Fighting Their Reflection

Alone in the room of her college apartment, MariClaire Warnock cried.

Her friends waited in the living room, drinking and socializing as she frantically tore apart her closet in search of something to wear.

Tears dripped down Warnock’s freckled face as she discarded outfit after outfit, deeming one after another unwearable.

After struggling for 20 minutes, Warnock joined her friends and explained the delay. In an attempt to comfort her, they told her that she should feel confident — she was the skinniest of the group.

“Yeah, let me just tell myself that in the mirror,” Warnock said.

Despite her friends’ words, Warnock knew that her problem ran deeper than this isolated incident.

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Of the approximately 19 million college students in the United States, around one in three are dissatisfied with their weight or body shape. At Miami University, which is home to approximately 17,000 undergraduates, many students suffer from negative body image and its effects.

According to the National Eating Disorder Association, body image can include what someone believes their appearance to be, how someone feels about their shape or weight, or how one physically feels in their own skin.

Nichole Carr is a mental health psychotherapist at Miami’s Student Counseling Service (SCS). Carr said that things like ethnicity, body type and gender all play a role in the perception of a student’s body image.

Although negative body image can affect people of all ages, Carr believes college students are particularly conscious of, and affected by, their appearance.

“I think [college is] just a really unique time of life when we’re all feeling really vulnerable about a lot of things, and our bodies are like the thing we put on to the world,” Carr said.

On top of the typical pressures most college students face upon arriving at college, Miami students may be grappling with something more when it comes to the fight for positive body image.

The Miami image — the idea that there is a stereotypical way most students who attend Miami look, dress and act — is not a secret around campus.

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Although everyone’s description of the Miami image is different, many would agree that it suggests someone who is white, affluent, slender and beautiful.

While some students believe that the Miami image is just a stereotype, others said that it has impacted them and the way they feel about themselves.

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Sophomore diplomacy and global politics, German, and comparative religion triple major Annalise Chapdelaine is unsure if the Miami image is completely true, but she does believe that some aspect of it exists on campus.

Chapdelaine suffers from negative body image and has made changes to her appearance in order to better fit the mold. When it comes to the Miami image, Chapdelaine doesn’t believe she fits it.

“Sometimes I’ll copy what people are wearing, like the white shoes [trend],” Chapdelaine said. “I knew people were going to be wearing [them] and I didn’t have any and I was like, ‘Okay, this will help me look like a Miami student.’”

Even before coming to Miami, Chapdelaine struggled with her body image. She has suffered from multiple eating disorders, including anorexia and orthorexia, and still considers herself to be in recovery. According to the National Eating Disorder Association, orthorexia is defined as an obsession with eating healthy and proper food. 

One thing that has helped Chapdelaine in her recovery is social media, but only after she took control of what she was seeing. Initially, Chapdelaine said that most of the content she consumed had to do with nutrition, which made her constantly feel bad about what she was eating.

After realizing the negative impact this content was having on her, Chapdelaine discovered multiple accounts on Instagram that were dedicated to helping those in eating disorder recovery, inspiring her to stop her unhealthy habits.

“I saw a therapist short-term, [but] she couldn’t see me in Ohio, so I’ve done most of it by myself by learning a lot about body image and eating disorder recovery and getting mad at society,” Chapdelaine said.

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At Miami, Carr predominantly works with eating disorder clients, and believes that they are very common on campus. Although Miami offers online screening for eating disorders and other mental health issues, they may be underreported.

“I think there’s probably a lot of people struggling on campus that don’t seek treatment or that maybe aren’t sharing with friends and family that they’re struggling,” Carr said.

In addition to eating disorders, some students say they suffer from body dysmorphia. For Warnock, it’s what sparked her spell of outfit hate.

According to the Cleveland Clinic, body dysmorphia is a disorder related to obsessive-compulsive disorders that can cause people to do things like look in the mirror all the time or pick at their skin. Approximately one in 50 people in the United States suffer from this obsessive condition.

MariClaire Warnock’s body dysmorphia is caused by her high attentiveness to her body.

Any time the junior human capital management and entrepreneurship double major passes a window, she takes a moment to analyze areas that she feels insecure about.  It also affects her relationship with clothing.

“It takes me forever to get ready for class in the morning, mainly because I like to look nice, but also because I never feel comfortable in what I’m wearing,” Warnock said.

When she first came to college, her body image worsened after constantly comparing herself to her peers. She remembers her freshman year, when she had to walk down a dorm hallway where other girls were hanging out and felt very self-conscious.

