Imagine spending a Saturday afternoon with nearly 100 middle school girls, having fun with fashion and self care -- and getting college credit for it.
Four of my classmates and I did just that as part of Body Politics, an engaging women's studies seminar taught by Vera Whisman. The seminar challenges students to examine the social, political, and cultural construction of the female body.
One recent semester the class examined how important it is for women to develop positive self images early in life. As we read statistics and articles about the struggles adolescent girls experience in relation to body image, we wished there was a way to make young girls feel good about themselves. Thankfully, Whisman built just the thing into her syllabus!
Our assignments included an activism project that allowed us to take what we had learned in class and put it into action.
Our task? Organize the Love Your Body Fair at Sister2Sister, an annual day-long event packed with workshops and activities led by high school and college student mentors to encourage positive body image in younger girls.
Our class was in charge of contacting various organizations and asking them to host an activity or a table at the fair. Many groups responded and, on fair day, encouraged the girls to belly dance, braid hair, paint faces, make their own body scrub, craft bracelets, and participate in other activities designed to help them feel good about their bodies.
Katie Childs '10, one of the students who helped organize the event, says that seeing everything come together on the day of the fair made all the planning worth it. “Organizing the Love Your Body Fair was stressful, in that we weren't able to envision exactly how it would come together,” she says. “But on the day of the fair, the details didn't really matter; once the girls started coming in, everything seemed to just work itself out.”
Whisman saw the event as a great way for students in the class to feel as though they had contributed to empowering young girls. “We feel really strongly about courses having an activism component in women's studies,” she says.
“I think that you need to see the ideas and theories of women's studies applied to real life. There's a saying among people who teach social justice: 'The truth will set you free. But first it will make you miserable.' Knowing that you can make a difference is the best antidote to that misery.”
Alison Bliss, a 2008 Ithaca graduate, is now working as an organizer for Sister2Sister. Each week, Alison worked with our class to contact organizations and plan the fair.
As we watched Alison manage multiple tasks confidently in helping us plan the event, it was hard to imagine a time when she was insecure or self-conscious. But Alison says she chose to get involved with Sister2Sister because she remembers how tough her middle school years were. “I can remember being in middle school: the dread of walking down the hallway, where to sit at lunch, what kind of clothes to wear ... just wondering how you would be judged.”
At the fair, IC students hosted tables set up for fun activities, as well as serious but safe discussion about the myths and realities of dating violence. Childs says that the best part of her experience was seeing how much impact the fair had on the young girls. “You could tell they were having fun, feeling good about themselves, and really learning something too,” she says.
“It's important for the girls to spend time with older mentors in order to have positive examples of young adults that they can look up to. Such examples might broaden girls' ideas about who they can be and what possibilities are open to them.”
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Fuse is a student produced publication about the Ithaca College experience. All content in the print and web versions of Fuse is developed by current Ithaca College students in a breadth of different areas of study.
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