Seventeen Body Peace Project

My name is Karina Grudnikov, and I am like any other teenage girl. If that means one thing today, it's that I have obsessed about my body. It means that I've pondered for hours if my stomach was flat enough, if my legs were lean enough, or if my love handles could be seen hanging over my jeans. For years, negative thoughts dominated how I felt about my body, and I did not treat it well. I constantly felt like my body was letting me down because it stubbornly resisted my attempts to mold it to perfection. Now as a healthy freshman in college, I realize that I, in fact, was the one who was failing my body -- by not taking care of it or treating it with kindness.

Like many other women, I personally learned how easily you can be sucked into the vicious trap of criticizing your body, especially when you are always staring at yourself in the mirror. It started innocently enough. I'd notice one thing that bothered me, then another that needed fixing. And then all of a sudden, I started to believe that there was something wrong with every part of me! Every aspect of me appeared flawed and disgusting, and I couldn't stand the sight of my own body. Like the deadly push of the first domino that ends up toppling the entire chain, that initial thought started a cascade. If only there was a way to catch myself from endlessly falling into that fatal trap, I thought. What good to us are the incredible dreams and goals in our minds, if all of our energy and emotions are exhausted by our constant self-loathing?

Then I read the November issue of Seventeen magazine and learned about the Seventeen Body Peace Project. Over the next year, the project will give me a step-by-step guide to change my negative mind-set and help me learn to stop obsessing. I immediately signed The Seventeen Body Peace Treaty because I believe it can save us from falling into that trap, by serving as a constant reminder to think positive thoughts rather than let ourselves succumb to all the crushing, negative ones. I hang it by my mirror so that before I look into the glass, ready to mercilessly criticize my body, I peer at the Treaty and remind myself that I am beautiful. Just stating the Treaty's positive statements aloud makes a huge difference in how I end up feeling.

Those who doubt the Treaty's potential to create long-lasting change might say that it is merely a piece of paper with words on it, and wonder what it can possibly achieve. Yet those thoughts that tell us we are worthless and that our bodies are despicable all begin as words in our minds, and they have an incredibly great effect on our self-esteem and body image. If those negative words can hold such enormous power over us, why not give that same power to the positive thoughts instead? While this is neither an easy fix nor an overnight change, I believe it is the first step in the revolution against self-hatred and self-destruction.