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Change Your BodyMental!

2020-2-TR01-KA105-0958152020Youth mobilityfinalized
Countries: TR|BE|LT|ES|BG|SE · Grant: €18,804
Health and wellbeingInclusion - equity

Objectives

The main goals of our project are creating an awareness about body positivity and cyber bullying and showing people how to handle with them if they come across a cyber bully. That acceptance is the way for being a part of the society or for living in their personal safe-zone without being excluded. Also, body positivity is a movement which shows up after this kind of insisting. First, body positivity showed itself for women as a feminist movement but it is for everybody indeed. In different eras, this movement focused on different issues but the thing never changes is the textile and fashion industry which tell people what they should do to be accepted by others and how they should look like to be found beautiful. The aim of body positivity is actually accepting everyone with respect whoever they are and however they look like. It means that there is no specific rule for being beautiful/handsome and nobody has a right to judge somebody else because of his/her physical appearance. There should not be a social ideal body idea. So, there will not be society system that stigmatizes people about being ugly when the people are out of the ‘’ideal’’. The main idea under body positivity is being neutral to our bodies and loving our bodies just the way we are, too. Therefore, accepting the others is going to get easier just the way they are and we will see each other’s bodies neutrally. Every individual have to have a right to decide on what kind of body they want to live in by themselves. For example, it is only his/her business if somebody wants or does not want to shave his/her body hair. Imposing on a woman for having thin waist, cellulite-free legs, and plump lips is unreal and a kind of social violence just like imposing on a man for a triangle muscular body, a characteristic chin structure, beard and bushy hair. In this sense, any individual with a social life will feel these impositions at any time of their day, and this situation removes the person from being a mentally healthy, self-confident and non-stressful individual. One of the criticisms faced by the body positivity movement is that it promotes unhealthyness. This negative criticism focusing especially on obesity has no basis. Body positivity does not support unhealthyness, it only pays attention to the existence of different body sizes and the industries producing as if these body sizes did not exist. It would be unfair to expect a healthy social psychology from individuals who cannot mentally feel like a part of society. This exclusion and othering; It can lead to various ailments such as depression, anxiety, and emotional eating disorders. Therefore, the first condition of a healthy body goes through a healthy mind. With the introduction of social media into our lives, it has become more important for people to be beautiful or handsome. The anxiety for being liked has increased; people started to show themselves like how they want to be look like normally but not actually who they are. The main reason for this is that they do not feel beautiful or handsome when they cannot reach the ideal in terms of society. Another of these problems is cyberbullying and cyber harassment. Cyberbullying is called threatening or embarrassing people over internet platforms. Although this term is mostly used for young people, the terms cyber harassment or cyberattack are also used for adults. Body positivity and cyberbullying are directly linked because social media tools are the platforms where body mation affair is most common today. Therefore, one of its biggest goals; It is to cope with the bullying in social media tools while trying to eliminate the ideal body perception. When cyberbullying is not prevented, its effects especially on adolescent individuals can reach suicide. The aim of the realization of this project is to inform young participants about body positivity, to increase awareness of body positivity, to support self-love and acceptance even for a group of young individuals, and to contribute to a small drop, perhaps causing large waves. In addition, in order to respond to the negative criticism directed to the above-mentioned body positivity, a yoga event was planned to emphasize the importance of having both a healthy mind and a healthy body. Yoga is a type of exercise that can be performed by individuals with all types of physical characteristics, and it is very pleasant to perform and has recently increased its popularity in the direction of encouraging people. The Erasmus + program focuses on healthy individuals and our project follows the same path to a great extent for its purposes.

Project partners (6)