Let me start by ask you to close your eyes.

Please close your eyes for a few seconds,

and think about \"the perfect body\".

Just for a few seconds, picture \"the perfect body\" in your mind.

Now open your eyes.

By a show of hands,

how many of you pictured your own body as the perfect body?

Look around, look what do you see?

By another show of hands,

how many of you have ever heard someone say

or have heard yourself say,

\"I wish I had a different body?\"

\"I'm ugly,\" or \"I'm fat,\" \"I wish I had different sized body parts.\"

Now what do you see?

I think we see an opportunity to change our future.

A very large opportunity to change our future.

I think we see an opportunity to change the future

for our generations of girls and boys and let me tell you why:

the most common factor in the development of eating disorders, anorexia, and bulimia

is body dissatisfaction, or unhappiness with your body.

This is an important message

because every aspect of our lives

is bombarded with messages of body image and body self-confidence.

We see it everywhere:

TVs, movies, magazines, social media, the clothing industry.

Every encounter we have with the external environment

is filled with messages about body image and body self-confidence.

So are these messages negative or positive?

You can probably answer this question.

How do they affect us?

Here's some information:

69% of school-aged girls who read magazines

say that the pictures influence the way they feel about body shape.

50% of those girls say that the pictures make them want to lose weight.

Over 50% of teenage girls, and almost one third of teenage boys,

use unhealthy behaviors to lose weight.

They starve, they vomit, they skip meals,

they use laxatives.

20 million women and 10 million men in the United States

will suffer from an eating disorder at some point in their lives.

Look at those numbers; think about that for a moment.

Eating disorders have the highest mortality rate

of any psychological condition.

If we think about clothing,

when did we start accepting size 0 and size 000

as actual sizes of real live human beings?

Human people.

Zero?

The average fashion model is 5, 11\",

weighs 117 pounds, and wears a size 0, 2, or 4.

The average woman is 5, 4\",

weighs 140 pounds and wears a size 12, 14, or 16.

A little difference there!

50% of women wear size 14 and up,

but our clothing industry caters to size 14 and under.

The average body mass index of Miss America winners is 16.9.

The World Health Organization says the average body mass index is 21.7.

Another big difference; almost 5 points.

So let's ask ourselves, how did this happen?

Why don't we picture our own body as the perfect body?

Why do we think our own body is so imperfect?

And why are girls and boys so unhappy with their bodies?

I think I have a potential explanation, so bear with me.

We, as a society, have become boiled frogs.

How many people have heard of the parable of the boiled frog?

The parable's been around for a long time.

It explains that if you place a frog in a pot of boiling water,

- Don't get nervous, we aren't going to do it! -

he'll immediately jump out to try to save himself.

But if you place a frog in a warm pot of water,

he stays put.

As you gradually turn up the heat,

he acclimates to the temperature in the pot and falls asleep.

And then it's too late.

I hope PETA doesn't call me. We have not boiled a frog!

The image is gruesome, I know.

But the message is clear.

We are the frog, society is the frog.

We have been boiled by the clothing industry,

by the media, by the entertainment industry.

We have been bombarded by negative messages

about body image and body self-confidence

every day, for years and years and years,

and it continues to happen.

75% of TV female sitcom characters are underweight.

A sports magazine recently was recognised

for placing the first \"plus-sized\" model on its cover.

Guess what size she is?

Did anybody see that in the news?

Size 12.

Plus sized.

So when did we start accepting size 12 as plus-size?

I think it was around the same time we started accepting size 0 or 000

as actual sizes of real human beings.

Can you pinpoint when it happened?

So all of this information is important.

What does it tell us?

It's time for a change.

It's time for a movement towards self-acceptance.

It's time for a movement that will disempower eating disorders;

remember we said the most common factor to the development of eating disorders

is body dissatisfaction.

So let's go back.

What can we do to lead this movement?

What can we do to change the boiling pot?

Can we change the clothing industry?

Can we change the media?

Can we change the entertainment industry?

Well, Viktor Frankl said, and I paraphrase,

if you can no longer change your situation, you must change yourself.

That's something we can do. We can change ourselves.

We can change ourselves,

we can change the future by changing ourselves.

I think we can do that.

We can teach our children to jump out of the pot of boiling water

before it's too late.

And we can serve as role models for self-acceptance.

We have a responsibility as educators,

as community members, as parents, as human beings.

We have a responsibility to start a movement towards self-acceptance

that can lead us to disempower eating disorders.

So how? They are just words until we put them into action.

How do we lead the movement?

How do we change?

How do we move forward?

Here's how:

Serve as a role model for self-acceptance.

Accept yourself!

There's no reason not to.

Stop negative body talk, the talk we talked about in the beginning.

No more negative talk about yourself or anyone else.

Appreciate the beauty of different physicalities

- we should do that everyday -

stop buying into the industries that promote self-judgment.

Challenge the pot of judgment by not judging ourselves.

We can do this.

Every body is the perfect body.

Make sure you read that one.

Every body is the perfect body.

We begin to picture our own body as the perfect body, we start today, now.

We teach our children to picture their own body as the perfect body.

We lead by example and engage in healthy behaviors.

So I think we can do this.

Are you with me?

We can change our future.

We can lead the way towards self-acceptance.

I believe that we can do this.

We can teach our future generations to jump out of the existing pot

before it's too late.

We can disempower eating disorders.

I hope you will join me in this movement.

Thank you.

(Applause)