Jacqueline Fitton takes pride in her body — and at the Body Pride Fair on the Tempe campus on Tuesday afternoon, she was encouraging her fellow students to do the same.

It’s important for “people to know what is offered to them [at ASU] to make their body their temple,” she said. “It’s not just about being proud of your body, it’s having enough pride to respect your body and keep it healthy.”

Fitton, a biology sophomore, was volunteering at a booth for the Health and Counseling Student Action Committee as part of the annual Body Pride Fair. The committee advocates for health programs on campus.

She said students often reflect the stress of college life through their bodies, so the message of a healthy body image is especially important on campus.

“There is a lot of stress to both succeed in school and form relationships with others,” Fitton said. “A lot of students will take drastic measures to change their appearance [because of this].”

Campus resource groups and student organizations, from Campus Health to the Hip-Hop Coalition, set up informational booths on Hayden Lawn to inform students about body image issues like bulimia and depression and encourage positive and healthy lifestyles on campus.

The Body Pride Fair also featured a stage with performances by campus dance groups and an eating-disorder discussion panel.

The fair was part of Body Pride Week 2009, a campuswide health and wellness effort by groups and off-campus organizations to raise awareness about body image issues and provide students with information and support. The week was organized by the Student Organization Resource Center on Tempe campus.

The week’s activities began Monday night with a screening of “America the Beautiful,” a documentary in which famous celebrities and sex symbols weigh in on America’s unhealthy obsession with beauty.

Events throughout the week will include a healthy eating and recipe demonstration on Thursday afternoon at Engrained in the Tempe campus Memorial Union, on-campus information booths with campus wellness brochures and a week-long charity clothing drive.

Body Pride Week will wrap up on Friday night with Devil Palooza, a free concert on the Student Recreation Complex lawn featuring national acts Say Anything and Steel Train.

Jessica Goodsell, a creative writing freshman who was also working at the Health and Counseling Student Action Committee booth at the Body Pride Fair, agreed that being health conscious can cross the line to health obsession when the mindset consumes a person’s life.

“If you’re weighing yourself every time you see a scale, that’s a problem,” she said. “If body image becomes the most important thing in life, over academics or even personal relationships, that’s a problem.”

Goodsell said she hoped the Body Pride Fair would encourage students to live a healthy lifestyle and have high self esteem.

“Body pride, to me, is not walking down the street and thinking I’m ugly compared to someone else,” she said.

Reach the reporter at trabens@asu.edu.