Una’s Love Your Body Day

By Jessica Braud

I’m going to confess something to you. I love hugs. And even more, I love free

hugs. Whenever I see someone wearing a FREE HUGS T-shirt or carrying around a FREE

HUGS sign, I shamelessly approach the person in order to receive my free hug. And when I

shamelessly, I mean shamelessly. But c’mon, admit it, getting that warm fuzzy feeling from a

free hug from a stranger totally makes your day a little brighter.

Una, the feminist group at SLU, took that feeling and offered it up to the entire SLU

community last Friday. Not in the form of free hugs (which also would have been awesome),

but in the form of body paint! They had set up a station at ‘the grassy knoll by the clocktower’

(their excellent description, not mine), draped the fabric abstract vagina that usually is hung up

in their office over it, and had laid out various paint colors and buttons. (The button I snagged

has two hands cupped together with a bright red heart painted in the middle of them with Love

Your Body Day written across it. It’s quite cute if I do say so myself.) Members of Una stood

out on the walk, encouraging everybody to stop and take a button and get a heart painted on their

favorite body part. Musicians played their jams, passerbys stopped to sit in the shade and enjoy

the tunes and the company of happy people.

One of Una’s core team members painted a lovely red heart on my upper thigh, by my

hip, which is currently injured, but I figured that showing a little love towards it wasn’t gonna

hurt. I had to leave all the celebration and love really fast to get to class, so I couldn’t stay

very long, but walking through the crowd of students, I got to see people with hearts painted

on their legs, arms, cheeks, sides, and in one instance, cleavage. And seeing these people

showing all this love to their flawed, human bodies and celebrating them totally gave me that

warm, fuzzy feeling. So thanks, Love Your Body Day, for making my day a little brighter.