Embrace – Love your body!

Last week a friend of mine and I attended the ‘Embrace’ documentary movie at the Maroochydore Cinemas.

I love a good documentary movie.   That is, a documentary that takes you on a journey to understanding.   A journey to see life from a different perspective.    Taryn Brumfitt, the woman who made the documentary movie, really is amazing.  The reason behind doing the documentary was to help create a world where women stopped hating their bodies, and started loving their bodies – no matter the shape or size.

What I loved about the Embrace movie?

I loved that Taryn put herself in the documentary.  She didn’t just narrate the story – she was actually in it!  Taryn told a story about her life and how she came to the point where she realised that she had to start loving her body and get over her body issues, she interviewed a range of women from a number of different sectors of the world.  Some were actors, some were models, some were editors of magazines, some were every day mums, some suffered from eating disorders, some were doctors, some were body builders.   The commonality was that everyone felt the pressures of ‘body issues’.

While it was nice to know that I’m not the only one with body image issues, its sad that so many women are haunted by their body image struggles.

What I relearned from the Embrace documentary?

While it is vital that we eat and exercise for health, it is important that we get past our body image issues.

Our women’s magazines have come a long way in some respects, but empowering women to love their body is still quite an issue for most of them.   There are many professional make up artists, hairdressers, photographers who don’t want to have their names associated with cover editions where the models are bigger in size.  It seems that the ‘love your body’ concept is fine as long as no one has to put their name to the photo shoot.

One of our objectives, as mums, is to help our children get from childhood to adulthood loving their bodies as they are.  The only way to help a child do this is to show them that we love our body as we are.   This may not be easy at times, but we have to change the way we talk about our bodies as children do what they see, not always what we say.    It is important that we change the record for our children.   It’s not about how great our thigh gap is, our story has to be about what we did in our lives.   Our legacy is our tribe of people,  and the story of our lives – what we do in our life time.   I know I don’t want my story to be that I spent the majority of my life obsessing over my body.  I just want to be healthy, and feel healthy!

So when you get a chance go and see ‘Embrace’.   It is worth your time, energy and dollars.   It is also worth taking your daughters too.   I am planning to get the dvd when it is available because I think it will be important for my girls to see.    We live in a world where the objective isn’t health – but being skinny.  Its not about ‘Summer bikini bodies’, as many personal trainers and gyms advertise.   Its all about health and making a stand to work on oneself for the purpose of health, and saying no to diseases such as diabetes.

I just want my girls to focus on health, happiness and wellbeing.     I want them to actively search out the truth and go forth in their lives loving their bodies and enjoying whatever they put their hand too.   I just need to do the same.   Lets not waste another minute focussing on our shape and size, and start putting our energies into making our lives fun, healthy and happy.   If we are doing all the right things then health will come and we will start feeling good in ourselves.

If you want to know more, check out the body image movement.