The College Fix

Upcoming ‘Body Appreciation Week’ includes session on ‘Why it’s OK to be fat’

The University of Alabama’s Department of Health Promotion and Wellness is encouraging faculty to avoid “diet talk” around students in an effort to “promote positive body image.”

Sheena Gregg, the department director and a certified intuitive eating counselor, made the recommendation in an article Monday on the university’s news page.

During the month of February, students often feel “pressures to look a certain way for a spring break trip, social media influences and general peer interactions,” Gregg wrote.

“Negative body image in the college student population can be concerning due to its correlation between body dissatisfaction, eating disorders and other mental health issues,” she wrote.

To help boost students’ self esteem and “positive body image,” she recommended that faculty and staff “[a]void the use of negative body talk or diet talk in the classroom or office.”

Additionally, she said they can encourage students to stop following “accounts on social media that trigger negative body image thoughts and feelings” and “[e]ncourage students to engage in basic self-care such as getting adequate sleep or eating regularly.”

“Having a healthier body image means one is able to celebrate and appreciate their natural body shape and the uniqueness of each individual person,” Gregg wrote.

She also told faculty to remember “that a person’s physical appearance says very little about their character or value.”

Gregg also plugged the public institution’s upcoming “Body Appreciation Week” on Feb. 24 to 27.

Events include an “awards-show-themed body appreciation PopUP” where students can make their own “affirmation mirror or compliment jar.”

Another session explores “how to view movement and eating nutritious as a positive experience for our overall health without tying these activities to weight loss.”

The week also will include a talk with Professor Rekha Nath on her book, “Why It’s OK To Be Fat.”

The book “challenges dominant cultural views of fatness as a moral failing or a medical problem to be fixed,” according to the event description. “… Nath critiques pervasive anti-fat biases and sizeism, arguing for a shift in how society views body size through the lens of social equality.”

Academically, “fat studies” has become a subject of college courses, academic journals, and debates at many higher education institutions in recent years.

At the University of Alabama, a 400-level philosophy course has students examine the issue. The “Philosophy of Oppression” class, which Nath teaches, includes discussions about the “oppression” of “sizism,” The College Fix reported.

Students also “consider questions of responsibility” for “victims of oppression…to resist the oppressive circumstances they face.”

MORE: University of Alabama philosophy class studies ‘oppression’ of ‘sizism’

IMAGE: Alona Siniehina/Shutterstock

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