Lillian Bustle is a well-known burlesque dancer in New York City who
last year delivered a popular TEDx talk on the challenge of accepting
your body, no matter its size. Because, let’s face it, there’s only a
small percentage of people for whom a healthy weight means matchstick
thin.
Bustle mentions some alarming statistics in her talk: The No. 1 wish
for girls 11 to 17 is to be thinner. Size discrimination in the
workplace has increased by 66 percent over the past three decades;
heavier women now earn up to 6.2 percent less than their thin
counterparts.
In spite of those trends, Bustle says, “We are on the edge of a brave
new world of body love and acceptance.” She points to a 2012 study
published in the journal PLOS One on “cognitive adaptation effect.” It found that preferences for certain body types aren’t fixed.
A group of 57 women were shown images of female bodies of various
sizes and asked to rate their preferences. Researchers found a direct
correlation between the number of images of larger women the subjects
viewed and the likelihood they would express a preference for that body
size. So, Bustle concludes, “The more we see one kind of body, the more
we like that kind of body.”
One way to improve self-acceptance is to increase our “visual diet,”
making sure that we look beyond the wafer-thin figures in fashion
magazines. “The more that body diversity is normalized in our minds,”
Bustle says, “the kinder we can be to ourselves and to our bodies.”