100 Conversations – Your body

Audience: Advocates + Educators, Parents + Caregivers, Youth

Topic: Boundaries + Values, Parent Education, Prevention

Name one positive aspect about their body
Identify ways in which their body helps them in life
Say ways that they might view their own body differently than others may view their own bodies

This conversation is best had with a close group of people
This conversation has two activities that will help folks think about this topic

Start here:

What do you like most about your body?
When are you the happiest with your body?
What words (adjectives) do you typically use to describe your body type/shape/size?
Do these words, either jokingly or realistically affect how you view your body?

Continue:

Do you find yourself comparing your body to others?
When are you unhappy with your body?
How do you see your body?
What is unique or special about your body?
How does it serve you? (a vessel to travel from one place to the next, a beautiful shell, something to keep your internal organs inside of you, a beautiful and necessary piece of your identity, a veil/mask, entrapment of your real self/identity, etc.)

Keep Talking:

What do you do to keep your body safe?
Who else values your body, and in what way (can give piggyback rides to friends or siblings, can go on walks, can give massages)?
Has your body ever let you down?

Have everyone draw as accurately as possible a picture of their current body and a picture of their ideal body.
Have folks share their pictures with the group. First, pass them around randomly (without names) and have the person who gets this picture describe what they see and how they feel about it.Think about:
Do the pictures look the same?

What areas stand out as looking different from one picture to the other?

Remind folks to take into account that the person who drew it is in the room and that the picture they drew is how they see themselves – it is important to be open and honest but also sensitive to someone’s truth if they find it disturbing/sad, etc.
After the whole group has shared and talked about the picture they got (from another participant), have each participant share their own picture with the group and explain what they drew and why.Think about:
What words (adjectives) do you typically use to describe your body type/shape/size?

Do these words, whether jokingly or realistically affect how you view your body?

Do you find yourself comparing your body to others?

Take some butcher paper to draw an outline of each participant’s body, then have a brief discussion about what they think/feel when they see the outline of themselves.Does it look proportionate? Realistic to what they actually look like?
Which things got skewed during the process? Are folks upset? Happy?
Then have each person adorn/decorate their body outlines as they see fit – this could be through a realistic perspective, adding moles/hair/ curves/dimples/facial features/scares/stretch marks/tattoos and piercings etc. Or, it could be idealist/imaginative/how they see themselves on the inside, metaphorically. For example, key emotions might be represented by images to describe those emotions like thunder bolt, rainbow, rain cloud or through color.