2023 Australian of the Year Taryn Brumfitt is the force behind the Body Image Movement and aims to break everyone free from beauty myths.
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00:00 I trained my body obsessively and I got the body, but I wasn't happy.
00:05 We weren't born into the world hating our bodies. This is something the world has taught us.
00:26 The extension of my circle of family and friends and people that you know that I feel safe and
00:31 good around, that principle applies to social media too. We get to curate what we see. Sure
00:40 there's algorithms, but you can drive what comes up in your algorithm by making sure that you're
00:48 following accounts that are not body focused. Body shaming is a universal problem and we have
00:57 been bullied and shamed into thinking our bodies are the problem. My advice to the next Australian
01:02 of the year is that there will be a lot of noise, there will be a lot of people that don't think
01:06 you're worthy, there will be a lot of drama. I've always lived by this quote by Steve Martin,
01:12 "Be so good they can't ignore you." I love delivering on results because you can like,
01:18 love, think I'm a good Australian of the year, a bad Australian of the year, but at the end of the
01:22 day what really matters is what we do. I guess it's just about being really discerning about
01:27 where you put your energy, who am I going to listen to and what's really important here.
01:32 Certainly the day after Australian of the year, it was a pretty sobering moment in a hotel room
01:38 reading some comments from the papers and online, not advisable, and I just sort of,
01:45 yeah that was really tough and I made a really quick decision early on, I'm not going to do this,
01:50 this is going to be part of the, one of the challenges this year, but I'm just going to
01:56 stay laser focused on the outcomes and that's what we did.