Like many children in Australia, Olivia grew up with a caring and supportive family and had a bright future, bursting with potential. However, like most kids, Olivia grew up being bombarded with harmful messages about bodies and appearance, from a very young age. As a preschooler, she wished she had a body exactly like that of her favourite Disney princess.
She recalls older students in primary school talking about ‘diets’ and not wanting to get ‘fat’. In early adolescence, though she loved gymnastics training and dreamed of becoming an Olympic gymnast, she quit after her coach said she was ‘heavier’ than other girls on her team and encouraged her to restrict her diet.
She remembers watching her mother frowning at herself in the mirror as she pinched the rolls on her belly, headlines screaming from magazines in waiting rooms ‘Get beach body ready: How to lose 5 kgs in 5 days!’ and family members teasing her for ‘eating too much’.
Imagine if Olivia had access to The Embrace Collective’s programs….
Olivia’s trajectory towards a life of body shame could have looked very different if the environments around her had been supported by the education and advocacy provided by The Embrace Collective, but we cannot shape her future without funding.
Without access to our evidence-based programs and resources, Olivia does not get body image support, she does not learn that she is wonderful just as she is and she keeps receiving negative messages about her appearance. At almost 18 years old, Olivia stops playing sports, diets obsessively, and vapes to reduce her appetite.
Like three in four of all young Australians, she now experiences body image distress; a deeply harmful state of anxiety that makes young people like Olivia more likely to:
- Abuse alcohol and illicit drugs
- Develop anxiety and depression
- Self harm
- Be at significantly higher risk of developing an eating disorder
Olivia’s parents and teachers are deeply concerned, but are at a loss for how to help her. Being a complex and often elusive issue, body image distress can be difficult for young people and their loved ones to recognise and seek help for.
And so they suffer in silence.
What Olivia’s life could have looked like
If The Embrace Collective were involved over the course of Olivia’s life, her story could have looked like this…