“I get really nervous to wear what I want because I get stressed that girls are going to be like, ‘That is the ugliest thing you could ever wear,’” Warnock said.

Junior strategic communications and American studies double major, Megan Miske, said that when it comes to her body image, the health of her relationship with her body depends on the day.

“It’s very up and down like a roller coaster sometimes,” Miske said. “I guess [college has] made it kind of worse, but I feel like everyone’s in the same boat.”

When she was younger, Miske struggled with bulimia and anorexia, which have impacted the way she sees her body. Seeing other women around campus, hearing what guys have to say about her, and social media have also been damaging.

“I’m always thinking, ‘What does this person think of me? Am I looking okay today? What if there’s something off about me?’” Miske said.

For some, body image is made even more complicated by race.

Sydney Hill is a recent graduate of Miami University who said that it is difficult for her to separate her race from the way she sees her body. Hill says that for most of her life, living in Medina, Ohio, that’s the first thing people would notice about her appearance.

“They would see my race before anything, which isn’t inherently a bad thing because it is a part of who I am, and you can’t divorce the two,” Hill said. “But at the same time, [people] would just make assumptions about me based on how I look.”

When it comes to her body image, Hill said she has an overall negative perception of her body.

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“Personally, I am not a huge fan of the way that I look, just because I think that as a child in a mostly white area, I often felt that I was very undesirable,” Hill said.

During Hill’s time in college, however, she said that her mentality about her body image changed. In the Spring 2021 publication of The Miami Student Magazine, Hill wrote about her relationship with her body, including her current mentality.

“I’m kind of at the point in my life where I don’t really care about how I look so much,” Hill said. 

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“I didn’t really like how the body positivity movement was more geared towards how desirable you are, opposed to how I am just as worthy of respect as anyone else.”

While many women struggle with their body image, men are also affected by it. 

Brennen McGill, a junior marketing major, said that when he first came to campus he experienced difficulty with his body image.

In high school, McGill said he danced six days a week and ate whatever he wanted. When his routine changed during his freshman year, he still ate what he wanted, but worked out less, and thus, gained weight. He was also comparing himself to other men and how much they worked out, but has since made an effort to not be so hard on himself.

“I’ve grown a lot with it in the past year, and it’s gotten a lot better,” McGill said. “I definitely still have my moments, [but] I think everyone does.”

At Miami, McGill believes that male body image is not talked about as often as female body image, due to the way men are raised and socialized through their family, the media, and their peers.

“We can’t really have insecurities or talk about stuff like that,” McGill said. “A lot of guys just don’t feel comfortable talking about their body or their body image.”

One study suggests that the lack of discussion about men’s body image can be partially attributed to gender norms that discourage men from talking about their body image and self-esteem.

Although McGill believes it’s hard to tell exactly who feels insecure about their body image, he has noticed the lack of conversation about eating disorders in men.

“I feel like anyone you walk up to and say, ‘Picture someone with an eating disorder,’ they’re gonna tell you it’s a woman,” McGill said. “It’s not something you see in TV shows or movies.”

According to U.S. News, approximately 10 million men have struggled with an eating disorder in their life, but experts believe that this number may be underreported due to the lack of open discussion about the problem.

When it comes to Miami’s efforts to engage its students in conversation about the Miami image and body image, the school’s attempts have been varied but limited.

One effort that SCS has made is establishing a website with information and a link to attend or request a workshop from an outside organization called The Body Project. The Body Project, a two-hour training program that maintains the goal of creating a healthier and more body-positive campus, is only designed for college-age women.

While The Body Project runs a group called More than Muscles that is designed for men and conducted at other universities, Miami isn’t currently running the program. Carr said there are hopes to do so in the future.

The school has also offered occasional workshops like “Body Image and Your ‘Summer Body:’ Love the Skin You’re In”, which was last held in May of 2020.

Other resources and information include Miami’s discussion of self-esteem and the Miami image, which provide an analysis of the Miami image and data from 1999, the most recent time this issue was studied.

Despite these efforts, students seem to be looking for more from Miami — more resources, more information and more effort — whether big or small. Fortunately, students have some ideas.

Chapdelaine believes providing information about body image at Miami’s mandatory first-year orientation or from resident assistants could improve the problem.

McGill said that something as simple as signs in Armstrong Student Center encouraging students to consume a sufficient and healthy amount of calories and providing helpful messages about food would be a step in the right direction.

In addition, SCS holds a weekly therapy group for people who want to talk about body image and self-esteem. Carr said Miami’s Student Wellness department is working on providing information on dorm bulletin boards that promote information about disordered eating and body image.