With 70% of Australian School children considering body image to be their number one concern, Mount Alvernia College did everything possible to secure Taryn Brumfitt as their keynote speaker for the 2023 International Women’s Day Brunch, held on Sunday 19th March.
The passionate thought leader and 2023 Australian of the Year is behind the Body Image Movement. She is also the Director of inspiring documentary ‘Embrace’ and a three-times bestselling author.
The brunch, held on Sunday 19th March, was also the perfect opportunity for Mount Alvernia College to launch its new program ‘The Literacy Society’.
What is the Literacy Society at Mount Alvernia?
We all know how important it is that we are strong readers and writers but in our contemporary world, literacy is much more than mastering reading and writing. It also includes information literacy, media literacy, digital literacy and visual literacy.
“Being literate, means you can use these environments and create in them. But it also means more than that. It means that you can critically evaluate the messages being pushed at you from these environments – and you then have control of the impact of these messages rather than be manipulated by them.
“As educators, it is very important to us that our students master this broad set of skills. And we put our heads together and came up with the idea of The Literacy Society,” says Samantha Jensen, Principal at Mount Alvernia College.
As a Master of literacies, Taryn was, without a doubt, the perfect person to help launch this new program. Taryn has used her literacy skills as a documentary maker, author and public speaker to spread awareness of body positivity and acceptance through her Embrace movement.
A few phrases that Taryn spoken to really stuck with the audience and it’s Mount Alvernia’s hope that’s all of Brisbane is kind to their bodies today (and everyday) after reading these few key takeaways:
- Our body is not an ornament, it’s the vehicle we use to do the things you want to.
- To love our bodies just a little bit more, because it feels great to love our bodies unconditionally, and you can’t look after something you don’t love.
- A reminder that a kind persistence to how we feel about our bodies defeats resistance.
Why body positivity is so important today
It takes just seven minutes for social media to have a negative impact on wellbeing. Taryn offered students strategies for being in control of social media and who they are letting into their life rather than being controlled by it, she said to “use features like mute, delete, and block to remove negative influences on social media”. Taryn also said that we need to stop comparing our “behind the scenes with someone else’s highlight reel”.
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