If Loving You Is Wrong, Taryn Brumfitt Doesn’t Want to Be Right!

16 May, 2015

Okay. We’ve all done it. “I hate my thighs. I have arm fat. My nose. My butt,” the list goes on and is pretty much as long as we make it. But when does small but derogatory statements become big issues?

How to take the perfect selfie has left the trivial conversations of high school hallways and transformed into a national topic of body image.

What’s the ‘perfect’ body anyway and most importantly who determines those standards? Oh, you do. Duuuuh.

The Trending Report talked with Taryn Brumfitt whose “Embrace” campaign has garnered world-wide recognition and a platform stretching from national morning show circuits to a bookstore (or e-tablet) near you.  Her mission, to “teach, educate and shout around the world that loving your body can bring you happiness and by learning to do so, change lives forever.” 

Brumfitt is the first to tell you that she’s an ordinary person who simply shared a story. “But it’s the story of millions,” she says “about how we feel about our bodies.”

“I learned how to love my body after I loathed my body and I just wanted to share that message with as many women as I could because I felt like I’d won the golden ticket.”

Brumfitt wants us to change the way we think by not buying into the subliminal and sometimes blatant messages that we see every day.

“If you just take a walk down the street, you see ‘defy your wrinkles, fight the lines on your face’ and I’m thinking why would we ever want to defy something that is the natural evolution of being a human being? It doesn’t make sense.” Brumfitt said.

“My saying is, ‘the lines on my face only serve to remind me that life is short and the bucket list is long.’ So I don’t want women to fight and defy the wrinkles. I want them to fight and defy something that is meaningful to them whether it’s the gender pay gap or whether it’s world hunger or whether it’s human trafficking. These are the things that we should be fighting and defying. We need to stop being at war with our body.”

A documentary, fittingly entitled ‘Embrace,’ highlighting the stories of women around the world is in the works and has garnered a lot of support on Brumfitt’s Kickstarter campaign.

“I’ve asked tens of thousands of women everywhere I’ve been, ‘What is it that you’ll be thinking about when you take your final breaths on this earth? What thoughts do you think will be going through your mind?’ And no one has ever said to me, ‘Oh my cellulite, my stretch marks, my big bottom,’ because those things aren’t important.” 

“I’m trying to get women to come back to the here and now-not wait for their final breath and learn to love their body today, unconditionally, because we’re breathing, we’re able, we’re capable. Let’s do that. Let’s not have any regrets.”

But is loving your body as is, an excuse not to be healthy? What’s wrong with exercise and wanting to make improvements to the body that I do already love?

Brumfitt is adamant about not promoting obesity. “Of course I’m not! I’m promoting good heath from within, whatever that means to you given your own very unique circumstances. And just as a side note, I think that we should not trust a four-letter word, diet, when the first three letters are DIE.   I think that should be alarm bells.”

“Great change and health for this country and the world comes from a place, a foundation, of body kindness, body love, self- confidence and self- respect… not a pill, not a potion, not a lotion, it comes from within. That’s what we need to know!

B.Owusu

Image TR 

Mentioned In This Post: @tarynbrumfitt