Here’s an amazing guest blog from the fabulous (and Canadian!) Emily Lauren Dick, aspiring author and body image expert. She tells you a little more about her book, “Average Girl: A Guide to Loving your Body” and all about how amazing it can be to be an Average Girl!
Hello Silver Lining followers!
It is so nice to have been asked by Bianca to write about my current endeavour…Love Average. For those of you who haven’t heard of Love Average, it’s a website I created to help me work towards my goal of being an author. Love Average started as a blog to help me keep writing and inspired and it’s turned into a platform to help inspire others as well. Love Average is a place where real girls can talk about what really matters and in the process help themselves Learn to Love Average!
The question I get asked most often by readers is: what do you consider Average? Average Girls are your every day, normal girls who struggle with feeling unable to fit into “ideal” standards. In other words, an Average girl is anyone who experiences body dissatisfaction…skinny, chubby, athletic…it doesn’t matter because it’s all Average. To quote one of my first blog posts, “being different but having similar concerns is what makes all girls…Average Girls.”
The book I’m working on is currently entitled “Average Girl: A Guide to Loving your Body” and it focuses on some very serious issues regarding the pressure to be perfect. In addition to my research and writing about body image, I have been interviewing and collecting responses from young girls about some of the topics I’ve been focused on writing about, including; eating disorders, bullying, media pressures, etc. I’ve also started to take photographs of real Average Girls which I hope to feature in the book.
This book (and website) has been something I’ve wanted to work on for a long time, probably since I first experienced body dissatisfaction. It is such a problem in our society and it is at the root of many other serious issues that young girls are faced with. I am writing this book because it’s something I would have wanted to read about growing up whether it was at school or home. Information is a powerful tool and I believe that it can help change everything.
Love Average, Emily