The Counseling Center will implement the Body Project program this semester to increase body acceptance among UTRGV female students.
Christopher Albert, director of the Counseling Center, said the Body Project goal is to encourage body positivity and reduce problems that may be related to body image, such as eating disorders.
“The Body Project is a dissonance-based body-acceptance program designed to help high school girls and college-age women resist cultural pressures to conform to the appearance ideal standard of female beauty and reduce their pursuit of unrealistic bodies,” according to the program website, bodyprojectcollaborative.com.
The program is being offered in different universities across the nation and is supported by research from the Oregon Research Institute.
The Oregon Research Institute contacted UTRGV in Spring 2018 and the Counseling Center started looking for peer facilitators during the summer, Albert said.
There will be five undergraduate and graduate peer facilitators on the Edinburg campus and two on the Brownsville campus, he said.
Ricky Rendon, a peer facilitator for the program, said body acceptance is a challenge for many individuals, especially women.
“Even though, like Dr. Albert mentioned, this is specifically for female students, one of the things that I also believe is that as a facilitator, it’s important to also understand that the male population has a significant role in body shaming the female body, and that leads to some problems,” Rendon said.
Peer Facilitator Ivana Zamora found out about the program from Rendon and wanted to be a part of it.
“Accepting the body that you are in is a real challenge and we don’t really talk about that,” Zamora said.
For the fall semester, the program will consist of two groups on the Edinburg campus and one on the Brownsville campus. The Edinburg groups will start Oct. 15 and 16, respectively, and the Brownsville group on Oct. 18.
The program will consist of four consecutive sessions, one session per week, and the ideal number of participants per group is eight to 12, Albert said.
Only UTRGV female students can participate in the program and the deadline to sign up is Oct. 14.
“Everyone is taught to believe that they have to be a certain way, or they have to look a certain way, and that, unfortunately, leads to lack of acceptance and we want to challenge that body ideal,” Rendon said.
For more information, call 665-2574.
