Vanity Plates Activity: A License to Feel Good About Yourself

Weighing the Pros and Cons

What comes to mind when you think of the word confidence? It is a word that is bandied about quite extensively in our culture and means different things to different people depending upon the situation. When we think of a confidence game or con game the word confidence changes into something to be wary of. Its origin stems from luring someone into your confidence and then using or cheating them in some way to benefit the perpetrator. Fraudulent claims and bait and switch scams start off with confidence and result in the victim feeling duped, tricked…confidence drops. So if con means against and pro means for perhaps we need to shift into a profidence stance?

Body Confidence and Self-Confidence are words that we use a great deal when we are working with body image. And the prevalence of con(fidence) games increases and heats up during the summer. The media, counting on our lack of body confidence, lures us into trusting weight loss scams and miracle products that guarantee body confidence. The one thing to be confident about in these situations,is that the products will NOT work.

So with the emphasis on beauty as the direct route to confidence and with a definition of beauty that is impossible for most of us to attain, finding body confidence and self acceptance on our own terms is essential especially during the summer months. Work on building profidence in yourself and trust that you deserve to be comfortable. You don’t need a license to wear clothing for comfort or staying cool in the heat. Trust me, NO ONE has the right to tell you what you can and can not wear on a hot summer day and the planet will not implode if all body types wear short sleeves and shorts!!!

Title: Vanity Plates

(You don’t NEED a license to feel awesome but just in case…)

Objective:

To give yourself the license to feel confident about your body.

Materials:

Posterboard about the size and shape of an automobile license plate, pencils, scratch paper, markers.

How to:

1. Using scratch paper and pencil think about a body confident message.
2. Using only 7 characters (letters and or numbers) design a personalized license plate that expresses a message of self acceptance body confidence.
3. Using the materials, create a facsimile of an automobile license plate with your personalized message on it. (Optional use the colors of your state license plate.)

This expressive arts directive is from contributing author Dr. Deah Schwartz. Once a month, Dr. Schwartz shares a therapeutic expressive arts therapy activity or idea to facilitate exploration, increased awareness and healing in the areas of body dissatisfaction and eating disorders. Some of these activities may need to be facilitated over more than one session, or modified for different ability levels, size of group, budget and size of work space. These directives may be used in individual or group therapy sessions or as self-help activities. Sometimes the activity itself is nothing new or brilliant but the OBJECTIVE of the directive is unique and specifically tailored to exploring issues related to body image and disordered eating. ENJOY! Fun is the main ingredient! You can learn more about eating disorder therapy here.