Students were encouraged to love their bodies and shun societal stereotypes by communication professor Ann Marie Barry on Tuesday. She discussed beauty - its history, its roots in science and mathematics, the modern media's definition, and its implications on our society. The lecture, titled "What It Means to be Beautiful," was sponsored by the Women's Resource Center (WRC) as part of Love Your Body Week. The WRC is calling on the Boston College community to celebrate bodies of all shapes and sizes by building confidence and encouraging healthy lifestyles.
Barry is the co-founder of the Body Confidence Committee and teaches classes in film and advertising. Her interest in beauty and its implications on society came from her passion for literary and film aesthetics and how meaning is so often derived from imagery.
Barry defined beauty as the symmetry of features, harmony of proportion, clarity of skin, and vivid, healthy coloring. She noted the most important thing to take away from this definition is that they all had harmony and health in common. Barry also said that despite what one looks like when young, "At 60, your face shows the kind of person you are."
The true face of beauty is often distorted by society, according to Barry. She described how women in China bound their feet for the beauty's sake to prevent their feet from growing too large. The practice started in the 10th century until it was outlawed in 1911. She showed horrific pictures of these women's feet after they had been bound for years, with broken toes and bones. Barry discussed the practice of women wearing rings, or Hwangs, around their necks in Padaung. These women would add on a ring to slump their shoulders so that their necks would appear longer as a sign of femininity.
After a brief discussion of tattooing, Barry shifted the discussion to fashion trends. Although some fashions have always posed some health risks, such as the use of corsets in the 19th century, the 20th century suffers from the increasing number of cosmetic surgeries conducted in the nation.
Barry then showed anorexia and bulimia statistics followed by some graphic photographs of sickly, thin women that came from pro-anorexia Web sites used to encourage women to starve themselves.
After all of these examples of the distortion of beauty, Barry brought the lecture back to the what true beauty is with some Native American quotes encouraging people to accept themselves as a greater part of the beautiful world around them.
Liz Wolf, organizer of Love Your Body Week for the WRC and A&S '05, explained that the concept of Love Your Body Week has been adopted at BC for the past two years. Previous to that the WRC had Eating Disorders Awareness Week. It was abandoned, however, when it was found that that type of programming reinforced eating disorders instead of combating them.
The central theme of Love Your Body Week encourages students to pledge not to say anything insulting about their bodies or others'. This idea is reinforced by several events throughout the week, including the lecture, "Wellness, not Waist-size" with nutritionist Sheila Tucker and trainer Corin Pilo on Tuesday.
Other events include "Yoga Meets Dance Class" and a showing of the movie Real Women Have Curves yesterday.
Today, students can go to the Walsh Function Room for the Love Your Body gala celebration with performances from Fuego del Corazon, The Bostonians, and the Philippine Society of BC. Poetry, comedy, artwork, and food will also be available at 7 p.m.
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