November 8, 2021
This week I decided to read a book recommended to me by Mrs Vanessa Sanford, Sonya Renee Taylor's The Body Is Not An Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love. The book highlights issues in our society that reinforce body shaming and the idea of a default body. The purpose of the book is to help promote radical self-love, in a world that makes it nearly impossible. Throughout history the idea of beauty standards have played a prominent role in shaping how we view ourselves as well as how we view others. Many people have felt the effects of body shaming from young ages. According to Taylor, most report their first instances of body shaming in years of puberty. My primary goal from my independent study is to find ways to help children and better society, by speaking about injustices and body shaming in order to attempt to limit the number of people that develop eating disorders. Without society reinforcing body shaming through all areas of life including products in the beauty industry, laws made by the government, and overall societal ideas that have been made to view certain bodies as having less value, the world would be a much better place. A place of difference faced with acceptance and not hate.