FIGHTING FIT
TARYN BRUMFITT’S BODY IMAGE BATTLE IS MOVING TO THE FRONTLINE — OUR KIDS, WRITES KIRI TEN DOLLE
E ight years ago, Taryn Brumfitt was standing on stage at a body-building competition in a silver bikini and stripper heels hoping the judges would rate her body a good score.
A 15kg weight loss in as many weeks of intense daily workouts and calorie counting had come to this moment. Behind the taut tummy that carried three babies in three-and-a-half years was a “hardcore obsession” to find happiness. “I had the perfect bikini body. But in that moment, all I could think of was to have that body now has taken too much sacrifice,” she says.
It was a turning point in Taryn’s life. Up until that moment she had fought a war with body image, even booking in cosmetic surgery for a tummy tuck, boob job and liposuction after the birth of her youngest child.
On the eve of the surgery, Taryn changed her mind watching her daughter Mikaela, now 10, play.
“My choice to change my body might set Mikaela up to want to change her body,” she recalls. “It broke my heart.”
It’s a realisation the 34-year-old now knows affects more children than is comprehendible.
“Up to 70 per cent of Australian schoolchildren consider body image to be a concern,” Taryn says, of the research driving her organisation Body Image Movement.
In the weeks that followed the bikini competition, Taryn posted a before and after photo of her own body transformation to her Facebook page that would go on to become internet folklore. The photos were in reverse. The before photo was the chiselled bikini clad Taryn on stage, while the after was a curvy, all embracing nude that “broke the internet”.
More than 100 million people saw the photo as it was shared across the globe. What followed was an international media frenzy as messages of support from thousands of people sharing their own stories about body acceptance flooded her inbox.
In 2014, Taryn launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise $200,000 to make a documentary.
Within two weeks she had raised $331,000 to fund the production. Nearly 9000 people backed the film, including heavyweights Rosie O’Donnell, Ashton Kutcher and Ricki Lake.
Embrace the documentary premiered at the Sydney Film
Festival in 2016. It has since been distributed in more than 190 countries on Netflix and iTunes, making it to No. 1 on iTunes in Canada and the US in the year of its release, and again in 2018 in the UK.
Now, Taryn has published a children’s book, Embrace Your
Body, aimed at combating body anxiety in children aged two to eight. It coincides with her latest passion project, the Embrace Kids documentary, which is being executively produced by Celeste Barber, Teresa Palmer and Natasha Stott Despoja, and will be given to schools as a free resource to educate the next generation to embrace their bodies.
Mission Australia’s National Youth survey found at least 31 per cent of young people in 2019 didn’t like the way they looked.
The Butterfly Foundation CEO Kevin Barrow says the latest results show an increasing trend in young people’s levels of concern about their body image (from 26.5 per cent in 2015 to 31 per cent in 2019).
“There are serious health ramifications if we do not challenge fundamental belief structures that are translating into nationwide body shape and size stigma,” he says.
This research echoes further alarming statistics held by Body Image Movement.
“We know Australian kids as young as eight are suffering from poor body image that could have serious and long-term health consequences,” Taryn says. “By age seven, one in four kids has engaged in dieting behaviour. About 70 per cent of adolescent girls dislike their body and one-third of adolescent boys wished they were bigger.”
Taryn remembers dieting throughout high school.
“I remember in my teens wanting to have ‘her’ body and wanting to be thinner,” Taryn says.
“Only a few months ago, I spoke to a young teenager who had struggled with her body all of her life. She came close to ending her life because of how she felt about her body. She was sobbing.”
“It’s one thing to hear those heartbreaking stories from adults,” says Taryn, “but it is another thing to hear it from kids who are in their prime, they should be enjoying life.
“To think that up to 70 per cent of Australian kids are not, as a mum, I feel devastated by that statistic. We really need to do something about it.”
And that starts with changing the dialogue about body image among children, she says.
“Embrace Kids is more than just a book, it’s an opportunity for parents, carers and teachers to help children build a foundation of positive body image values based on moving, respecting and enjoying their bodies. This book could really change people’s lives and change kids’ perceptions of their body and that’s massive.”
Taryn admits a lot has changed since learning to love her own body eight years ago.
“I’m more confident, I feel more gratitude for my body, I feel like I can do things I never thought I could do before,” she says.
“When you embrace your body, there are so many more things you say yes to. When you are kind to your body and you really back yourself, you find yourself doing things like standing on the stage at Google Headquarters in Silicon Valley addressing their leadership team and going how did I get here? That is the embrace journey.”