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Culture Wed Oct 19 2011
Love Your Body Chicago!
For the past 13 years, the National Organization of Women has celebrated Love Your Body Day in October. It seems like a simple concept; set aside a day to highlight the insanity of today's beauty standard and improve girls' and women's self confidence. However the past 13 years has proven how stubborn those old beauty "standards" are and how damaging this can be to our society.
Thirteen years later, we are not just dealing with airbrushing and fad diets. There is also the lack of women of color in the media and advertising, models' bodies shaved down to mimic Barbie doll proportions and the limited portrayal of women in the media as sex on a stiletto. (Learn more on NOW's website.)
Loving your body has turned into a complex and occasionally contradictory mission: loving your curves but being a healthy weight, climbing the corporate ladder occasionally in heels and a short skirt, owning your sexuality and matching VS black lingerie.
To open the dialogue more and continue a discussion that quite honestly will all wish didn't have to be brought up annually, NOW created the 2011 Love Your Body Day Blog Carnival, with bloggers from all over the United States contributing their thoughts on how they love their bodies and what they hope for the future.
I know we all wish that these insane beauty standards would have gone out of fashion with the thong sticking out of the back of the low-rise jeans, but they didn't. They are still here relentlessly attacking girls' and women's (and more recently men's) body images. So check out the Carnival, make some comments and let's start talking about how we can best love our bodies and ourselves (minus the thong out of the back of jeans, that's just tacky).
