ASU’s Womyn’s Coalition is hosting “Love Your Body Day” to celebrate “real” beauty today from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Men and women of all ages will proudly display their bodies as they attend the event in matching underwear on Hayden Lawn.

The event’s goal is to promote positive body image and discussion about issues surrounding body image including weight, social pressures and eating disorders.

Justice studies and gender studies sophomore Sarah Norman, co-director of the Womyn’s Coalition, said she understood the pressures individuals felt to conform to an image of perfection and personally struggled with both anorexia and bulimia at a young age.

“Our society has put out this unrealistic image of perfection, and what it means to be beautiful,” she said.

Norman said much of the pressure people feel to attain a “perfect” body is due to the images portrayed in the media.

“You see these stick-thin models who perpetuate unrealistic images of beauty,” Norman said. “It’s disgusting that we allow this to be so prevalent in our society and that more people don’t take direct action to combat such fallacies.”

Women and gender studies junior Leah Heathcoat said she plans to attend the event and is excited to remove the taboo and openly speak about issues involving body image.

“It’s about having that conversation without stigma about body and health issues,” she said. “It takes the stigma out of it so that we can talk about some of these issues without all of these outside influences.”

Norman said she believed another factor in the societal problem with body image, and specifically eating disorders, was an overall disregard for the severity of the problem.

“People often … say it as a joke about not eating, or restricting what they intake, or throwing up after they eat,” she said. “Our society kind of marginalizes it and doesn’t take it as seriously as it should.”

Norman said she feels issues related to body image should be made more prominent because they affect a wide array of people and also have severe consequences.

“It transcends ethnic, gender, socio-economic boundaries,” she said. “It’s a really prominent issue with all groups.”

Heathcoat focused on the stereotype that these issues pertain strictly to young people.

“I’m a mother and a grandmother. This isn’t just an issue for young women, its an issue for women across generations,” Heathcoat said.

Karen Moses, director of Wellness and Health Promotion at ASU, said the American College Health Association’s National College Health Assessment revealed 60 percent of male students and 61 percent of female students at ASU wished to change their weight in some way.

Many people believe issues surrounding body image mostly affect women, Moses said, but that is not the case anymore.

“Men are almost equally as inclined to change their body as women, which I think is something people don’t realize,” Moses said.

Norman said she is excited to see people’s reaction to the event, and hopes it spurs more attention to issues surrounding body image.

“I would love to see more people centering their activism on these issues because I feel such issues aren’t getting enough attention,” Norman said.

As a survivor herself, Norman said self-empowerment and positive allies were key in combating eating disorders and negative body image and said she hopes events like “Love Your Body Day” help to promote a more positive outlook about all body types.

“At ASU there are so many different types of people, different personalities, different body shapes and sizes, and different ideals of what it means to be beautiful. I’m excited to concentrate on and [for the event to] be a celebration of positive body image.”

Reach the reporter at michelle.parks@asu.edu.