Empower club wraps up Love Your Body Week

Empower Club has just wrapped up Love Your Body Week, a period of time where the group encourages body positivity. Following the event, members of the club took the time to reflect on their accomplishments from their sticker sales and spreading their body confidence message. 

“When I was a freshman, I joined Empower and I saw that this club was really taking initiative and making an effort into making everyone feel comfortable and loved in their own bodies,” Empower Club Co-president Amelia Moroney said. “That [Love Your Body Week] was a welcome for me to York and to the rest of the club.”

Love Your Body Week, first created by the National Organization for Women (NOW), drives to “combat the influence of the media by exposing it’s ideal and narrow frame work as unrealistic and often unhealthy.” Through posters created by the group, as well as body-positive stickers, Empower aims to create a safe and accepting environment for the York student body. 

“I feel like it’s very important, especially to have this in high school, because I feel like for a lot of people there hasn’t been a space where they feel comfortable to talk about themselves and their bodies,” Senior Mary Braden said. “To have Empower Club and Love Your Body Week as a time for people to talk freely about and accept their body is something that is really important as you are growing up.”

The Empower Club leaders have expressed that there are small things we can do to build our confidence over time.

“I think choosing the right thing, the healthy thing, does not mean skipping meals, it means eating through three meals a day and not overworking yourself,” Moroney said. “Just make sure that everything you’re doing is in moderation. It’s having everything around you being supportive and fueling you, because you’re the most important.”

Empower suggests that the change starts by simply clearing our lives (or phones) of unnecessary negativity. 

“Once quarantine hit, I realized that the only connection I was having was over social media and seeing these perfectly manicured people that they were trying to put out, but I just decided that I didn’t want that,” Moroney said. 

The club also strives to emphasize “body neutrality” and positive self-talk outside of the Love Your Body Week as well as to implement that mindset into our personal lives. 

“Additionally, we’ve focused on Love Your Body Week but try to keep the mindset that it’s a long term thing and you’ll be with your body forever,” Braden said. “Obviously, you can’t just completely change the way you view your body overnight and how you perceive yourself, but try to set a day-by-day plan to do small things to try and build your confidence.”