About

The Anthology

Scrutinising our body’s every move has become an instinctive part of society’s behaviour. Whether it be tracking our weight, scars, or shape, we always seem to be seeking a new way to beat our body into submission.

The Resilience of Being is here to challenge that. This project aims to nurture the idea that our body can exist outside of the ideology that natural changes need euphemistic justification.

We’re getting to a stage where just saying the words “every body is beautiful” isn’t enough of a comfort blanket to cover the length and the depth of struggles that a negative image of your body can cause. We need to look further than the end goal of self-love and get to know the aching parts in between.

Like any other tangible beast, negative body image needs tackling, a key part of which is re-lighting the blazing discussion that surrounds it. This is something I would like to hold a flame to, through this anthology. Using words to create more than quick fixes and share the longer rides, as tangled and incomplete as they may be.

A few lines down, you’ll read the editor is 24 years old, as this is particularly relevant information for this project. A common belief is that we don’t meet these difficulties with our body until we hit our teens, and that any pressures that we do encounter are alleviated after becoming thirty-something.

This is not the case.

The Resilience of Being is a collection that wants to look at stories from people of any age, including the 13-30s, but also everyone outside that window. While negative self-impressions can last, so do the people fighting them, and this collection wants to reach both ends of the spectrum.

If this strikes a chord with you, whether you consider your experience important or trivial, you will have something to contribute. I encourage you to submit and share it and learn the significance it can hold for others to read it, and even for you to write it.

Wherever you currently land on your timeline, a self-destructive approach to your body doesn’t have to be the default.

 

The Editor

Emma Willingham is a 25 year old with a penchant for accents, currently working as a Content Editor for an academic publisher and volunteering as Federation Editor for the North Yorkshire West Federation of Women’s Institutes. Outside of editing other people’s work, she can spend free time attempting her own in writing plays and short stories, and wishing she was better at poetry. Heart is placed precariously on her sleeve, fuelled by witty one-liners and dancing.