‘Love Your Body’ event promotes ‘comfort food,’ binge-watching

The Dalton State College Social Work club hosted an event Thursday to promote “body awareness and acceptance on campus.”

Attendees at the one-hour “Love Your Body, Love Yourself” event were provided with literature asserting that “the media portrays a false hope of what body image should be” and outlining various “self-care” strategies such as enjoying “comfort food” or “watching an entire season on television in one weekend while you lie around in pajamas.”

[RELATED: Fat activist: ‘Exercise and diets are constructs’]

Event organizers told Campus Reform that they are generally in agreement with the ideals of the Body Positivity Movement, which is closely associated with the cause of “fat acceptance.”

Indeed, while the hosts asserted that their purpose was “to promote self-care and a healthy body image,” one of the flyers distributed at the event listed “self-care” strategies that included binge-watching television for an entire weekend, playing “like a kid,” and reading a picture book.

Students even received coloring pages with black and white animals on them.

Members of the Social Work Club also expressed their disgust with flyers that recently appeared at the University of Colorado at Boulder urging President Trump to “deport fat people” and calling on “fat people” to “please stop eating,” calling the posters “demoralizing” and saying they are “[negatively] influencing school and social life.”

One member, referencing Barack Obama, acknowledged that “[we] don’t have the right to tell them they can’t say things,” but insisted that “this kind of language is offensive.”

[RELATED: Bradley University combats ‘fatism’ by promoting ‘fat acceptance’]

To help students deal with such trauma, the Social Work Club also distributed a “self-care cheat sheet” with coping strategies such as “Play like a kid [with] silly putty, bubbles, Legos, cartoons, coloring, [etc.]” and “Read a book. Bonus points if it has pictures.”

Asked their opinion on the Glenn Marla quote that “There is no wrong way to have a body,” event leaders told Campus Reform that “People can be healthy at lots of sizes.”

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