*Trigger Warning : This article mentions Body Image and Eating Disorders*

Body awareness is an uncomfortable yet touching subject that many students in high school can struggle to talk about. This is changing because of a Silver Creek High School senior named Emma Hunt.

Emma Hunt, a senior at Silver Creek High School, created a capstone project for a part of her SCLA (Silver Creek Leadership Academy). The SCLA program gives many students the opportunity to create a project of their own to address issues that are going on in their community and to be a leader. The name of Emma’s project is called “Body Kind.”

Body Kind is a capstone project that addresses the increasing eating disorder issues and how to help students with these problems, in the high school community.

“Body Kind is my capstone project all around eating disorder prevention and it kind of encapsulates a few different things,” says Hunt. “One of which I’m in an internship for the non profit organization Be Real, so through them I teach their Body Kind curriculum to high school freshmen and then I also just work with them for their social media.”

Eating disorders can be a sensitive subject. It’s impossible to predict the outcome of what students and families will say or think about this topic. Hunt has been able to teach the freshmen students through a health class taught by John Miller. So when they’re first coming into high school they’re not surrounded by the ideas for the next couple of years of having to fit an “ideal” body type.

“I chose this project because since 2019 the rate of eating disorders nationally for adolescents has doubled, but at Silver Creek it’s tripled, so basically the rate of students here hospitalized for eating disorders has tripled which is insane,” Hunt explains.

Both students and staff are able to contribute to this new improvement that’s being taught and hopefully continues to spread.

“I’m teaching the freshmen and this is so I’ve taught every freshman by the end of the year for the Body Kind curriculum and then for staff mostly just listening and being willing to learn about things that are typically uncomfortable for people to talk about,” says Hunt.

This topic can certainly be uncomfortable for many students and even teachers so it’s important to focus more on this and open up the issues that are surrounding the school. Being open to talking about body disorder awareness can already create such a positive environment and open up to further discussion so other students don’t feel alone in this.

Hunt had a presentation on February 6, 2023, at Silver Creek High School for the staff.

“I’ll kind of go through the problems with body image and body dissatisfaction amongst our youth at Silver Creek and I’ll give five steps that we as a school can take in order to implement a body confident environment and then finally finish with my results from semester one teaching the Body Kind curriculum.”

Hunt has had the opportunity to have an internship at the organization, Be Real, with the goal of spreading body confidence across everywhere. This topic has given Hunt many other opportunities while getting to impact the students at Silver Creek for the better.

“[Body Kind] has given me an internship as well as being an ambassador for Be Real. Ive been able to work with a lot of people I’ve looked up to, there’s this one girl Lindsey Hall, who’s gone viral on tik tok for eating disorder prevention and her blogging and I’m working with her right now on social media so it is so cool that I got to meet her.”

Emma’s project really is opening eyes and creating an amazing community, not only around Silver Creek but for everyone around her.