Body image bootcamp

“Bodies be bodies…”

…As the incomparable Teri Hofford would say. Teri’s Body Image Bootcamp was a gift I didn’t know I needed. She originally began hosting the Body Image Bootcamp (BIBC) in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico in 2018 and I’ve been wanting to go for years, but always had an excuse to put it off. I finally got my shit together this year, and was particularly excited to learn how to facilitate a BIBC here in Wisconsin, but if I thought I wouldn’t learn (and feel!) new things about body image because I’ve been on this journey for a while, boy howdy was I wrong. Like very wrong.

I have a tendency to remove the emotion from my memories and feelings. Just ask any therapist I’ve ever been to. I can recount some pretty horrific stuff like I’m ready a grocery list, ten steps removed from it. This is obviously a coping mechanism, and my brain’s way of protecting me, but it can sometimes be a barrier to breakthroughs and knowing this about myself, I was a little worried I wouldn’t connect, not only with other BIBC attendees, but also with myself. I also had all the normal (normal???) worries about not fitting in, being the odd woman out, not making friends, and not belonging that I tend to have going into every social situation, and add to that my concerns about being in a country where I don’t speak the language. All these thoughts had me pretty nervous about what to expect and what the experience would be like for me.

Turns out, I was worried for nothing. I arrived a day early and stayed at Hacienda Buenaventura and immediately was able to connect with one of my fellow BIBC attendees, a French Canadian woman who was staying at the same hotel pre-bootcamp. We had such a lovely dinner getting to know each other that it immediately put my mind at ease about the workshop, and eased my fears around not fitting in. We took an Uber together to the BIBC villa, then rode the sky bucket (what we lovingly call the outdoor funicular elevator thingy that ferried us up and down the steepest part of the hill and hauled us right to the BIBC doorstep). We were greeted with hugs and limeade (two of my favorites things) and my new companion and I were the first to arrive and the first to choose our rooms! Day one was largely settling in, greeting new arrivals (more hugs, more limeade) and swimming naked in the infinity pool with an AMAZING view of Puerto Vallarta and the ocean (I never want to swim with a bathing suit on again). That first evening, we were served a delicious meal, then headed to the rooftop fire pit area to talk through Clifton Strengths (which if you haven’t heard of it, I highly recommend checking it out here!) We laughed and chatted and got to know one another a bit, then all headed off to bed (avoiding stepping on any of the many gecko friends all over the open-air parts of the villa at night).

The next morning was the official “Day 1” of the bootcamp, and that’s when I knew this wasn’t going to be just surface level stuff. While I won’t recount everything we learned or did, one of the most powerful moments for me happened on Day 1, when we were asked to take 10 minutes and write down a list of every mean or negative thing we say to ourselves (or have said to ourselves). I was super honest with this exercise, and didn’t realize that part 2 was to hand our list over to a partner. The person we were paired up with then read our list out loud, as though they were saying these things to themselves. I would never, never say things as mean as what I’ve said to myself to another creature, and just hearing those words come out of someone else’s mouth made me weep. I was crying like a baby before we were even halfway through the list. This one small moment was so monumentally eye-opening, and says so much about how we’re willing to treat ourselves, versus how we treat others.

Days 2 and 3 were a happy blur of meaningful discussions, tears, hugs, good food, and photos. At the end of Day 3, the last day of the bootcamp, we discussed ways to continue body image work as we head back into the world, and had a glitter graduation ceremony where we helped each of our fellow attendees heal parts of themselves where they struggle with body image most, and thanked each other for witnessing us, and basked in the gentle healing that comes along with being truly seen. And bonus, I got cute cat stickers on my bum!

The day after our glitter graduation ceremony was a free day of sorts, where we had massages, bummed around Puerto Vallarta in small groups, and got matching tattoos! I know that sounds crazy (which is how I prefaced my text to my husband about it lol), but the discussion came up about matching tattoos, and my wonderful roommate Nathou, whose native language is French, said the phrase “je t’adore”, which means “I love you” and as we reflected over learning to love ourselves and our bodies, it just felt right as a matching tattoo idea, and so that was what we decided on! This means we also all have a little piece of Nathou (both the phrase, and for some of us, even her handwriting) with us as we go back into our lives, and a meaningful reminder to treat ourselves with love and kindness. There’s a pic below of this beautiful tattoo, which means so much to me I can’t even put it into words!

Some of my biggest takeaways from this workshop were:

  1. You probably have more work to do on your body image than you think, even if you’ve been working on it for years

  2. You can’t love your body if you don’t love who you are, so it’s not just about your body image, but also your self-image

  3. The vast majority of us are searching for a sense of belonging and comparison, self-doubt, and fear robs us of the chance to make meaningful connections and impactful relationships in our lives if we let it

  4. Being naked is a fucking gift - it’s so much easier to attain body neutrality when you acclimate yourself to your naked body, just doing its body thing

  5. This one is aimed at moms, non-binary parents, and caretakers in particular - if it is accessible for you, try to take a solo trip just for you every now and again so you can experience being able to prioritize only yourself, even if it’s just for a day or two at a time

  6. The world needs your softness and your vulnerability

I am so grateful to Teri for creating this experience (and to Beth, the coordination guru with whom I share a love of spreadsheets)! I know folks are going to really benefit from doing this work, and I can’t wait to bring my own spin on this bootcamp to Wisconsin! Leave a comment or shoot me an email if you have any questions! I could talk about body image, and also this bootcamp, literally all day long!

