4 Tech Tools for Celebrating Body Acceptance Month

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February is Body Acceptance Month, a time to celebrate positive body image and, perhaps, to begin cultivating it. Unfortunately, most people don’t accept their bodies or have a positive relationship with them. Yahoo! Health conducted a study in January as a part of their Body Peace Resolution project to see how people felt about their bodies. They found that only 1 in 7 Americans considered themselves to be body positive, but for those that do, men are almost twice as likely to identify this way—20 percent of men said they felt body positive versus only 11 percent of women.

In an effort to cultivate more body acceptance, let’s take a look at four tech tools and communities you can use to celebrate Body Acceptance Month and create a more positive self-image.

Proud2Bme

Proud2Bme is an online community created for and by young people and is a project of the National Eating Disorder Association. Their blog covers topics ranging from health and fitness to fashion, and they also invite youth to share their stories via one of their many social media campaigns. Content is created “with the goal of promoting positive body image and encouraging healthy attitudes about food and weight.” What could be better?

Body Beautiful

This iOS app allows you to tap into body-positive messaging and information, as well as opportunities to share body positivity on social media. Content includes inspiring celebrity quotes, links to relevant news and media stories, related body-positive organizations, and a “Photo Stamp” feature which places a positive message about body image onto a photo that you can then upload to social media. This is a great app for both gaining knowledge and sharing your perspective with others.

#Fatkini

The #Fatkini hashtag on Instagram was created by Gabbi Gregg, a fashion blogger who wanted to create a more diverse idea of beauty and de-stigmatize images of women of size wearing bikinis. The hashtag has grown into a viral social media movement, with everyone from The Daily Mail to XOJane covering this body positive revolution.

Nalgona Positivity Pride

Decolonizing eating disorders and body image is the mission of Nalgona Posivity Pride, an intersectional body image community that focuses on breaking down the racist, colonial projections cast onto the bodies of people of color. Their work includes an Etsy shop selling crafts featuring body positive messages, a blog, zine, forums, and Nalgona Positivity Nights, which are monthly meetups in Los Angeles that give space for young people of color to find eating disorder and body image support. The project was started by a young person, too. Gloria, now 24 years old, found herself struggling to find intersectional body image resources for young people of color, after surviving an eating disorder herself.


What online tools, resources, or body image communities do you follow? Let us know by sending a tweet to @YTHorg with the hashtag #bodyacceptance.

Image via http://positivebodycampaign.tumblr.com/


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