Beginning on Sunday, January 26th , the newly pledged women of Sewanee’s Greek life will participate in a wonderful program focusing on body positivity, sexual health, and relationships. FEED, or Fully Embodied: An Empowering Dialogue, is being organized by Sewanee’s own Dr. Noffsinger-Frazier, Ph.D., LCP (C’97), Kaki Nix (C’10), and Hope Faulk (C’14).
In our interview with Dr. Noffsinger-Frazier, she explains everything you will need to before the program begins on Sunday!
How would you describe FEED and what does the acronym stand for?
FEED stands for: Fully-Embodied: An Empowering Dialogue. FEED is a four-week peer led women’s prevention and outreach program. Specifically, the program seeks to create a space where women can have in-depth conversations about important and timely issues for college women. Led by upper-class women, and delivered in small groups of about 12 women, freshmen women will have the opportunity to talk about body image, appearance-related pressures, relationships, and issues related to identity development. The groups will also spend time discussing strategies for making the campus cultural environment more empowering and positive.
What inspired you to create this program?
For several years my research and clinical interests have been in women’s health, and more specifically prevention programming geared to reduce risk for disordered eating and eating disorders. Two years ago I brought The Body Project (Stice & Presnell, 2007) to Sewanee, and it was found to be highly effective in improving women’s body satisfaction and reducing disordered eating. Following the implementation of the program, in collaboration with Hope Faulk (C’14), a discussion was begun about expanding the focus of The Body Project to tackle other similar, but related, issues. Specifically, we wanted to target the larger cultural problem of the objectification of women, which frequently results in the internalization of these objectifying practices, most commonly referred to as self-objectification. The psychological literature is clear that self-objectification is extremely harmful to women and results in eating disorders, depression, and sexual dysfunction (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997). FEED seeks to arm women with strategies to reduce self-objectification and to protect themselves from its harmful effects. Equally important, though, FEED is grounded in social-justice theory and the women who participate in FEED will also be actively engaged in developing and implementing strategies to change their community, and hopefully the broader culture.
What do you hope young women take away from their experience in the program?
My hope is that women walk away from FEED feeling more empowered to make changes, not just in their own lives, but in their community as well. Starting the dialogue is important, but the only way that Sewanee, and the broader culture is going to change, is to actively dismantle the forces that perpetuate the ongoing objectification of women. This can be done with small, personal resistance strategies as well as through larger structural change, both of which are goals of FEED. One of the final exercises that women in FEED will go through is a visualization activity, wherein women will envision a community in which they feel empowered to claim space and make their voice be heard. I hope that all of the women who go through the FEED program leave feeling strong, embodied, and empowered.
Overall, this program will bring a new awareness to our campus about issues that affect all of us, women and men both, on a personal level. Please come armed with opinions, ready to speak your mind in a safe, non-judgemental environment. We can make a difference together! So I look forward to seeing all of your lovely faces on Sunday afternoon!