I've posted before about Carmen Cool, the Boulder, CO psychotherapist who facilitates the body-positive Boulder Youth Body Alliance. (I still think "Carmen Cool" is a superhero's name.)
Well, she's at it again. Or rather the teenage girls she works with are at it again. Here's her announcement (posted with permission) about their latest project and event, which transforms bathroom scales into works of art that register positive messages instead of numbers.
New Vista High School students from the Boulder Youth Body Alliance and the Naropa Community Art Studio will be displaying its Yay Scale Project, a celebration of a body positive life, at Boulder's premier art gallery, the Art and Soul Gallery, 1615 Pearl St, Boulder, CO 80302.The art opening is on April 7, 2006 at 7:00 pm, and the scales will be on display from April 7 - April 30, 2006.
The project is sponsored by the Youth Opportunities Advisory Board (YOAB), the Naropa Community Art Studio, and the Art and Soul Gallery.
Through the facilitation of Merryl Rothaus, MA, ATR and Carmen Cool, MA, LPC, using the language of art and a variety of art media, several Boulder youth will transform traditional bathroom scales into individual pieces of art, and work with their body image in the process. The "YAY scales," a concept developed by Marilyn Wann and used with permission, register a positive adjective instead of a number. In addition, the entire scale will have become the canvas through which the students express themselves.
Through re-authoring and transforming the scales into YAY scales, this time a number will not determine how one feels, or how happy one can be based upon a number. Rather, the language of art; color, texture, line,shape and form, will assist in celebrating one's feelings about his or her body and self-image and redefining the nature and meaning of a scale and their relationship to it.
With the studio art experience of transforming their scales into artistic YAY scales, the students will learn about how the creative process of making art can be a tool for self-expression and can serve as an antidote to a dominant, damaging part of their culture. The teen's YAY scales become a form of art as social action where their personal feelings and thoughts about an important issue reach and positively affect others.
The Boulder Youth Body Alliance (BYBA) is a group of teen peer educators who are helping other teens fight body dissatisfaction and resist the pressures to do unhealthy things to try to change their bodies. Based on the work of The Body Positive organization in California, this innovative and comprehensive program trains teens to discuss the consequences of disordered eating, eating disorders, and address other topics such as cultural influences and size discrimination. Through grass-roots efforts, students work to change the broader conditions in the community that promote
shame and body dissatisfaction.The Boulder Youth Body Alliance is led by Carmen Cool, MA, LPC.The guiding vision behind the Naropa Community Art Studio is to provide a safe, free space for various age groups, particularly adolescent members of the Boulder community, to gather and create art together. Unity in diversity, the birthright to pursue creative expression, and the capacity of visual art to contain and communicate the full range of human experiences comprise the essence of our mission and focus.
The teenagers wrote about their experiences after creating the scales. Their writings are being posted next to their scales in the gallery display. Carmen shares some excerpts:
"In this rich country, we have a poverty of self-love.We lack the luxury of wholly believing in our intrinsic beauty. We lack love of our flesh, bones, hair and skin. How do we teach ourselves to hold our heads high? We must open our chests to sprout wings from our hearts. Wings that allow us to soar into love of our bodies and faces with reckless abandon. (If your heart was 'heavy' with this kind of love, would you put it on a diet?)"
"Recently, despite all the pressure I feel to attain physical perfection, I have realized that in the end, when I look back, the things in my life I will be proud of will have nothing to do with the size or shape of my body. These three women, my mother and two grandmothers always wanted the best for me and valued me for everything not just my body.They are my body inspiration."
"When I saw the metal guts spill out of my scale I wanted to throw it across the room. Instead, I poured my heart and guts into the thing I hated most and finally realized that we could be friends. Damn the man who invented scales. Praise the women who taught
us how to break them open.""No woman should try to appease their scale by trying to become a number that it thinks is ideal. Numbers on a dial shouldn't determine my wealth. I want my scale to worship and applaud me for my beauty. To reflect the strength and magnificence that is my body. My scale should recognize me as a goddess. When women step onto their scales, the streets, or step in to the world I want them to feel gorgeous, immaculate, and radiant. I want every woman to know that they are perfection; pure goddess from head to toe."
"In today's world, beauty is given a meaning by people other than ourselves. To me, beauty is courage, thoughtfulness, bravery, support, strength, hope and empowerment. What does it mean to you?"
"The idea that something is everything you could want it to be in any given moment. Our perfect generation is breaking free from the typical and from the binding structures society builds for our youth, women, people, minds, bodies and spirits. That is all I ask
of our generation and our society to try. Break free, live free, laugh, eat, sing, become the perfect generation.""I aspire to be everything I can be. Some days that's tough. But in the end, I remember that I'm all I've got. All these ads on TV, telling me that I'm not good enough the way I am. But I don't want some genetically modified girl in my place. No thanks. I'd rather just
be plain old extraordinary me. I'm allowed to be beautiful and strong and stunning and outrageous and unique and confident and original. I'm allowed to be me.""My life's greatest accomplishment will not be for my body to achieve model form. God, grant me the serenity to accept what I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know that I am beautiful."
"This makes it all worth it," Carmen says. I agree.
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