Curriculum Overview

Today’s explosion of visual social media—such as Instagram and TikTok– has created an epidemic of body image problems for young people. Body dissatisfaction affects upwards of 70% of adolescent girls and 40% of adolescent boys. Research ties body dissatisfaction to a host of adolescent mental health problems. COVID has exacerbated these mental health problems for young people, as they have spent more time alone and on social media. There is a critical need for a body image curriculum to be taught in schools. 

BE REAL created BodyKind to provide an evidence-based, high school body image curriculum to address the needs of today’s students. This 4-lesson curriculum for high school, health or advisory class starts with what the field of eating disorder prevention has learned from 20 years of research on body image and eating disorder prevention. We’ve added a discussion of Appearance Bias–discrimination based on physical features–to the conversation. We talk about how experiencing prejudice affects student body confidence. We’ve also added evidence-based self-compassion tools for students to use when they compare themselves to images of people they see on social media.

Lesson 1

 Appearance Bias – Students learn about appearance bias—when a person is judged and treated differently based on how they look, rather than who they are or how they behave. Students take a gallery walk around the room of 24 Understanding Others body stories. These stories help students gain an awareness of how people of different sizes and abilities, with different skin shades, facial features, gender representations, and other identities experience the world. We discuss the impact of how appearance ideals and appearance bias have pressured people to try to conform to societal ideals for attractiveness. We analyze the costs for students of responding to the appearance pressure in their environment. Students also explore how body confidence can be enhanced by (1) viewing their bodies as instruments, not ornaments; (2) having gratitude for what their body does for them everyday; and (3) accepting natural body diversity.

Lesson 2

Social Media, Comparisons, and Self-Compassion – Once students become aware of appearance pressures, we analyze how these pressures show up in their lives and in the media they consume. We discuss how self-compassion is an effective tool to cope with the negative comparisons we all make to the pictures we see on social media and other places these ideals show up in our lives. Experiential exercises reframe the negative comparisons we all make in our minds to kinder, more self-compassionate thoughts that will ultimately serve students better.

“Our beliefs about bodies disproportionately impact those whose race, gender, sexual orientation, ability, and age deviate from our default notions. The further from the default, the greater the impact. We are all affected – but not equally.”

― Sonya Renee Taylor, The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love