A vital new doc­u­men­tary dares to say love your body

Body pos­i­tiv­i­ty is a war cur­rent­ly being waged on the bat­tle­ground of social media. The issue has sparked con­tro­ver­sy, rebel­lion and mobil­i­sa­tion across the globe, with celebri­ties such as Amy Schumer, Jen­nifer Lawrence and Kate Winslet adding to the dis­cus­sion by pro­mot­ing diverse body rep­re­sen­ta­tion with­in Hol­ly­wood and the adver­tis­ing indus­try. It is a strug­gle which, sad­ly, remains as rel­e­vant as ever.

By body image, we mean our own inter­nalised sense of what we look like. And by hav­ing a body image issue, we mean hold­ing a neg­a­tive men­tal rep­re­sen­ta­tion of what a body should look like, for­mu­lat­ed through var­i­ous forms of media and judged against our own exter­nal appear­ance. The dis­crep­an­cy between the two images results in a dis­tort­ed self-per­cep­tion which can devel­op into men­tal ill­ness in the form of depres­sion, anx­i­ety and anorexia.

Direc­tor Taryn Brum­fitt address­es the issues plagu­ing women of all ages in her pow­er­ful debut doc­u­men­tary, Embrace. The film was inspired by the aston­ish­ing sup­port she received after post­ing before-and-after pho­tos of her­self on Face­book – the ​‘before’ shot show­ing her in peak con­di­tion dur­ing a body-build­ing con­test and the nude ​‘after’ tak­en a few weeks after the birth of her third child. Vis­i­bly bear­ing the evi­dence of child­birth, Brum­fitt issued the accom­pa­ny­ing state­ment: ​‘Be loy­al to your body, love your body, it’s the only one you’ve got.’

Redefin­ing beau­ty is at the heart of Embrace, which looks at why so many women hate their bod­ies and what can be done about it. Giv­en the film’s fem­i­nist lean­ing, par­tic­u­lar atten­tion is paid to con­sumer pho­tog­ra­phy and the idea of ​“recast­ing the gaze” to sub­vert stereo­typed images of fem­i­nine beau­ty. A series of inter­views and pho­to­shoots ensue, with mul­ti­ple women from around the world shar­ing their per­son­al expe­ri­ences with body sham­ing and self-loathing. Most of their con­cerns stem from weight fluc­tu­a­tion but per­haps even more illu­mi­nat­ing is how a num­ber of women with phys­i­cal defor­mi­ties and dis­abil­i­ties grew to love their appearance.

Though lit­tle atten­tion is paid to male body inse­cu­ri­ty, fam­i­ly and the impor­tance of show­ing sol­i­dar­i­ty is very much at the fore­front here. An over­whelm­ing sense of com­mu­ni­ty and cama­raderie per­me­ates the film and reveals that every­one – even the peo­ple you think look ​‘per­fect’ – have dis­tort­ed per­cep­tions of their own bod­ies. How we per­ceive our image is about how we define the self and, with this doc­u­men­tary, Brum­fitt attempts to bring the con­trol of this def­i­n­i­tion back into our own hands – as one of her inter­vie­wees sim­ply states, ​“beau­ty is what you make it”.

With Embrace, Brum­fitt con­tin­ues her vital work as the founder of Body Image Move­ment, spread­ing the rev­o­lu­tion­ary idea of self-love through­out the globe by destroy­ing any pre-con­ceived notion of a ​‘per­fect’ body.

Embrace pre­mieres in Lon­don on 16 Jan­u­ary before screen­ing across the UK.