Positive Body Image Symposium

March 14, 2024 from 10:00 to 3:00
Location: Wood & Little Wood River Rooms

Registration Link:

The symposium will feature renowned researchers and lectures with expertise in body image. The sessions will offer CE’s with certificates $25.00 for sessions 1 - 3, or $10.00 per single season for 1 - 3.

The symposium is free to the ISU community and the general public.

Times tentative

10:30 -12:00

Speaker- Lisa Cypers Kamen, MA, Adv. CASAC, SUDCCII, RYT-200

Nurturing Positive Body Image from the Comfort of Our Own Skin

12:00 - 1:00 Lunch Break

1:00 - 2:30

Keynote – Virgie Tovar

Presentation –

10 Selfies That Will Change How You See Your Body

To be announced

Positive Body Image Symposium Keynote

Positive Body Image Symposium 2024

Keynote – Virgie Tovar

Presentation –

10 Selfies That Will Change How You See Your Body

In this lecture and workshop, Virgie Tovar (plus-size body positive influencer, contributor for Forbes.com and author of The Body Positive Journal and You Have the Right To Remain Fat), will share how self-documentation (aka "selfies") helped her radically change how she saw her body. For most of her life, Virgie hated seeing pictures of herself. Why? When Virgie was just 5 years told, she was taught that she was "too big," and this led to negative body image, an undiagnosed eating disorder and an obsession with trying to change how she looked. After learning about body positivity and fat activism, she began to use her phone to heal. Come out to hear her story and try some radical selfie therapy yourself.

Bio –

Since 2011, Virgie Tovar has non-judgmentally taught people about the harmful effects of weight-based discrimination and the benefits of celebrating body diversity. She is a plus-size Latina, author, lecturer, and leading expert on weight-based discrimination and body positivity.

Tovar holds a Master's degree in Sexuality Studies with a focus on the intersections of body size, race and gender. She is a contributor for Forbes.com where she covers the plus-size market and how to end weight discrimination at work. She started the hashtag campaign #LoseHateNotWeight in 2013 and in 2018 gave a TedX talk on the origins of the campaign. Tovar edited the anthology Hot & Heavy: Fierce Fat Girls on Life, Love and Fashion (Seal Press, November 2012) and she's the author of You Have the Right to Remain Fat (Feminist Press August 2018), which was placed on the American Library Association's Amelia Bloomer List, The Self-Love Revolution: Radical Body Positivity for Girls of Color (New Harbinger Publications 2020) and her new interactive book, The Body Positive Journal (Chronicle Books 2022). She was the host of the Webby-nominated podcast, Rebel Eaters Club, which was produced for three seasons. In 2018 she was named one of the 50 most influential feminists by Bitch Magazine. She has received three San Francisco Arts Commission Individual Artist Commissions, the Inspire Award from Project HEAL, as well as Yale's Poynter Fellowship in Journalism. Virgie has been featured by the New York Times, Tech Insider, BBC, MTV, Al Jazeera, NPR, and Yahoo Health. She lives in San Francisco.