The Wellness Center collaborated with Counseling and Psychological Services, Health Services and the Luann Dummer Center for Women to create a series of educational and self-empowering events for Body Image Awareness Week, which began Feb. 19 and concluded on Feb. 26.

The week’s events included programming in the residence halls, a self-kindness meditation session and a movie night showing “Miss Representation.” Kaite Slieter, the graduate assistant at the Wellness Center, said she hopes the week encouraged discussion about the issue of negative body image among students.

Negative body image is an issue that can be harmful to college students since it is connected to many other health behaviors, such as getting enough sleep, eating properly or getting adequate exercise, according to Slieter. In turn, these behaviors have an effect on self-perception.

“All of those things can affect your diet or your weight, which if neither of those are good and you have a poor sense of your body, then it feeds into negative feelings. Then negative feelings feed into poor grades, or less concentration, or depression or anxiety – and then it’s mental health. It kind of all spirals,” Slieter said.

Slieter added that Body Image Awareness Week coincided with National Eating Disorder Awareness Week to bring attention to all students who are struggling.

“There’s a lot of people who maybe struggle with negative body image but maybe don’t have an eating disorder,” Slieter said. “We’re trying to kind of come in the middle of that so it doesn’t progress to something.”

Sophomore Sheila Statz attended the movie night and said body image is an important issue to discuss on college campuses.

“I think it’s important because it affects what women become and what they really put their time into,” Statz said. “It also affects men and just culture as a whole.”

Slieter also recognized negative body image as something that has an impact on both genders.

“Maybe they (men) feel more pressure to be masculine or to be muscular or manly or whatever it might be – where women feel the pressure to be skinny or put together or beautiful or fit,” she said. “I think it manifests itself in different ways, but it lends itself to both men and women equally.”

If a student is struggling with body image, he or she can visit Counseling and Psychological Services and meet with a counselor or stop at the Wellness Center to discuss topics such as nutrition.

Margaret Galush can be reached at galu4637@stthomas.edu.