The Middlebury Campus

Issue date: 11/8/07 Section: Features

Media Credit: Nichole Wyndham Laurie Essig, assistant professor of Sociology and Anthropology, poses on Friday night. [Click to enlarge]

Too many people were crowded into the hot, dark subterranean space but no one seemed to mind. All eyes were transfixed by the hypnotic images that flowed onto the silvery projection screen as words poured forth from a larger-than-life pair of lips belonging to an unidentified Middlebury student.

"There's a moth on the window, and it's spreading its wings,/I am wondering how it sees, all these ugly things./Can it see my kilos? My back-side of doom?/Can it see my sickness? My empty room?"

The spellbinding words were those of poet Georgina McKerrow, a recovering victim of an eating disorder. Her pain and frustration, clearly expressed in the verses of her poem "Looking at Me," captivated the room at the third annual "I Love My Body" fashion show and screening sponsored by Feminist Action at Middlebury (FAM).

"The poetry was extraordinarily moving and made the film work," said Jyoti Daniere, the director of Health and Wellness Education. "I was almost brought to tears. The simple, direct prose that the director used was very powerful."

FAM introduced this edgy event, featuring a student-produced documentary followed by a feel-good fashion show, to promote awareness of the body image issues on campus. With a rising number of students - male and female - suffering from negative body image at the College and throughout the country, this year's screening spoke to a larger audience and addressed other issues such as gender violence and homosexuality.

Ryan Tauriainen '08, co-president of the Middlebury Open Queer Alliance, has directed and produced all of the documentaries since the event's inception.

"I think Western society is placing an incredible amount of pressure on young people to fit in a small box of what beauty is," Tauriainen said. "This is done through the importance placed on being incredibly thin or fit - it exists for both men and women."

In this year's "Love Your Body" documentary, there were not any pin-thin bodies with skeletal arms and legs or alarming statistics intended to scare the audience or leave them hopeless. To make the viewing experience less dispiriting, Tauriainen even brought in the individual stories of students fighting eating disorders, including anorexia nervosa and Body Dimorphic Disorder.

Continued...

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