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November Newsletter '22

Happy Thanksgiving From Body Haven!

Hi, everybody! ÔØñ´©Å May this message find you relaxing during break with friends and family, midterms far from your mind. And we hope you secured the classes you wanted during registration! It's been a busy month!

Body Haven is pleased to announce that our model call for the SP23 runway show has been filled! Thank you to everyone who applied, we are so excited to get the ball rolling. We are sorry to cancel our fashion design event, but we have another event coming up on December 9th, Collage Night! Hope to see you there! And keep your eyes peeled for further announcements, we may have a Christmas fundraiser coming your way!

We the board hope you all are having a safe and comfortable holiday.

While holiday traditions are special to us, it’s important for non-Natives to recognize that for many Native Americans, Thanksgiving is a day of mourning and protest since it commemorates the arrival of settlers in North America and the centuries of oppression and genocide that followed. The following is a message from Native Hope:

We hope that this Thanksgiving, the hearts of all people, Native and non-Native, are filled with hope, healing, and a desire to dismantle the barriers—physical, economic, educational, psychological, and spiritual— that divide us and oppress us.

This time of year, and these two holidays, Thanksgiving and Native American Heritage Day, give us the opportunity to reflect on our collective history and to celebrate the beauty, strength, and resilience of the Native tribes of North America.

nativehope.org

Article: How To Navigate Harmful Talk About Dieting at Thanksgiving

By Pam Moore

• Manage expectations
• Find support
• Ignore or step away
• Reframe your thinking
• Have a response ready
• Set a clear boundary

Muhlheim suggests responding to diet talk with, I’m choosing to focus on gratitude this holiday and not depriving myself, or, I’m here to enjoy this wonderful meal with people I care about. I’m trying to step away from diet and body talk.

When you’re dealing with a close friend, relative or someone you see regularly, the best — and most challenging — approach could be an honest conversation about your boundaries. You might feel “as though a lion is chasing you,” Kneeland says, adding: “It’s okay for this to be so hard. You learned for good reason that it’s not safe to have these conversations or to live in this body or to behave or engage in these ways.”

Keep the focus on your needs and your feelings, Muhlheim says. You might try something such as: Talk about dieting or bodies is really hard for me (or harmful for me). Can we agree that you won’t comment on people’s bodies (or my body) or on what I’m eating?

Ditching diet talk gives everyone a chance to enjoy a holiday gathering without shame — which leaves more room for connection.

Resources To Decolonize Thanksgiving

Artist Spotlight: G.R. Gritt

G.R. Gritt is a Juno Award-winning, Two-Spirit, Transgender, Anishinaabe/Metis artist. They reclaim space through songs that show that intersectional identity is expansive and not to be divided into parts. By exploring the emotional and cultural core of their heritage as a non-binary, queer, Indigenous artist, they create new space and encourage others to do the same. Gritt released their first album titled, Ancestors, in 2021.

Recommended Reading: You Have The Right To Remain Fat by Virgie Tovar

Growing up as a fat girl, Virgie Tovar believed that her body was something to be fixed. But after two decades of dieting and constant guilt, she was over it—and gave herself the freedom to trust her own body again.

Ever since, she’s been helping others to do the same. Tovar is hungry for a world where bodies are valued equally, food is free from moral judgment, and you can jiggle through life with respect. In concise and candid language, she delves into unlearning fatphobia, dismantling sexist notions of fashion, and how to reject diet culture’s greatest lie: that fat people need to wait before beginning their best lives.

@bodyhaven_ccc

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