Educating about body images

By Kyle Hobstetter on February 27, 2018

Eating disorders can impact up to 20 percent of college students — while many more students struggle with feeling good about their appearance and bodies.

To help Towson University students learn more about healthy body images, the Counseling Center established the Body Image Peer Educators Program[BROKEN LINK], designed to help students become educators for the TU community about eating disorders and assist in improving the body image of our students.

Students in this program are trained throughout the year by Jaime Kaplan, Ph.D. who is the coordinator of Eating Disorder Services at the Counseling Center. Through their training with Kaplan, the peer educators can then help their fellow students sort through good and bad healthy habits.

“College is a prime time for identity development and college students are often looking at their peers as models of who they want to become,” Kaplan said. “Because of this comparison and societal pressures for thinness, college students (who frequently live and eat meals with each other) may compare themselves through dress, food and weight.

“Students often pass around health and wellness tips among each other, most of which are untrue, and this can lead to unhealthy habits,” Kaplan noted.

Along with training, peer educators participate in campus-wide events, both on their own and with other student groups. The group will be holding events for National Eating Disorder Awareness Week now through this Friday, March 2.

The group held their first event this past Monday called “Happiness isn’t a Specific Size.” The tabling event was set up for students to answer trivia about eating disorders and win a free t-shirt as a prize.  The catch was that all of the t-shirts had the tags cut out of them so nobody knew what sizes they were.

“Our culture tends to put a lot of emphasis on sizes and numbers so we wanted to literally cut that out of the equation and allow students to select a t-shirt that fit their bodies, not the cultural idea,” Kaplan said.  “We wanted to put on the event to raise awareness about how much size plays a role in what we buy. People tend to walk out of the store than buy a larger size and we want to break through that stigma.” 

The peer educators group will hold events additional events throughout the remainder of this week:

• On Wednesday, the Peer Educators will focus on eating disorder and body image in all bodies, including men, women, and individuals in the queer, non-binary, and trans* communities.  They will have a table in the University Union starting at 5 p.m., co-sponsored with the Queer Student Union.
• On Wednesday at 7 p.m. the Peer Educators will host transgender speaker and gender diversity trainer Ryan Sallans in the Potomac Lounge.  This event is being sponsored by the Eating/Exercise Awareness at Towson, and is co-sponsored with various departments on and off campus.  Ryan’s talk will explore identity post-transition and his life after his recovering from an eating disorder.  
• On Thursday evening from 6-8 p.m., the Counseling Center will have peer educators hosting a panel in the Loch Raven Room of the Union, discussing various TED Talks related to body image.

Along with those events on campus, Towson University offers various sessions in the Counseling Center. Along with individual sessions, Kaplan also runs a Body Image Support Group each semester and serve as the liaison to many eating disorder providers in the community, should students need off-campus support.

Learn more about the services that the Counseling Center offers its students.[BROKEN LINK]

Students can sign up for the peer educator-led Body Project — an interactive discussion group that focuses on helping women feel more positively about their bodies and helping them critique unrealistic societal ideals of beauty. Students can also inquire about joining the Body Image Peer Educator Program by filling out an application.