Lauren Conrad Bans 3 Words from Her Site. Should You Ban Them from Your Life?
Lauren Conrad is on a mission, but it’s not about creating a new line of clothing or crafts, but about creating a healthier and more conscious online environment. (Photo: Getty Images)
Conrad announced in her blog entry entitled Letter from Lauren: June Shape Up that certain words will no longer be tolerated on her site. “When we’ve talked about getting in shape in the past, words like ‘skinny,’ ‘slim,’ and ‘thin’ have often come up,” she wrote. “Starting this month, we’ll be banning any body shaming terms from the site, and replacing them with words like ‘fit’ ‘toned,’ and ‘healthy.’ We try do to this for the most part anyway, but now we’re making it official!”
Dr. Joe Taravella, Supervisor of Pediatric Psychology at NYU Langone Medical Center’s Rusk Rehabilitation, gives the lifestyle expert two thumbs up for her decision. “I am a huge proponent of her doing this,” he tells Yahoo Health. “I think it’s a perfect level of sensitivity in creating an awareness of the importance of the words that we use. Like Don Miguel Ruiz said in this book, The Four Agreements, in the First Agreement: Be impeccable with your word. I think this speaks to that. The goal for us isn’t to be to skinny and thin and conversely fat and heavy—the goal is to be fit and healthy.”
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He adds that it’s also important for adults to be mindful of their words around children “because kids are starting in pre-school and kindergarten by calling each other fat. We want to move away from that terminology and create more of a lifestyle change to be healthy and fit.”
Taravella took action this past weekend with his own children. “We saw the movie Pitch Perfect 2 and one of the characters, unfortunately, is called Fat Amy,” he explains. “And I told my kids after the movie, ‘We’re not going to call her Fat Amy — that’s not an appropriate word to call someone. We’re going to change it to Sweet Amy, because she’s really funny and sweet.’ I really don’t want my kids walking around calling someone fat — and conversely, we wouldn’t want to call this character Thin or Skinny Amy either because it’s not how we want to define or quantify ourselves. There is a huge preoccupation in our culture and we want to shift that to being healthy.”
He concludes by saying the key lies in acceptance. “One size really doesn’t fit all. We all have different body types, so we need to accept the body type we have and try to live and embody a healthy atmosphere and a healthy life.”
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