Tag Archives: body positivity

Where the Revolution Continues: Inside the Second Annual Body Love Conference

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A speaker at the 2014 Body Love Conference. Photo: Body Love Conference

The Body Love Conference debuted last year, riding on Tucsonan Jes Baker’s breakthrough success in body-positive blogging. Baker’s dating woes — and how they affected the way she saw herself in the mirror — sent her on a personal journey of body acceptance. Before long, the personal became political as she launched a blog called The Militant Baker, a place where could share with others what she had learned on her own journey. The Militant Baker soon reached a readership of about 20,000 — and then nearly a million as some of her content went viral.

We are maligned for wanting control over our bodies.

But Baker, along with a team of like-minded advocates and volunteers, knew that the movement needed something else as well: a safe but more public space for seeing, feeling, and asserting body love, where empowering words could translate into empowering actions. The Body Love Conference was their brainchild, and their months of preparation to make it happen paid off on April 5, 2014, with an event that drew more than 400 people.

The momentum continued this year with the second annual Body Love Conference, held at the Pima Community College West Campus on June 6. The message was the same, but a lot of things were different this year. Baker passed the torch to the other BLC volunteers so that she could turn her attention to her first book, slated for release on October 27. Meanwhile, the BLC team decided on a smaller, regional conference, so that they, too, could focus on something further out: a national “headliner” conference in 2016. Continue reading →

A First of Its Kind: The Body Love Conference

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On April 5, 2014, women and their allies from all over the world convened at the University of Arizona for the inaugural Body Love Conference. Kicked off by Tucson’s own Jes Baker of the Militant Baker blog, the Body Love Conference sought to educate, advocate, and provide a safe space for those identifying as women, and their allies, in order to revolutionize the way bodies are perceived.

“The way we view our bodies determines the way we participate in the world.”

Throughout the conference, participants attended workshops conducted by speakers comprising women of all sizes, women of color, transgender women, and aging women. Each workshop carried variations on the same message: the critical importance of empowering women through providing access to a supportive community and education on body acceptance. It is clear that whatever thoughts you have had about yourself and your body image, someone else has had them too. You are not alone. Below is a cross-section of four of the 33 Body Love Conference presenters, who spoke out against the power of body shame by showing us that all of our bodies are normal — and normal bodies are lovable. Continue reading →