Healthy Body Image

We all know that it is preferable to have a positive body image. Life is much easier when you can see your own reflection and feel energized by the image. I wonder how many of us look at our own reflection and like what we see. I would suspect it is not a lot.

Most of the women and girls I work with would like something to be different. Does wanting to change something physical about yourself mean you have a poor body image? I suppose it depends on how accurately you are perceiving your own body.

Your Body image is about the way you think about your body. It reflects the relationship that you have your body. With a positive body image, a girl has a real perception of her size and shape and feels comfortable and proud about her body. With a negative body image, a girl has a distorted perception of her shape and size, compares her body to others, and feels shame, awkwardness, and anxiety about her body. A girl's dissatisfaction with her body affects how she thinks and feels about her self. A poor body image can lead to emotional distress, low self-esteem, dieting, anxiety, depression, and eating disorders.

The key to a positive body image is seeing you self in a realistic way not comparing yourself to some unrealistic ideal. The media gives such distorted images of how young girls are to look. Teenage celebrities struggle to be a size zero. You see images of anorexic women and girls on TV and in the media.

The federal government health and human services agency has a great website on body image at www.4woman.gov/bodyimage/ . It also has some great sites for girls to visit for support on creating a healthy body image.