Emi Howe is a body image specialist raising awareness in the workplace.
How body image impacts the workforce from a wellbeing and inclusion perspective is something that is only just starting to be understood. Here Emi talks about how organisations progressive in these areas can start to engage on a subject that negatively impacts 90% of women and 40+% of men.
“This week, I believe we broke ground. In association with Impact Culture* for the Citizen’s Advice Bureau, I shared a session addressing microaggressions and body image in the workplace – as a session subject, I don’t believe has been done before.
Body image assumptions, judgements and prejudice have a far-reaching negative impact, yet this form of discrimination is not present in any discourse around diversity and equality and is often omitted in equality statements and policies. In fact in researching microaggressions for the session, every conceivable discrimination seemed to be mentioned EXCEPT body image.
Weight shaming and fat phobia, it seems are still acceptable discriminations.
There are a couple of reasons for this: a false cultural belief that body shape is intrinsically under the individual’s control – something which is perpetuated by blame culture, the diet and fitness market and an overly simplistic view of health. The vast and uncelebrated research tells us this is simply not true. Not to put too fine a point on it, some people can have as much control over their body shape as their skin colour or sexuality and as such the subject should be treated in the same way, viewed in the modern world as an unacceptable prejudice.
Certainly research out of Harvard would agree, where measures of discrimination show that not only is body image faring the worst in their areas of discrimination research but unlike the other subjects: disability, sexuality etc, body image is the only sub-conscious bias which is actively getting worse.
Another reason it doesn’t benefit from the same discrimination response is that those impacted by it often do not feel empowered to address it. It is a conversation that until now we’ve not felt able to have.
Over the last few years a new vocabulary has been rooting into our culture: 'microaggressions', 'triggers' and a lesser known one – 'attributional ambiguity'. Having these words gives us power because we can start recognising unacceptable behaviour and take steps to raise awareness and address it.
We know anecdotally from posts on LinkedIn that blow up around this subject, that it's not just teenagers and young people who this affects. The fantasy culture that we inhabit, creates a workplace problem. However understanding the meaning of microaggressions also helps us to understand that awareness from the dominant culture is often very low – until we do the work of changing that. In this case, those who don’t live in minority bodies don’t have the experience or skills to form a response or policies that feel safe and supportive to all involved.
BodEquality in association with Impact Culture specialises in doing just that. Helping organisations to better implement inclusion policies; providing training and enrichment for all aspects of the organisation; promoting real and diverse wellbeing approaches and helping forge cultural shift around this real-world issue that impacts so many."
Emi Howe is a Sociologist, TED x speaker and author of The Body Hoax – The Business Case for Valuing Real Bodies.
*Impact Culture is passionate about creating equitable, diverse and inclusive communities, the sustainable way using evidenced cultural change. https://www.impactculture.co.uk/
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