BY EMMA USSING

Embrace: Kids documentary has premiered at Cinema Nova, marking an important cinematic step towards promoting healthy bodies and mindsets for children.

Directed by Australian writer, body-positivity activist, and filmmaker Taryn Brumfitt, best known for the 2016 Embrace documentary and body-positivity movement. 

“Recent studies suggest that body image is the number one issue affecting our children and we want to be part of the solution," Taryn said.  

"It’s alarming and heartbreaking that kids are being held back by how they feel about their bodies.” 

The Embrace Kids project asked a group of 18 school-aged children to define and collaborate on solutions for the identity challenges they were experiencing. 

Embrace: Kids maintains that a person can use features like mute, delete, and block to remove negative influences on social media. Although the film does not speak to counteract them on a broader scale. 

Focusing on how you feel, rather than how you look, is a way of counteracting messaging that tall and thin is the idealised body type. 

“Embrace: Kids explores the relationship children have with their bodies and why so many boys and girls hate their bodies and what we can do about it,” Taryn said.

“Imagine giving kids the tools to move, nourish, respect and enjoy their bodies instead.”

“It's [about] gender identity, disability representation, diversity, inclusion, bullying. We cover a lot of subjects. And it's a really important film for families to go and see.”

The film highlights the capacity of children to share and encourage each other’s kindness, considering how we relate to other people and how they relate to us and treat us. 

Accompanying the release of the film is the Embrace Hub, an all-inclusive portal for safe and effective body image resources.

For more information, please visit Embrace Hub.