Body Prayers: Finding Body Peace--A Journey of Self Acceptance - Softcover

Radcliffe, Rebecca

9780963660725: Body Prayers: Finding Body Peace--A Journey of Self Acceptance

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0963660721 ISBN 13: 9780963660725

Publisher: E A S E, 1999

Body Prayers: Finding Body Peace—A Journey of Self Acceptance is a gentle yet powerful book for women ages 15+ who find themselves in bodies that do not look like those found in media images. Because women compare themselves to the impossibly thin, fit, and surgically-shaped bodies that parade across television and movie screens and magazine pages, most end up disliking their bodies in some way. Body Prayers: Finding Body Peace looks at how harmful our social judgments are about female body size to women young and old—especially when it comes to self esteem and confidence.

Body Prayers: Finding Body Peace helps us begin to question whether society's expectations for women to be thin in order to be beautiful, successful, or loveable makes sense or whether it is actually intolerant and destructive. This compassionate and uplifting book also helps women begin to quietly embrace their own bodies as being uniquely beautiful. When we, as women, discover a more self-accepting and tolerant attitude toward our own bodies, we then find it possible and essential to adopt a more tolerant attitude toward everyone's varied size and shape. It is only when women begin to promote a spirit of tolerance and acceptance for themselves and their children that we will see society's obsession with thinness begin to weaken.

Finding Body Peace is a journey—it happens step by step, insight by insight. Page by page, the reader is led through the inner thoughts and feelings women have as they step in front of mirrors, look at their bodies, struggle to be thin, fail repeatedly at diets, become depressed, and slowly lose their confidence to even pursue the jobs they want or the dreams they have because they are not thin enough. Page by page, the reader begins to then consider another way of thinking. . .another way of viewing their bodies. . .another way of looking at our culture's rigid and narrow view of beauty. Slowly a new vision emerges in which women can embrace the natural beauty of the female body with all of its varied curves. Slowly, the reader begins to imagine the power women would have to change the world if they were not held back by fear and lack of self-confidence stemming from body-hatred.

Body Prayers: Finding Body Peace—A Journey of Self Acceptance is a must read for women who wish to be comfortable in their own bodies and be free of the self-hatred that creeps in from the messages our culture sends us about thinness. Body Prayers: Finding Body Peace—A Journey of Self Acceptance is an essential tool for all women who wish to teach their daughters and sons that females are beautiful in all their diversity. Easy-to-read and sprinkled with 84 statistics that illustrate how deep body-hatred runs in our culture, this book ends with nurturing and motivational affirmations and poetry to inspire our new vision. When women and their friends and families join together in the pursuit of body tolerance, diversity, and acceptance, perhaps we will see an end to eating disorders, body shame, and the swallowed dreams of women everywhere.

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From the Publisher:

Body Prayers: Finding Body Peace takes women on an uplifting journey that questions our thinness culture and creates body acceptance.

From the Author:

Body Prayers: Finding Body Peace—A Journey of Self Acceptance is an antidote to the body-hating culture that has become so deeply established in our world. Why is it that only one shape and size is beautiful? Why is it that women have to be so wispy to be considered attractive and worthy of success?

Body diversity and size tolerance are topics that have not yet entered our national discussion and are long overdue. Too many women do not have the confidence to utilize their full skills and talents because they see themselves as failures at becoming stick thin. This is not right or fair. We have to work to change this so that women of all ages can feel free to embrace themselves for their wonderful ability to contribute and make the world better each in their own way.

To do this, let's question the culture that tells us we must first look perfect before we can dream the dreams of our lives. Otherwise, women of all shapes, sizes, colors, and backgrounds are not really free to become who we are.

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