Build Community
Goals:
- Connect to others through a shared positive approach to beauty, health, and identity
- Role model love and respect for your unique body
Benefit:
Build community to support a Body Positive lifestyle.
In this final competency, Build Community, we honor the human need for connection. The Body Positive's work is to build communities where people support one another in choosing to love and respect their unique bodies. These are places where self-criticism and dieting tips are not topics of conversation; where bodies are not blamed as the reason for people's problems. Instead, conversations focus on what is actually happening in people's lives; the joys and struggles of living life are shared. In order to sustain positive change on an individual level, it is essential to feel connected to others who are doing the work to love their bodies, to people who are committed to fully living their lives.
If you don't have anyone in your life to support you in living a Body Positive lifestyle, you might feel isolated and slip back into old ways of thinking about your body. Dieting might suddenly seem like a good idea, and old habits are revisited. If you have Body Positive people in your life-even just one-then it is much easier to live in harmony with your individual needs and passions. The people in your Body Positive community see and honor your unique beauty. They support you in pursuing balanced self-care behaviors, freedom from obsession with image, and your wildest dreams!
To read about the other four competencies of the Be Body Positive Model, go to: