About Our Group & Project:

  We are a group of three college students in a women's
studies class at Northern Illinois University in Dekalb, IL. For our class, we have been assigned an Action Research Project in
which we have to choose an issue, research it, and work with a campus organization in order to do something in the NIU community that deals with our issue. The official issue our group has chosen is Beauty Norms and/or Representations of Women in Popular Culture. However, we have decided to focus specifically on eating disorder awareness. 
    Being aware of eating disorders is important for many reasons. One reason is that almost every person in the US knows someone who has an eating disorder. In fact, this year's 
National Eating Disorders Week slogan was "Everyone Knows Somebody".
Below is an infographic from that very campaign. (Click to enlarge)

The person you know could be a family member, friend, fellow employee, neighbor, acquaintance, etc. Being aware and conscious of this issue can help you help someone else. Even though men and women can both have eating disorders, this issue is significant to women because the majority of the people with these disorders are, in fact, female. Feminists are often interested in calling attention to eating disorders because beauty norms and the representations of women in pop culture oftentimes are the reasons for a woman having an eating disorder.

     Young women see society's interpretation of beauty, decide that their appearance isn't good enough, and take dangerous actions to attempt to look like the skinny models that are so often used on television and in magazines. 
    After conducting the action for our project, which was a Heart Your Parts campaign, it was very obvious to our group that people are too used to thinking of themselves negatively. The purpose of our action was to get people to think about themselves in a positive life, and raise awareness about eating disorders. As we sat at the table we set up and asked passersby to tell us which body part they love the most on themselves, it was clear that it was a hard question for most people to answer. One gentleman that stopped at our table said that our question, "Which part do you heart the most?" was the hardest question he'd been asked all day, even after two exams. This just goes to show how much our society focuses on the negative.

Click through our website to learn more about the problem we researched, the collaboration we were involved in, and the action we conducted.