White Pine Center for Healing's Body Appreciation Poster Contest

Contributed

White Pine Center for Healing, Northwest Pennsylvania's only center specializing in the treatment and prevention of eating disorders, body image issues, and trauma located in Erie, hosted a body appreciation poster contest over the past few months involving children from schools across various local districts.

The Love Your Tree Poster Contest allowed any youth that participated in the Love Your Tree prevention program presented by White Pine to submit their art for a chance to win prizes and have their art featured in a 2025 community calendar. The calendars will become available to purchase at the poster contest award reception on July 25, 2024; the proceeds benefiting both White Pine Center for Healing and the United Way of Erie County.

Love Your Tree is an arts-based body appreciation program that celebrates body diversity. Youth engage in group discussions about body acceptance and appreciation that includes talking about the diversity seen in nature, considering why that is so positive, and creating a poster that is a physical representation of what they take away from the program through their art.

What is body dissatisfaction and how does it impact Erie's youth?

Body dissatisfaction is negative body image. Despite the vast diversity of body shapes in all different types of people, many people find themselves wishing their body was different in one way or another, including children.

A survey of nearly 3,000 youth conducted by the Butterfly Foundation last year found that:

• 57% of kids aged 12-18 were dissatisfied with how their body looks.
• 78% wished they were thinner or leaner.
• 62% said that social media caused them to feel dissatisfied with their bodies.

Additionally, it's been discovered that 40-60% of elementary school children are concerned about their weight or about becoming "too fat."

Body dissatisfaction is the leading cause of eating disorders. When youth are not happy with how their body looks, they are significantly more likely to engage in risky behaviors, including disordered eating, in an attempt to conform to the "ideal" body types often shown on social media.

Eating disorders can completely ruin the lives of those who suffer from them, and have the second highest mortality rate out of any other psychiatric disorder.

The most effective way to fight back against body dissatisfaction and eating disorders is through education and awareness which can be done through prevention and outreach programming.

What is prevention programming and why is it key to preventing body dissatisfaction and eating disorders?

Eating disorder and body dissatisfaction prevention programs reduce the likelihood of developing disordered eating habits and other risky behaviors while also building a better relationship with food and body. These programs, like Love Your Tree, do this by providing education, awareness, support, mental tools (like media literacy), and resources to those who participate in them.

Prevention programs are key to fighting back against body dissatisfaction and eating disorders because they aim to prevent risky behaviors before they start, which is much more effective than trying to correct risky behaviors after they've developed and begun having a negative impact.

What is White Pine doing to prevent body dissatisfaction in our community's youth and how can you help?

White Pine Center for Healing provides multiple prevention and outreach programs for not only our community's youth, but for adults, families, and businesses as well. Some of these programs include, Love Your Tree, The Body Project, HeartMath, Eat Breathe Thrive, Confident Body Confident Child, and Intuitive Eating.

White Pine has presented prevention programming to over 2,000 schoolchildren in the past year alone in multiple school districts, and they do this at no cost because they are funded solely by donations and grants.

If you're interested in helping White Pine fight back against body dissatisfaction and eating disorders in Erie's youth, here are some ways you can make a difference:

• Consider them on August 13th for Erie Gives!
• Make a donation on their website
• Support them on social media
• Buy supplies from their Amazon Wishlist
• Volunteer