It all started with a post to Shapely Prose, a blog maintained by the authors of Lessons From the Fat-o-sphere. Oprah Winfrey had recently received a lot of media attention for gaining weight. The post said, as Jill Rodde ’09 paraphrased, “Hey, Oprah, 200 pounds isn’t the worst thing that could happen to you. Please love your body.”
Jill and a group of her friends realized that students on Carleton campus might be dealing with the same issues. We’re bombarded with media images of what we’re supposed to look like. People spend a lot of time fretting that if they become fat, people won’t like them, or they will drop dead at any moment from a heart attack. The founders of the Body Positivity Discussion Group, Jill Rodde ’09, Emily Tragert ‘09, Becky Canary-King ‘10, and Lisa Gaetjens ’09, wanted to start the discussion about these issues on campus.
Body Positivity holds a weekly discussion group on Friday afternoons on body-image-related issues, as well as running a blog, Happy Bodies, which deals with issues as wide-ranging as sexual assault to “The Fling.” They also comment on traditional portrayals of the human body taken from magazines and post them in noticeable places on campus. You know the type of picture: a hollow-cheeked model glowering at you from a vaguely post-apocalyptic urban setting. In her underwear. Body Positivity asks, “What is this ad selling?”
Lead-lined underwear, clearly, to keep out the radiation.
The group’s culminating event this term was a body-positivity potluck and dance party seventh weekend. Because issues of body image affect everybody, both women and men were encouraged to attend, and to bring good food, not what society says we ought to be eating.
The potluck dishes came in great variety, from artichoke dip, corn muffins, bean salad, chocolate (always a hit), to bananas and yogurt and better-than-sex-cake. For decorations, there were silhouettes of students of all different shapes and sizes on the walls, and on the tables, the paper tablecloths had questions on them such as “What can your body do?” Crayons were provided.
After the dinner, the dance party began. People got up and jammed to “Don’t Worry, Be Happy,” and, of course, “Big girl you are beautiful.” The dancing somehow developed into a shoulder-rubbing conga line, then back into dancing.
Some of us had been wondering whether the hamantaschen scattered across the tables were just for decoration. The Body Positivity organizer’s explanation summed up the philosophy of their group quite nicely. “Yes, you can eat the hamantaschen.”
