Be Body Positive Campaign

What it is?
The ‘Be Body Positive’ campaign is a youth-centred campaign which aims to help young people to feel more positive about their bodies. Bodywhys wants to develop a range of services for young people to achieve this aim.

As part of this campaign, Bodywhys would like to recruit a panel of young people aged 13-20 who will represent the views of young people. We have also thought of lots of other ways to get involved, but are sure you can come up with more.

The idea behind the campaign is to get as many young people as possible involved in spreading the ‘Be Body Positive’ message. See below for information about the Youth Panel and a range of other ways to be part of the Bodywhys ‘Be Body Positive’ campaign.

What is the ‘Be Body Positive’ message?
The ‘Be Body Positive’ message is that it’s OK to be who you are. It’s also about knowing that body image is only one part of who we are. We are all unique and there is no one in the world just like you. Each of us has our own talents and skills, our own way of looking at the world, our own ideas and ambitions and our own body shape. The ‘Be Body Positive’ message is about embracing our individuality, doing the things we enjoy, accepting and feeling comfortable with ourselves and how we look.
Why?
We know that body image is an area of concern for young people.  A lot of young people mention that they feel judged on how they look and also that they feel pressure from the media to look a certain way.  A report** in 2009, outlining the views of young people, found that self- image was a huge area of concern. We, at Bodywhys, want to respond to this and see how we can help young people to feel better about themselves, to have a healthier attitude to how they look and get on with enjoying their lives to the full.

How can we do this?
We want to ask young people themselves.  The idea behind the ‘Be Body Positive’ campaign is to get young people around Ireland thinking about how they can feel better about their body image. At Bodywhys we want to develop a range of services specifically for young people but we need some inspiration!!  We believe that young people are the best people to help us out.

Click here to find out more about how you can get involved.

Here’s a video of what young people had to say about being body positive. Ideas gathered at the recent Young Social Innovators event in Dublin, May 8th, 2013.

**The Department of Health and Children produced a report in 2009; Teenage Mental Health, What Helps and What Hurts. This report outlines the views of 277 teenagers, aged 12-18 regarding what ‘hurts’ or negatively impacts on teenage mental health and also to learn what young people feel ‘helps’ or positively impacts on their mental health.  Self image was identified as the key ‘hurt’ and young people mentioned that this was as a result of being judged on how you look, pressure to look a certain way and the impact of the media on self image.