Body Empowerment is a whole-of-community initiative. It is designed to support swimmers of all ages and stages to develop and sustain a positive and empowered relationship with their body through their swimming life and beyond, specifically through enhancing safety and reducing risk for psychological and physical harm.
Swimmers can be best supported when clear messages and supportive actions are consistent, repeated, and reinforced across multiple settings including at the pool, home and more broadly in life. Therefore, Body Empowerment aims to engage everyone involved in the training and care of swimmers, so we can each play our role in contributing to swimmers not only performing at their best, but developing lifelong skills to optimise physical and mental health.
Having a shared understanding about what we mean when we are using words such as “body image” and “body empowerment” can be critical to having effective and supportive conversations. So let’s start there…
KEY TERMS
About Body Empowerment
Find out more about the Key Terms we are using throughout Body Empowerment
For swimmers to feel good in their bodies and stay engaged in the sport, this relies on all of us playing our part in creating environments and experiences where people feel safer and more supported.
Body image is far from a superficial or benign issue. With young people dropping out of sport due to body image concerns, and a rise in more serious body image distress over the last ten years across all community groups (with a sharper rise in girls and women) 1, it’s time to pay attention.
Evidence around how involvement in sport impacts body image is mixed, with some suggesting that sports involvement supports a more positive body image1, and others noting a more detrimental impact2. What this tells us is that there are many factors at play and that listening to the voices of both current and former swimmers is critical to our understanding of how to contribute to environments where swimmers feel more empowered and respected.
Note: See Swimming Australia’s Uniform Policy for more information.
Evidence suggests that when we focus on someone’s body weight, shape, size, composition or aspects of their appearance, this can lead to body distress and shame in ways that have a significant impact on current and future physical and psychological wellbeing. Alongside this, it’s impossible not to pay any attention at all to bodies, particularly in a sport like swimming where feedback can at times be directly related to a swimmer’s body. We can play our part in Body Empowerment by:
- Focussing less overall on appearance in all domains of life, and
- Focus on what the body is doing, rather than what it looks like
The good news is that although the factors that impact each person’s body image are complex, we are now clearer about what can be more supportive for more people, thanks to resources such as the Butterfly Foundation Body Kind Survey (2023).
With all this in mind, the Body Empowerment Key Messages aim to provide anchor points which can support all of the swimming community to play our part in supporting swimmers to perform in the pool, whilst also keeping physical AND psychological wellbeing a priority.
You’ll find resources matched to your role – Coach, Parent/ Supporter, Swimmer or Community member – which can support you in knowing more about the Key Messages, and what to do and say when it comes to body-related conversations.
