Lifetime Magazine:
Breaking Women's Silence on Body Shame
Breaking women’s silence on body shame “Do I look fat in this?” It’s a question Jessica Weiner has made a mission out of asking. For the past 10 years, the 30-year-old author, performer and activist has toured college campuses and communities with her interactive performances, designed to provoke women-and men-into changing how they think about their bodies and their lives. Her shows have triggered audience members to react emotionally; several have publicly confessed to eating disorders and sexual assaults.
One woman sticks out in Jessica’s mind: She stood up in the middle of a show, belittled the performance as idiotic and stomped out. Years later, she turned up at another performance and apologized in front of the audience, explaining that the issues she’d seen played out on stage had frightened her because they so closely mirrored her own painful, and secret, experience with bulimia.
“Following a performance, no matter what town I’m in, there’s a line of women who are eager to tell their stories,” says Jessica. “I see so many women who hate their bodies and feel like their lives can’t start until they lose five pounds.”
Jessica understands these feelings all too well. Her mother put Jessica on her first diet at 11. “My mother had always been overweight and didn’t want me to suffer the same life she had. I dieted every single day until I was about 18.” She was also a self- described “exercise bulimic” who worked out obsessively. “ But I looked normal – I was a size 9,” she says. “So nobody thought anything was wrong.”
The turning point came in college at penn state. “ I was depressed and went into the bathroom to purge for the first time.” Jessica says. Inside the bathroom stall was a sign: “Eating disorders can kill.” Below that, someone had written “I’m already dead.” Below that, a second women had scribbled. “So am I.”
“I suddenly realized that I wasn’t alone, and that I was angry,” Jessica recalls. “I thought, This is how we talk about it? On a bathroom wall? The whole issue was so rooted in shame.”
Jessica sought counseling and joined a therapy group of women struggling with eating disorders. “Then a woman in the group committed suicide.” Says Jessica, “and I realized I couldn’t be quiet anymore.” She wrote her first show, Wake Up, World, which addressed her own experiences with eating disorders. When the show ended, the
audience remained in their seats, asking her questions and revealing their own secrets. The interactive format for her later performances was born. After graduation, Jessica founded the ACT Out Ensemble, a group that toured the country performing her plays about body image, sexism, school violence, rape, relationships, alcohol and drug addict ion. Most recently, she published the first book, A Very Hungry Girl.
“It’s important for every woman to take responsibility for her life and make it more positive,” Jessica says, whether it’s consciously changing the way you speak about yourself and others, or making an effort to see yourself as more than your body weight. Focus on making change today - not five pounds from now.
“I am incredibly pound of who I am today.” Jessica says. “And that’s not something I would ever have said 10 Years ago. I think that everyone can feel this way.” |
