After meeting Lydia Jade Turner at a Collective Shout fundraiser last year, I was smitten with this passionate psychotherapist and advocate for positive body image, more particularly her positive approach to total wellbeing and her commitment to working towards change through education, information dissemination and cooperation.
Turner appears with other women, including grandmother Merle Hayne, in a vibrant and inspiring spread in the new issue of Peppermint magazine, on sale today. Her story particularly resonates with me. She says:
"I thought I was fat and, in cultures of the industrialised world, a fat body is taken as evidence of moral weakness – of gluttony, lack of discipline, stupidity. I thought I had done something wrong. Towards the end of my teenage years it got to a point where looking in the mirror, leaving the house and nourishing my body became impossible.
It's no easy task overcoming these insecurities, but in time I learned that if I worked through previous traumas and focused on developing other aspects of my identity (for example, social, intellectual, emotional and spiritual aspects), I could feel good about myself and my place in the world. Interestingly, as other areas of my life have blossomed, so too had my body image."
"I thought I was fat and, in cultures of the industrialised world, a fat body is taken as evidence of moral weakness – of gluttony, lack of discipline, stupidity. I thought I had done something wrong. Towards the end of my teenage years it got to a point where looking in the mirror, leaving the house and nourishing my body became impossible.
It's no easy task overcoming these insecurities, but in time I learned that if I worked through previous traumas and focused on developing other aspects of my identity (for example, social, intellectual, emotional and spiritual aspects), I could feel good about myself and my place in the world. Interestingly, as other areas of my life have blossomed, so too had my body image."
Above is the video for Turner's practice BodyMatters Australasia.
Girl With a Satchel
2 comments:
I really wish the girls over at Tumblr would realise thin does not equal more friends or success. That site breeds eating disorders. So great to have posts like these this week. Gala Darling has a great series of posts she's doing on fashion blogging and body image. Plug plug plug!
I spoke to Lydia for my Rainbow of Awesome story...she was absolutely amazing. Her observations on power and media and oppression and life were ridiculously insightful.
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