A Quarterly Newsletter

Loving Your Body
Inside and Out

Learn to Love What You See in the Mirror
When you look in the mirror, what do you see? Do you like what you see? Women in the U.S. are under pressure to measure up to a certain social and cultural ideal of beauty, which can lead to poor body image. Women are constantly bombarded with "Barbie-like" doll images. By presenting an ideal difficult to achieve and maintain, the cosmetic and diet product industries are assured of growth and profits. It's no accident that youth is increasingly promoted, along with thinness, as an essential criterion of beauty. If not all women need to lose weight, for sure they're all aging — which is a "disaster" sure to happen — just ask any middle-age anchorwoman or model — if you can find one.

Other pressures can come from people in our lives.
· Family and friends can influence your body image
· A doctor's health advice can be misinterpreted and affect how a woman perceives and feels about her body.

Celebrate and Nourish Your Body
Building a healthy lifestyle that includes a healthy diet and physical activity is important to improving body image. We all want to look our best, but a healthy body is not always linked to appearance. In fact, healthy bodies come in all shapes and sizes! Developing and nurturing a positive body image and a healthy mental attitude is crucial to a woman's happiness and wellness!

Change Your Body Image Not Your Body
It is important to remember that when you change your body image, you don't change your body, you change the way you think about your body.

Essentials to developing healthy body image include:
· eating healthy
· regular exercise
· plenty of rest

Eating healthy can promote healthy skin and hair, along with strong bones; exercise increases self-esteem, self-image, and energy; and plenty of rest is the key to stress management – all of these can make you feel good about your body.

And don't forget your kids! The attitude of parents about appearance and diet affects their kids' attitudes.

Article adapted from the womenshealth.gov web site at http://www.4woman.gov/bodyimage/index.cfm. The site is maintained by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services – Office on Women’s Health.

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Women Making History
Lecture

With the arrival of Fall Semester 2006, the Women’s Resource Center announces the return of the annual Women Making History Lecture. Funded through the generosity of ETSU alumna Barbara Murphy Brooks, this year’s guest speaker for the Women Making History Lecture is Susan Gentry Williams, Ph.D., professor of management in the Jack C. Massey Graduate School of Business at Belmont University. Entitled “Women and Negotiation in the New Millennium,” the Williams lecture is scheduled for Tuesday, October 24, 2006, at 7:00 p.m. Location is the B. Carroll Reece Museum, Main Gallery.

Williams, who completed her B.S. in 1967 and M.A. in 1968 while at ETSU, received her Ph.D. from the University of Georgia in 1975. Upon rreceiving her Ph.D., Williams taught in the University of Georgia system and at East Tennessee State. In 1989, Williams joined the higher education ranks at Belmont University, which is located in Nashville. She has served the university in several capacities, most recently as Vice President of Administration and Planning before returning to the classroom full time in 2001. Prior to her tenure with Belmont University, Williams had been a business owner and entrepreneur in Nashville for several years.

Williams is an active public speaker and consultant on topics related to management. Representative clients include Penn State University, The United Methodist Church, Vanderbilt University, AAA, Disney, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. She recently completed a three-year appointment as a judge for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, a Secretary of Commerce appointment. She has served the Tennessee Center for Performance Excellence in various capacities since its inception in 1993; she now serves on the Panel of Judges. Williams is a member of the ETSU Foundation board of directors and volunteers her time for a variety of local non-profit organizations in the Nashville area.

For additional information, contact the Women’s Resource Center at 423-439-7847.

 

Love Your Body Day 2006

On Wednesday, October 18, 2006, from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., the ETSU Counseling Center will sponsor a variety of interactive information booths, along with free giveaways, for Love Your Body Day 2006. Booths will be set up throughout the Atrium of the D.P. Culp University Center. ETSU students, faculty, and staff will have access to everything from free massage therapy to healthy eating tips to women’s health information.

Hollywood and the fashion, cosmetics and diet industries work hard to make each of us believe that our bodies are unacceptable and need constant improvement. Print ads and television commercials reduce us to body parts — lips, legs, breasts — airbrushed and touched up to meet impossible standards. TV shows tell women and teenage girls that cosmetic surgery is good for self-esteem. Is it any wonder that 80% of U.S. women are dissatisfied with their appearance?

Women and girls spend billions of dollars every year on cosmetics, fashion, magazines and diet aids. These industries can't use negative images to sell their products without our assistance.

For more information on Love Your Body Day 2006, contact Kim Bushore-Maki, ETSU Counseling Center at 423-439-4841 or by email at bushorem@etsu.edu.

Poster acknowledgment: Maria DeFazio was the Grand Prize Winner for the 2006 Love Your Body Day Poster Contest. Article partially adapted from the Love Your Body Day website at http://loveyourbody.nowfoundation.org/index.html.

Women’s Health Series
Summer Highlights

When you're fighting cancer, your body needs the best treatment (as recommended by your doctor), plus the best nutrition, to help you slow or prevent weight loss, manage fatigue, and continue getting the most out of life. Creating a sound nutritional base at the outset of your treatment may make it easier to overcome dietary challenges and minimize weight loss. And a sound nutritional plan works best for all of us, over the long haul.

Would you welcome simple and practical tips on establishing a personal nutritional plan or expanding an existing one? Then join us for “What Does Nutrition Have To Do With Cancer, Anyway?” Maria Schell, laboratory director for the ETSU Department of Microbiology in the Quillen College of Medicine, will return as guest speaker for this Women’s Health Lunch Break Seminar. Schell will discuss some of the causative factors associated with cancer, along with what can be done to prevent and manage it with a sound nutritional plan, subsequently leading to a longer and healthier life.

Scheduled for Tuesday, November 14, 2006, at noon, location is the East Tennessee Room, D.P. Culp University Center, at noon.

 

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