New student-inspired club encourages body positivity

CSB+SJU has a new club dedicated to making all bodies welcome on our campuses, no matter the size, shape or characteristics our physical being portrays.

On Thursday, Nov. 3., the CSB+SJU Body Positivity club met for an informational meeting in the Henrietta Academic Building. This year’s club officers Anna Trombley, Sophia Sartain and Anna Savage, along with their faculty advisor, Jennifer Kramer, had six other students attend, creating an environment to celebrate the beauty of their own and each other’s bodies.

The Body Positivity club was born from Kramer, a CSB+SJU communications professor and health education scholar, and her students. In Kramer’s Fat Studies course, students learn about the stigma weight can hold in our society, especially in the medical field.

“It’s the medical realm that’s really the big enforcer,” Kramer said. “It gives it legitimacy.”

She expresses how medical advice to lose weight supposedly “helps” the demographic and makes them healthier, even if it means humiliating them.

Kramer’s Fat Studies course discusses in depth the ways our society makes it acceptable to discriminate against individuals based on their size. Students are then encouraged to work in groups to create and implement a fat activism project in their personal lives or on campus. A group from her spring 2020 section of Fat Studies proposed creating a club inclusive to all bodies. The pandemic unfortunately halted all progress before it was to be approved by the Joint Club Board.

After a two-year hiatus, passionate seniors in Fat Studies during the spring 2022 semester drafted the outline of the club and started the @csbsjubodyliberation Instagram page for their fat activism project. Emily Eng, 2022 CSB graduate, was one of these seniors and shared what the fat activism movement means to her.

“Even breaking that stigma of saying the word ‘fat’ and it coming with a sentence of support or not wanting to change your body is something that last semester I learned was not talked about. Having awareness and a place to be able to talk about it was really necessary,” Eng said.

With Emily and her groupmates’ efforts having already initiated a start to the movement on campus, Sartain, one of the club’s current officers, reached out over the summer asking if she could continue the legacy of the Body Liberation club. One minor barrier she faced in establishing the club on campus was the original name of the Body Liberation club. The Joint Club Board would not induct the club into existence unless they changed it to the current name, the Body Positivity club. The club officers and Kramer expressed difficulty accepting the name switch because it can set individuals up for failure when they are trying to practice radical self-love.

“The body love and body positivity language as a movement takes the energy away from the structural changes that need to be made,” Kramer said.

Body positivity requires a lot of effort on the part of the individual and less work for societal standards to shift. Conversely, body liberation is a call to dismantle the norms set in place for our physical being to look a certain way that is perpetuated through the media. Despite the name change, the current officers continue with optimism.

“We are obviously fonder of our original name, the Body Liberation club, because we realize the toxicity surrounding always feeling the need to remain positive about our bodies, but regardless of the name of the club, our mission remains the same. We aim to provide a space for people to celebrate their bodies,” Savage said.

Her and her fellow officers are doing that and more. Last week’s meeting was more meaningful than they thought possible. Their official mission, “to create and maintain an environment on campus for people of all identities to appreciate their bodies, to ditch comparison/shame and to educate the CSB+SJU community on fat and weight-related stigma to create a healthier, more inclusive community,” was honored through the vulnerability and genuine connection members showed and felt at Thursday’s meeting.

Trombley said the club’s impact for her is having relationship and solidarity in this movement, which gives her hope and support. She feels better able to fight the unrealistic messages the media feeds us about our bodies knowing there are others in the battle with her.

All three officers—Trombley, Savage and Sartain—said this was the first official club they were invested in because it is an issue that “resonates with each of them” and they feel that “everyone is equally heard.” They felt events of other clubs they had attended in the past showed difficulty constructing an environment inclusive of all opinions and voices.

Events to come include the Hot Cocoa Social for Mental Health Awareness week at the Multicultural Center on the CSB campus this coming Monday, Nov. 14, from 5-7 p.m. and a Yoga and Yogurt Night in the CSB lower HCC group fitness room from 7:15-8:15 p.m. in the evening of Nov. 17. They also plan to partner with the Writing Center in the future to write inspirational notes and positive affirmations to produce a mural of optimism in one of the academic buildings. Their vision is that students who walk by will be filled with joy and acceptance of themselves.

For reminders about events and meetings as well as information about body positivity and liberation, follow them on Instagram at @csbsjubodypositivity. The resounding message the officers want to send to students is one of acceptance and unconditional beauty.

“Your body may not look like another Bennie’s or Johnnie’s, but that doesn’t mean it’s any less beautiful than theirs. All bodies are beautiful as they are, and we, Bennies and Johnnies, should celebrate that,” Savage said.