How Body Shaming in Media Affects Eating Disorder Recovery and How to Handle It

Feel badly about your body? Having a hard time dealing with media’s images of how bodies SHOULD look? Are you just OVER watching movies or Netflix or other TV shows that have NO body diversity? Sick of social media promoting a certain kind of body type and disguising it as “health” or “wellness”? It can feel as though we are bombarded with images on or phones, on TVs, on computers, and on movie screens that send us the message that we need to look a certain way. In San Diego, messages about having a “bikini body” or a “beach-ready” body assault us on a daily basis. Both in San Diego and other places, summer can especially be difficult. All the media show people in fewer clothes, so you may feel even more conscious about how your body looks. In this post, I’m going to identify three ways the media portrays bodies and how it influences eating disorder recovery. PLUS, I’m going to share what you can do about it.