LOS ANGELES — When high school senior Melinda Wang isn’t studying, she’s building lesson plans for her nonprofit, Outline Your Heart.
“It’s an organization dedicated to helping individuals who have eating disorders or who are going through something similar,” said Wang. “Helping them put out their feelings into words.”
It’s a writing-based tool Wang used the writing-based tool during her recovery. She explained that her eating disorder began in middle school, after years of being body shamed.
“Being overweight was definitely an insecurity for me. If you’re ashamed about something, they’ll kind of find it and they won’t be nice about it," Wang said. “Body shaming is a topic that’s not really broached,” she added. “People don’t really emphasize the negative or harmful effects of it, they just kind of engage in it.”
A National Institutes of Health study found that 37% of students have experienced body shaming in their lifetime, sometimes from peers, sometimes from family.