—Sam

p.s. Special thanks to Cat of Alter Ego Boudoir for taking the dress photos of me on my camera so I could edit them! You’re a doll!

 
 

Camp Thunder Thighs

A fat-positive camp with a focus on healing our troubled relationships with our bodies

I never went to camp as a kid, not the overnight kind anyway, with bunks and s’mores and all that, and I’m newer to this whole body and fat acceptance movement, so I honestly wasn’t sure what to expect at Camp Thunder Thighs. The camp was hosted by Virgie Tovar, an author, activist and one of the nation's leading experts and lecturers on weight-based discrimination and body image.

I headed to Sausalito, California with some trepidation. First of all, I was scared of not belonging. As a person who has had thin privilege (being ‘straight-sized’) until the last 5 years or so, I haven’t experienced a lot of the same size-based stigma that those who have been in larger bodies their whole lives have. I was worried that I would feel like an outsider even though I live in a larger body now. Along those same lines, I was worried about not connecting with people or that I wouldn’t be able to contribute to the conversations in a meaningful way. This is a fear I often have, and if I’m being real, isn’t necessarily specific to this event. Last, but not least of course, as a person with a chronic illness that causes me chronic joint pain and sometimes limits my mobility, I was concerned about how my body would feel during the weekend and if I would be in a significant amount of pain from travel, walking, etc.

I was super happy to be carpooling from the San Francisco airport with the awesome Teri of THP Studios, a body-acceptance educator and intimate lifestyle portrait photographer based in Winnipeg, Canada, and just that first interaction with a fellow camper was so nice it put my mind at ease a bit about the whole “What if no one likes me and I don’t make any friends?!” concern.

While camp was filled with learning sessions, laughs, s’mores, and campfire sing-a-longs, it was so much more. Some of the powerful messages that we discussed just blew my mind. They were transformative. Among them were the following:

  • That choosing yourself is a radical act of treason against patriarchal and fat-phobic systems of oppression

  • That fat-phobia isn’t about the weight, it’s about control and is intertwined with misogyny, racism, ableism, and colonialism/white supremacy

  • That fat isn’t synonymous with ugly (I have REALLY personally struggled with this one, not in how I view others, but in how I view myself, and it’s something I continue to work on and unpack)

  • That boundary setting is an act of respect towards the self and a declaration of worthiness

  • How normalizing all bodies is soooo important

  • That fat people (and people of color and queer people and women) are not individually responsible for their own mistreatment and abuse or for systemic mistreatment

  • How important it is to curate your social media and what is being put into your brain - positive representation of fat and disabled people is so key

  • That ‘flattering’ is what we call anything that makes us appear thinner

  • Most of what we consider “striving for happiness” is actually striving to obtain or maintain privilege

  • That the negative self-talk and self-shame and self-hate (particularly the weight-related kind) is like your native language, and it’s based on your experiences in your family of origin, and in society at large, but body acceptance is like a second language. It may take you years to become fluent, and when you’re tired, stressed, or overwhelmed, you might momentarily revert back to your native language, but you always have that second language available to you and you can choose to use it

  • That we are all precious as fuck, and need to remember that immutable fact

There were some difficult and uncomfortable moments too, and that’s to be expected with doing this kind of personal and community-based work in a society that de-values those in larger body sizes. There were difficult moments around the concept of grieving the thin ideal (if you’re working through your own journey around body acceptance, this is something that you’ll probably be familiar with, and it’s hard as fuck). On the other side of the coin, Virgie had the amazing idea of a Vulnerability Fashion Show, in which campers dressed up in an outfit they might struggle to wear in day to day life, or something they’ve been wanting to wear out and haven’t felt comfortable doing. While this was a strictly photo-free event, all I can say I’ve never experienced something as amazing and terrifying as strutting my stuff in a vulnerable outfit (which you can see in the photos below that were taken later at the beach), but then being cheered for so loudly and joyfully by 30 ladies and feeling so damn supported (not to mention like a rock star).

With the difficult moments were some moments so damn joyful it brought me to tears.

  • Seeing dolphins and seals on the first trip to the beach

  • The vulnerability fashion show (again, both terrifying and wonderful) - the amazing feelings surrounding cheering for and being cheered for by so many amazing women and the look of sheer joy, tenderness, vulnerability and pride on each woman’s face as she strutted down the aisle to whistles and cheers and more support than I’ve ever felt

  • The impromptu beach photo shoot (which you’ll see below!) - badass fat feminist babes in bikinis and crop tops rolling around on the beach being sexy and powerful and precious as fuck

  • Guided meditation focusing on the parts of ourselves that we struggle with and talking through that experience together

  • The campfire question & answer times and the unprompted childhood song singalong when we all sang songs from The Little Mermaid and ate fancy s’mores

I left camp a changed person in all the best ways. I made friends I hope to keep for a lifetime. And I learned things that will help me heal my relationship with my body, and view my body as the friend she has tried to be to me all along. I hope you read these words, and view these images of joyful, beautiful, fat babes living their best damn life and you see how possible that is for you too. #losehatenotweight

Fat Positive Resources

Podcasts

Blogs & Articles

Books (links in book title)

Communities (links in community title)

A Guide for Partners Concerned About Their Significant Other Giving Up on Diet Culture (link in title)

  • Resilient Fat Goddex (CW: Article discusses partner’s perceived difficulties with the fat positive movement and may be hard to read in more vulnerable moments, but is a great guide and resource list for partners who are concerned about their spouses and significant others giving up on dieting but who want to be supportive, etc.)