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EXCLUSIVE FEATURE 25 NOT AN ORNAMENT BUT A VEHICLE TO YOUR DREAMS DBy Margaret Mielczarek. uring the past 12 months or so, we’ve been preoccupied with the pandemic, and perhaps rightly so. But another health crisis is happening. A silent crisis, one that I’m all too familiar with, having dealt with my own battles with body image over the years. This crisis is the body dissatisfaction epidemic, and Australian writer and film director Taryn Brumfitt is on a mission to turn things around, to shift the way we think about ourselves and about how we look. “After I had my first child, I realised that my body wouldn’t bounce back to the way it was before – that despite what all the magazines, billboards and the advertising told me, I couldn’t get my body back,” said the now mum-of-three. “It wasn’t possible.” Thus her “battle against my body and how I felt about it” began, leading her on “the journey of \\\\\\\[attaining\\\\\\\] the perfect body”. “I had three children in three and a half years,” Ms Brumfitt said, “and after I had Mikaela \\\\\\\[her third child\\\\\\\] I just knew that I wanted to not feel so miserable about my body. I thought having surgery would be a quick fix to help me ... feel better. But, of course, while I was going to have the surgery for breast augmentation and a tummy tuck, I cancelled it because of my daughter. And then, of course, I went down the journey of what it would feel like to have the perfect body. How would that make me feel?” The story goes that despite cancelling the surgery, she would end up training “for hours” while “I restricted my food intake”, as she is quoted as saying to the Los Angeles Times1 in an article published in April 2017. “I lost all this weight and toned up, got the ‘bikini’ body, the body so many women fight to have,” she said, with the article going on to say that even though Ms Brumfitt had posed “in front of 1000 people, \\\\\\\[she\\\\\\\] realised she still wasn’t happy”. “It just wasn’t worth it. It wasn’t a balanced life,” Ms Brumfitt told the publication. “I shared photographs \\\\\\\[on social media\\\\\\\], the non-traditional before and after photographs, way back in 2012,” she said, describing her life after achieving that ‘bikini body’, but once the weight came back on, she learned to love her body for “what it could do rather than what it looked like” as the Los Angeles Times put it. “Embracing your body is about moving your body, nourishing your body, respecting your body, but mostly, enjoying your body.” “The response was overwhelming: more than 7000 emails and messages, and just so many heartbreaking stories,” she said, adding that this was when “I knew I wanted to do something to help”. “I didn’t know what that was, but I knew that \\\\\\\[it needed to be on a big scale\\\\\\\]. So, I ... started to put one foot in front of the other and ... a lot has happened since.” Ms Brumfitt is referring to the launch of the Body Image Movement. “So, originally, what happened was, I received all those emails \\\\\\\[after posting the before-and-after photos\\\\\\\], and then I wrote a book, thinking, ‘Oh, OK, that’ll help’,” she said. “\\\\\\\[US actress\\\\\\\] Ricki Lake wrote the foreword, and it had really good success. Then it was just like, ‘Oh, no! A book isn’t going to make a dent in this issue’. So, I thought, I’ll make a film.” Hence, Embrace (available to watch on Netflix) was born. “It was my first time directing \\\\\\\[a film\\\\\\\], so there was ... so much to learn,” Ms Brumfitt said, adding that “I just had the most remarkable people from around the world” as interview subjects, with “each having a really different story about their own body image”. “We heard from Ricki Lake, and how she suffered from sexual abuse. We chatted with \\\\\\\[Australian journalist\\\\\\\] Mia Freedman about advertising standards and beauty through the ages. \\\\\\\[Australian marathon runner and burns victim\\\\\\\] Turia Pitt ... says in the film, ‘Maybe the fire was the best thing that ever happened to me, we’ll never know’. “Just extraordinary people with extraordinary stories, and the film has, I mean, gosh, it’s gone beyond any of my expectations. “I’m really proud that Dr Zali Yager, from Victoria University, and Dr Ivanka Prichard, from Flinders University ... have done a global study on the impact of Embrace, and \\\\\\\[the study has\\\\\\\] just been published in a medical journal ... Now we have the data \\\\\\\[that the movie is having an impact\\\\\\\], it’s really quite compelling to think that it actually can change someone’s life.” Ms Brumfitt says ‘body image’ is “your perception of how you feel about your body”, while ‘positive body image’ is “really seeing your body through the TO PAGE 26 RETAIL PHARMACY ASSISTANTS • APR 2021