Tri Delta sisters 'Reflect' on body image in focus groups

This weekend, Tri Delta sisters stopped for a moment of 'Reflection' - and felt better about themselves as a result.

Reflections Body Image Program is a Tri Delta-based eating-disorder prevention program, created to improve body image among young women.

The program began in 2007 with Carolyn Becker, a professor of psychology at Trinity University. Partnering with Tri Delta International, she launched the Reflections campaign in response to troubling statistics about young women's body perceptions.

According to the National Eating Disorders Association, most fashion models are thinner than 98 percent of American women, and 46 percent of 9- to 11-year-olds are "sometimes" or "very often" on diets.

As many as 40 percent of female college students suffer from some type of eating disorder, according to the Massachusetts Eating Disorders Association.

"Body image is an issue for women everywhere," said Annie Stancliffe, a College sophomore and Tri Delta sister. "It's becoming less of a taboo subject."

Yesterday and last Sunday, Penn's Tri Delta chapter hosted two-hour focus group sessions on body image led by upper-class peer coordinators and run by Tri Delta President and College junior Ashley Belton and Tri Delta sister and College junior Becky Heller, who attended a training program in Texas last fall.

"We realize not everyone agrees with the thin ideal," Heller said. "We're here to promote a healthier image."

Reflections has been proven effective -- according to its Web site, eight months after the program, 53 percent of women who have participated at one school "no longer felt strongly that their weight influenced how they felt about themselves as a person."

The program was broken into two sessions: awareness and strategies.

The first session, attended by the freshman pledge class, peer leaders and many upper-class sisters, occurred last Sunday afternoon. Girls discussed the "thin ideal" - the delusion that in order to be popular and attractive, they need to diet excessively and work toward an impossibly thin physique.

Peer leaders then talked about the difference between healthy and nonhealthy dieting, and how to recognize the signs of dangerous weight loss and eating disorders.

At yesterday's session, sisters talked about strategies to combat bad body image and engaged in role-playing activities to simulate confronting a friend with such issues.

"It went really well," Heller said. "Girls were expecting a boring lecture, and what they got was an interactive, enjoyable experience."

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