Dismantling Diet Culture and Sizeism with Families: A Feminist Body Neutral Parenting Group for Collective Healing

ABSTRACT

Sizeism is a systemic form of discrimination that devalues one’s inherent worth and personhood based on the size, shape, and weight of their body. Feminist family therapists can support the mental health needs of communities by helping dismantle and heal fatphobic messages and misunderstandings about health. This conceptual article details a group curriculum for a body neutral parenting group that creates space for parents, families, and communities to learn skills and heal from anti-fat bias and related mental health implications. Body neutrality is a concept wherein individuals accept their bodies as a vessel that carries them through life, and as such, do not attach positive or negative feelings to their physicality. In the body neutral parenting group, caregivers can heal from their relationship with food, their body image, and movement, as well as help promote a healthy relationship with food, body, and movement within their children.

KEYWORDS:

• Sizeism
• diet culture
• body neutral
• parenting

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).