Chariho Youth Task Force's Campaign Promotes Positive Body Image

Over the past year, the Chariho Youth Task Force has kickstarted a new campaign called “Every Body Is Beautiful” in order to promote body positivity around the school and the local community.

“The ‘Every Body Is Beautiful’ campaign takes on a lot of different meanings depending on who is looking at it and how they view it,” said Chariho Youth Task Force’s Chief of Marketing, Ali Felicetti. “But it’s really just celebrating all the things our bodies can do for us rather than just focusing on the way that we look.”

Felicetti explained that this campaign is a personal campaign to everybody. Whether that is how an athlete uses their body for their sport, how some people are self-conscious about the way their body looks, or how some people dwell on the fact that they may be of a different race or gender than others, it comes down to the idea that everyone should embrace what they already have.

Starting at the beginning of the school year, the Chariho Youth Task Force felt that this was important to expand this campaign to the high school by putting stickers on the mirrors in the bathroom and putting up posters around the school.

“That was a big start of that process,” Felicetti said. “And now we are hoping it becomes just a normal part of the school culture. Our ultimate goal is to really have a shift in the culture… to just make it a more acceptable thing to talk.”

Felicetti continued, “I would just love for high schoolers to take away, especially when you are at such an impressionable point in your life where you have a lot of stress and a lot of different things going on, that you have to stop and appreciate your body for what it can do and everything that it is, rather than worry about if it is good enough.”

The Chariho Youth Task Force hopes to spread this campaign to other schools around the state and local health centers in order to spread their message as far as possible.

“I think that in today’s society, especially with the prevalence of social media, it can become really easy, especially for younger people to compare themselves to other people they see,” Felicetti acknowledged. “I think that just makes it really important to just spread that message of positivity and self-love and knowing that there is no such thing as perfect and that everybody truly is beautiful in their own way.”

Picture courtesy of Matthew Gouvin.