BODY IMAGE

BODY BODY IMAGEIMAGE

Body image refers to our beliefs and

feelings about how our bodies look and function.

Body image is not inborn, but learned.

A negative body image often leads to Body Image Disorders.

Body Image Disorders

• Eating Disorders Anorexia Bulimia Compulsive Eating Overeating

• Self-Injury/Mutilation Disorder• Exercise Addiction

Our body image is influenced by our family, our friends, the media, and society in general.

It's heavily influenced by what we think we should look like in order to be attractive, and how we think our bodies should "perform."

The most common Body Image Disorders are eating disorders.

1 in 5 girls struggle with eating disorders

1 in 10 boys struggle with

eating disorders

Adam Rickett suffered from Bulimia as a school kid.

Princess Diana suffered from Bulimia. She helped women worldwide face their own eating disorders when she publicly discussed her own.

Carnie Wilson, of Wilson Philips,

suffered from Overeating.

Although she has a new body image, she still battles her eating disorder daily, and uses her experiences to help other eating disorder sufferers.

Wilson underwent surgery to cure her disorder and prevent her death.

Billy Bob Thornton is a Bulimia survivor. Angelina Jolie is a self-mutilation survivor.

WASTING WASTING AWAY:AWAY: WHITNEY HOUSTON'S

FRAIL APPEARANCE STUNS CROWD

Daniel Johns has openly talked about his battle with Anorexia, and wrote a song about his experience called, Ana's Song for Silverchair's CD, Neon.

Elisa Donovan is a recovering anorexic.

                                             “My eating disorders are Ketosis and Overeating…To believe that Anorexia and Bulimia are the only eating disorders is foolish and untrue.”

Stacey Handler…Granddaughter of Ruth Handler,the creator of the Barbie doll. Stacey was also the inspiration behind the Stacie doll.

“Barbie is in fact just a doll, created by one woman and then endorsed time and time again by a society that has spent billions and billions of dollars trying to become the perfection she radiates.”

“Plastic surgery, diets and self-starvation are just a few of the many ways women have attempted to have that perfect body.” ---Stacey Handler

“Another way the mediaobscures public concepts ofweight is by touching upphotographs of celebrities…Magazines don’t represent the true person…They’re presenting a created image.” --Natalie Portman, actress

BeforeBefore

AfterAfter

Jamie Lee CurtisJamie Lee Curtis

“Seventeen, the most widely read magazine among teenage girls in the United States, claims to

"encourage independence" and help each reader "become this wonderful person that she dreams

she will be.”

--Kimberly Philips, How Seventeen Undermines Young Women

“…But far from encouraging independence, Seventeen only reinforces the cultural expectations that an adolescent woman should be more concerned with her appearance, her relations with other people, and her ability to win approval from men than with her own ideas or her expectations for herself.”

-- Kimberly Philips, How Seventeen Undermines Young Women

Even athletes suffer from negative body image.

They often turn to steroids and growth-hormone drugs to achieve an ideal body and performance perfection for their sport.

In the last decade, as many as 80 professional cyclists died from the reckless abuse of the performance-enhancing drug EPO.

Superstar Billy Graham (Wayne Coleman)

A former WWF champion and a wrestler who had whatat one time was known as "the perfect body."

Graham is now a cripple from the after effects of steroid abuse and said, "Steroids have destroyed lives in wrestling. I'm just one example.“ (1993)

About 7 million women and 1 million men

have eating disorders due to poor body image.

In a recent survey, 75% of women and 54% of men reported that they are unhappy with their physical appearance.

Many children, under the age of 10, are becoming obsessed with dieting and their bodies.

They are afraid of becoming fat.

Our body image is notnot a true reflection of who we

actually are.

As Orthodox Christians, we must realize that we each

were created in the image of Christimage of Christ.

“So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.”

GENESIS 1:27

What is more beautiful than to be with Christ? What is more desirable than his divine glory?

Nothing is sweeter than that light which illumines the entire order of men and angels.

Nothing is more beloved than that life (of God) in which we all live and move and have our

being. There is nothing sweeter than the ever-living beauty, nothing more pleasant than the

unceasing gladness. There is nothing more desirable than eternal joy and blessedness,

about which no word can suffice to explain or thoughts to comprehend it sublimity and

infinity. For how indeed can one speak about what is essentially and inexpressibly beauty?

St. MakariosSt. Makarios

“...The LORD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart."

1 Samuel 16:7