This is something that is ongoing and I will continue to add to it however I thought it was important that I look at the methodology and try to find where my gaps where in order to get where I need to work on more as well as what I have been looking at in the form of organizing my blog in order to make sure that I am not going to have blank sports when it comes to the learning outcomes.
As I have been going through different parts of my investigation in the past couple of weeks, I discovered that I am not as healed as I thought I was about my eating disorder. I have had times were I have thought I might relapse when I have been going through my journey however I still consider this to be an extremely important subject and want to do something around it but maybe not directly around eating disorders because I have realized as well that there is a severe barrier to entry so I am now going to try to be more focused on the side of body image and the root that causes all of this issues. For example, looking at the history of Fat phobia and the way that we still see the effects in today’s societies as well as looking at the different comments and ways that people not only view food but their relationship with their body because if I stay focused directly with eating disorders I am not sure where it will take me in my educational journey as well as in my personal one. I also spoke to several psychologists, and they recommended that I take this project and look at it from the perspective of the root issue and the behaviors around it, but that still leaves me a little in the air. I still don’t have everything figured out, but I need to look into it further to understand what’s going on in the project, given all the processes I have been going through.
Since my last tutorial with Zuleinka, I have been working on figuring out what different forms I want to start doing more interventions in because I have been more focused on the research aspect. It has been a struggle to actually start working on my interventions however I understand that this is what makes a masters a masters and not an undergrad and this is why I now it is an important step in the journey, I am going to start today to do a sort of social media strategy which will be more done on research and different ideas to start preparing my audience for what is coming because I feel as if it is a very hard subject to approach but that is the whole point. I have been reaching out to a lot of different people, and I have been rejected or told no to collaborations, which I am aware is part of the process, but at the same time I have had other people start to reach out. I am now going to start a social media campaign as part of my intervention, but I am still in the very early stages. I am going to be working on this for a while, while continuing to reach out, do interviews, and look for people I could collaborate with, all while implementing my own creative practice into this Instagram. I will continue to work on this. I am also going to be in Colombia, where I will have the opportunity to talk to many more people and see different ways I could pivot the ideas I am already bringing to the table. I am going to use this social media platform to educate people on different subjects and get them thinking and interacting. I plan to have some forms as well, and I am going to keep on working on this at the same time. I am also looking to speak to different people who have gone through these struggles. I really want to do something I spoke of with Zuleinka about having different people who feel they do not have the opportunity to be beautiful to be seen as beautiful by maybe getting them to help me create a fashion line which they would feel the most comfortable in and seen as beautiful and the most confident and do a shoot to represent this but this is an evolving idea and will continue to learn and see different ways in which this might change.
The question I have come up with, but am aware is going to change for now in my project, is, “How can I bring awareness through a platform where people suffering from body image struggles feel safe and have a form of expression?” My project is going to revolve around body image, how it has evolved, and why this whole system has been built around the view of people’s bodies. This is something I want to further investigate because I personally have suffered from several eating disorders and have a distorted relationship with my body, as well as many of the people who are a part of my life, and I have seen the evolution of trends around Ozempic and eating nearly nothing in order to achieve a certain body type. I have different ideas of different forms in which I can test and further research this question but the first intervention I completed was having a poster and different materials that one could use in order to find a way to answer this question, “HOW DO YOU FEEL IN YOUR BODY? WHAT DO YOU SEE YOUR BODY AS? WRITE OR DRAW IT OUT AND PUT IN WHEREVER YOU FEEL IN THE POSTER”. This was done with a small in-class audience, and I hope that when I do it in a larger setting, I can get more information from the participants. I have considered doing it with various questions in public spaces around the school, such as the canteen or the pub after class. I want to do this because, through my research, I found an artist named Ally Z, who speaks about how her experience helped her find her voice: “My art emerges from this personal experience of these eating disorders and how I represent my body within my artworks” (Zlatar). I want to be able to create a format in which people who suffer from body image problems can show the way they represent themselves, and this can also be a useful tool for their own personal therapy.
I learned and received feedback on how to further improve my intervention, what it made people think about while completing this specific activity, and how differently people view their bodies. With the idea for this project what I really hope to accomplish is to make people question why we allow this to be a part of our lives and we normalize commenting on other peoples bodies as well as how we speak to ourselves I also hope for people to not just see the problems that are happening now in the present but for people to understand were it comes from and why it started because if we don’t know where it comes from how will we know how to change it.
I know this is a sensitive subject and I have to be careful, especially since I am in outpatient treatment for my eating disorder. However, I have the help and support I need to keep researching, and I understand it’s a sensitive subject for the community. I want to help because it’s always been a secret, and no one likes talking about it. I may encounter challenges, but I will keep working and ask my tutors and classmates for help to complete this project as successfully as possible.
The starving artist – ally.zlatar (no date) – ally.zlatar. Available at: https://allyz.cargo.site/the-starving-artist (Accessed: 20 May 2026).