. A vintage dress. Coral or apricot. It used to be my mother's. It's pretty fabulous. That's beside the point of this story. The point is to extend the dangers of not eating, and the consequences. 

I wanted to look great. My parents were out of town. I didn't really know how I was getting back from prom, especially since the trains weren't running all that late that night. No one knew how much I was eating that day. No one could make sure I was eating. The thing is, I wasn't even having problems with this whole eating thing. I kind of contained my "relapses" to special events. Prom was one of the few of those. 

I think I had half a bag of salad that day. My high school also allowed us to drink three glasses of wine or beer at this prom (for free, well, after you had paid the 35 dollar entrance of course). Need I say more? I'm small. I'm a girl. After the first glass of wine (which weren't one drink sized, because they liked to fill the glasses to the top) I was getting tipsy. By the second? I was slurring. I couldn't walk straight - heck I was wearing heels. What would you expect?

At some point, the headmaster talked to me. At some point, some other teachers talked to me. At some point, some teacher I don't even know threw me into a bathroom stall. I came out, she asked if I were going to be sick again and I said: "No." not knowing that she thought I had puked (which, for the record, I hadn't). 

A couple of days later it turns out that I was one of a few people who got in trouble for "clogging the hotel's bathrooms" and I was about to get suspended or expelled for a day or two. My headmaster was not the best one. The teachers at the dance talked some sense into him, especially given most of our's academic records. Really, it could have been their fault for providing us with free liquor anyway. 

Although there were many factors that could have caused me to get that drunk (the fact that they let 16-year-old girls drink three glasses of wine in less than an hour, which actually were much more of the size of six drinks of wine), I should have eaten that day. It would have saved me some embarrassing moments, and some shameful ones too. Being sent into the principal's office is, for someone like me, the worst thing in the world. 

About a year ago, I read about drunkorexia. Basically, it's when someone doesn't eat because they want to save the calories for alcoholic drinks. Great? No. It's terrible. Although this is not what I was doing - I wanted to look good by not eating - it's related. 

Don't drink and not eat. Eat and drink. Or eat and don't drink.