On October 18, 2019 the Women’s Center, along with campus partners, celebrated National Love Your Body Day (LYBD) with its Second Annual LYBD Summit. Designed intentionally to celebrate holistic self-love, it was themed, “Revolutionizing All Bodies: Finding Space in Institutions Not Made for You.” 

The Love Your Body Day Summit featured presenters from various NC State campus units. The schedule of the day included the following:

• Opening in the Women’s Center with Carlyn Wright-Eakes, rape prevention educator in the Women’s Center: Embodied Intention through Poetry, Guided Meditation and Community Care;
• Feminist Killjoy: Loving Your Radical, Authentic, Killjoy Self with Elizabeth Nelson, associate professor, communication;
• Health at Every Size and the Language of Body Positivity with Lexi Matkins, student programming intern in the Women’s Center;
• I Go Here, I Work Here… Yes, I Belong Here with Leah Young, April Perez and Marcela Torres-Cervantes of Multicultural Student Affairs;
• Decolonizing Intersectionality: The Politics of Body, Sexism, and Intersectional Feminism with Angela Gay and Lisa LaBarbera-Mascote of the Women’s Center;
• Fatphobia in the GLBT Community with Dylan Smith of the GLBT Center;
• Food Elitism Panel with Sarah Cohn, director of NC State Hillel, Lindsey Haynes-Maslow, assistant professor, agricultural and human sciences, and Jackie Bruce, associate professor, agricultural and human sciences;
• The History of Strolling and Claiming Bodily Space with National Panhellenic Conference Fraternities and Sororities;
• Closing Speaker Natalie Bullock Brown, assistant professor, Women’s and Gender Studies.

Overall, the day focused on creating a culture of accountability in how we think about and care for our bodies as well as the bodies of others. Using the conceptual framework of the Women’s Center, each workshop brought forth a number of ways to engage in practices that bring about healthier ways of living, finding joy, speaking out around injustice and decolonizing the negative beliefs inscribed on people, their bodies and their way of existing in the world.

Love Your Body Day Summit is a yearly event that is cross-listed with the Women’s Center Domestic Violence Awareness Month Calendar because we recognize the way we treat people and their bodies is important to address as we deconstruct systems of power that cause harm at multiple levels. For more information about the Women’s Center or to see what we do, visit us in Talley Student Union, Suite 5210 or email us at womens-center@ncsu.edu.

Angela Gay is assistant director of the Women’s Center. Lexi Matkins, majoring in agriculture science, is a student programming intern in the Women’s Center.