Body Image Support in Philadelphia

By Angie Barone

Did you grow up hearing comments about “bad foods”? Does your family make comments about your second helping at dinner? Do you find yourself holding back the urge for dessert because you’re worried what people will think?

Have you ever been hanging out with your friends and heard comments like “ugh I look so fat” or “I need to start working out more”? Are your friends praising each other for making it through the day without eating?

Do you ever find yourself feeling badly about your body after scrolling through social media? Do you follow a lot of Instagram model or exercise accounts? Have you found yourself comparing your body to those of celebrities?

Where are you getting your messages about body image from?

These messages are being transmitted through families, friend groups and the media. It seems impossible to escape because they are around every corner. Billboards show off the latest “ideal body” technique like cool sculpting, Twitter feeds normalize body jealousy, friend groups chat about the newest diet craze, and families encourage exhausting work out regimens. 

These are just a few ways in which our society is immersed in promoting and perpetuating the diet culture message that it’s better to live in a smaller body and wrong to live in a larger body.

Our society is a body shaming culture.

It chooses the “body type” of the moment and sells this idolized body ideal as the answer to our problems. For example, in the 1960s, when Twiggy came around as a supermodel, the body ideal for females changed from feminine and curvaceous (think Marilyn Monroe) to thin and angular. Even currently, there has been a transition happening from “thinspo” to “fitspo”, placing defined, muscular bodies as the path to worthiness and happiness over thin bodies. 

With body ideals comes an appearance-based social comparison, which compels us to compare our bodies to those of models, actors, reality tv stars, Instagram influencers, our friends and more.

When we try to achieve those body goals (which, remember are usually photoshopped/retouched images), and do not achieve them, we are faced with shame and guilt and sometimes even a newly developed pattern of disordered eating. Its a perpetual cycle of feeling not good enough. 

Taylor Swift, who recently spoke out about her struggles with body image and disordered eating, speaks to this shame conundrum in her latest Netflix documentary, Miss Americana,

“If you’re thin enough, then you don’t have that a** that everybody wants, but if you have enough weight on you to have an a**, your stomach isn’t flat enough. It’s all just f—ing impossible.”

The perpetuation of the body shame in diet culture has become so prevalent that it is now normal to feel unsatisfied and shameful of our bodies. This has been termed normative discontent, and it is reaching girls and boys are young as six and seven years old. When we grow up feeling inadequate in our bodies and having an unrealistic body image, it only sets us up for feelings of failure. 

So, what do we do?

Although our culture is set up in this way, it is also true that many people have realized this toxic cycle and have started speaking out against it in the body positivity movement. 

At Spilove Psychotherapy, we embrace and perpetuate that all bodies are good bodies.

We promote and help others trust in anti-diet truths and health at every size. Therefore, in an effort to promote body acceptance and to fight the body shaming which we face on a day to day basis, we want to share 6 ways to change the negative body image thoughts you may be having and induce self-love and acceptance. 

6 Ways to Battle Body Shame:

1. Social Media Cleanse

PSA: This is the only type of cleanse we will ever recommend to you! Because social media is such a big piece of our lives today and a major player in of the perpetuation of body shaming, we suggest cutting out the harmful and adding the helpful. Take a moment to sit down and look through the accounts you follow. Hit that unfollow button on the exercise accounts, the diet accounts, the Instagram model accounts and any other accounts that often make you feel badly about your body image. Once you do that, take a look at Instagram accounts that promote body diversity, fat acceptance, and self love and hit that follow button! This cleanse will create a much more positive time line to scroll through in your day to day and provide your brain with repetitive supportive messages about body image and acceptance.

2. Listen to Body Positivity/Anti-Diet Podcasts

Podcasts are a great way to pass the time on your commutes or in free time, so they can be great ways of getting the positive body talk that we may not know how to start on our own. Here is a list of a few to get you started: 

Food Psych Podcast with Christy Harrison

Body Kindness with Rebecca Scritchfield 

Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris (Episode #220, The Anti-Diet with Evelyn Tribole)

Trust Your Body Project with Whitney Catalano

She’s All Fat with Sophie and April

Affirmation Pod with Josie Ong

The Recovery Warrior Podcast

Fearless Rebelle Radio with Summer Innanen

3. Read Body Acceptance Books

Just like podcasts, reading books are a way that people spend their free time or how they practice self-care. Books that promote body positive, body accepting and body neutral ideals are a great way to learn about how we can become happier in our bodies and how we can improve our perception about body image. Here is a list to get you started:

The Body is Not an Apology by Sonya Renee Taylor

The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf

Health at Every Size and Body Respect by Linda Bacon

Things No One Will Tell Fat Girls by Jes Baker

Beautiful You: A Daily Guide to Radical Self-Acceptance by Rosie Molinary

The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls by Joan Jacobs Brumberg

Anti- Diet by Christy Harrison

4. Practice Affirming Self-talk

Breaking the cycle of negative self-talk and body shaming can be difficult. The negative ways that we talk to ourselves and think about our bodies only continues the body shaming that we see in our society. It creates poor self-esteem and confidence, which can keep us down. This negative self-talk feeds off of the messages we get on a daily basis from media and people.

In order to build self-esteem and body love, even in the face of the daily messages, we have to change our inner messages.

The first step is realizing you are being unkind to yourself and your body, and seek out media that perpetuates a positive message about bodies and self acceptance and love. Utilizing #1, #2, and #3 above can aid in this step. Once you have immersed yourself in a set of new messages, you can begin the process of believing in yourself and your body as beautiful and worthy of love. Remind yourself of your worth every day in the mirror instead of shaming yourself. Changing the brain and the talk of the inner critic is difficult work, we know, but its totally possible and absolutely a journey worth taking that will lead you back to self-acceptance. 

5. Write a List of Ways You are Thankful for Your Body

To aid in your journey back to self love, write a list of ways in which you are thankful for the body you live in. Keep it on your phone, post it on your bathroom mirror or keep it on your nightstand. Somewhere accessible and easy to find, so that on the days when it is hard to keep up your positive self-talk, you can look at the list and be reminded of all the ways you are thankful for and love your body. 

Having a hard time coming up with what you feel grateful for about your body?

Next time you are doing an activity you enjoy, like hanging out with friends, yoga, or art, think about how your body is helping you engage and experience these activities. Then, write those down!

6. Find a Supportive Community

Surround yourself with people who are also seeking and practicing body positivity! Join a body positive book club, a body positive fitness class or try a body image group! Being around others who are also on a mission to find more self love and body appreciation will support your positive body image practices and help you in times where you feel discouraged or inundated with diet culture ideals perpetuated in the media or by your friends and family members. 

We are very excited to announce that beginning March 7, 2020, we will be offering a BODY IMAGE GROUP in Center City, Philadelphia!

Held on Saturday mornings, this group will offer a nonjudgemental, come-as-you-are space for therapy support and helpful skill building to improving your relationship to your body and your self, and maybe even making some friends along the way!

Reserve your spot today to begin the journey back to self love and body liberation! 

About the author:

Angie Barone is an intern therapist in our Center City office and offers reduced rate counseling.. She is a graduate student at Villanova University in the Clinical Mental Health Counseling Program. Angie is passionate in working with individuals seeking help with trauma, eating disorders, and addiction. She believes that mental health is equally as important as physical health and strives to help her clients seek holistic healing. Angie creates a warm, collaborative and accepting environment for clients to help facilitate growth and change.