Food and Body Image at Barnard
CW: Food and Body Image
Just about everyone has heard about the Freshman fifteen. And even though we’ve all heard of it, it’s still seen by many as a negative thing. This negativity around bodily change in size is fueled by stigma about being fat; by fatphobia. I often overhear all these beautiful human beings at Barnard/Columbia speak negatively about how they were “so much skinnier” before college and have “gained so much weight” since coming to college. It’s made to sound like a casual joke, but it’s loaded. As someone who has struggled with body dysmorphia, binge eating, and over-exercising, I took people’s comments about their weight fluctuations during their first year quite deeply. This blog post seeks to understand what it means to build a healthy body image and relationship with food at Barnard and hopes to increase dialogue about a topic that is often shoved under the rug.
To start, I want to point out that “Freshman” in the “Freshman 15” phrase is not a gender-inclusive word, as it is rooted in the historical norm that only men attended institutions of higher education. We can shift our use of the exclusive word “Freshman” to something more inclusive quite easily! “First-years” is an easy replacement. Making space in language for women, nonbinary, genderfluid, genderqueer, trans individuals, and anyone else on the gender spectrum to exist in higher education is a huge step towards creating equity and inclusivity.
That may have seemed like a random tangent, but this theme of creating environments where people of all different identities can take up space is strongly connected to how we take up “space” with our own bodies. It impacts how we love our bodies and how we view beauty. As womxn are often expected to be unrealistically thin, womxn are inherently expected to take up less space. When people adopt the mindset that becoming skinny is the way to being beautiful, they are roped into physically taking up less room. This allows others (traditionally cis men) to take up that space for them, which teaches cis men to override other people’s voices. Furthermore, beauty standard expectations for womxn to be thin are rooted in white-centric beauty standards. So when womxn take up less space in their size, womxn of color are also forced to make their identity take up less space. There are some amazing classes at Barnard that touch on this, focusing on body, space, and existence within intersectional feminism.
It’s interesting though, because I never really hear cis-men use the phrase “Freshman-15” to describe their experience with weight fluctuations. The phrase excludes people of any other gender, yet it disproportionately affects the very same people that are not included in the word “freshman”. Not only are womxn folk, transgender folk, nonbinary folk and gender queer folk not allowed to take up as much space in academia, as indicated by the gendered term “freshman”, but they are the majority of people that I hear voicing their concern about gaining weight or taking up too much physical space. They are the people I hear experiencing the violence of this phrase, “Freshman 15”.
When I made this connection, everything shifted for me. I no longer blamed myself for having body dysmorphia. I no longer blamed myself for binge eating and overexercising. I saw it as a product of a system of oppression. Shifting this blame allowed me to see eating food, and taking care of myself, as a form of activism. Every time I feel good after eating, every time I fight the urge to limit my eating, I try to see it as a stance against oppression. It helps me respect myself more.
Barnard is one of the most supportive and safest higher educational spaces to talk about body image and our relationship with food. Being an institution that primarily serves women, transgender folk, nonbinary folk, and a people who identify with a spectrum of other genders, it supports a demographic that is especially vulnerable to the effects of unhealthy body expectations in society. Of course, these eating disorders are not limited to people who identify as women. Individuals who do not identify as cisgender may be dealing with both body and gender dysphoria simultaneously. This is not easy. Furthermore, the intersection of racism and body discrimination can have an enormous impact on people of color, particularly on BIPOC. Eurocentric beauty standards fuel the pressures to be skinny; the pressures to be lighter; and these pressures can amplify one’s struggle to love their body. No one story is going to be the same.
With this, there is always room for improvement in diversity and inclusion initiatives and practices on campus. White people and cis women are still the majority at Barnard. In this way, BIPOC and queer people may experience more difficulty surrounding body image and the “Freshman 15”, whether that be isolation in their experience, microaggressions that amplify negative body image and associated self worth, systemic pedagogical or curricular oppression, or something else.
Clearly, this is a really complex issue, but Barnard tries hard to create safe spaces for students to speak their minds and create systemic change in collaboration with faculty, administrators, and staff. The fact that this is a learning institution dedicated to uplifting people who were not historically included in higher education speaks to the kind of conversations they are willing to have--hence the fact that I’m able to write about this topic in a blog post! Below, I’ve included some resources in case you are struggling with eating disorders, body dysmorphia, and anything else body or food related.
The Rosemary Furman Counseling Center offers help for all Barnard students. For both current and prospective students, Furman Counseling also has suggested this free online eating disorder support group on their website, alongside this free and anonymous online virtual meal support. They also invite anyone to listen to “Food Psych”, a podcast by Christy Harrison, which can be found here. Barnard students themselves have also come together to address the intersection between racism and body discrimination. Unplugged is a powerful student run collective that uplifts womxn at Barnard to share their stories about body discrimination, mental health, anti-Blackness, and more.
At college, it’s easy to get caught up in the business of everything. I know that a lot of people-- myself included--skip meals because there “isn’t enough time”. But there is always time for self-care and self-love. Self-care isn’t just a personal thing; it’s a stance of fighting oppression. I hope that Barnard will grow and help reshape these spaces and our conversations about dining and our bodies into more affirmative, honest, and supportive ones. Especially during quarantine, I’ve noticed the number of conversations about being dissatisfied with bodily appearances increase. This blog post is a reminder that your body is beautiful and always will be. This blog post is a reminder that conversations about body image and insecurity are important, especially ones that are based in love rather than fatphobia. This blog post is a reminder that bodies are more than limbs that move and muscles that grip--our bodies are our vessels, our physical manifestation of self. So please, take up all the space you want. I hope I, and others, can embrace our weight gain in college--it’s normal. Weight fluctuates. Your beauty and power does not.