The state is top in the country for Google searches for “breast augmentation” and “boob job,” according to a recent study from Utah State University’s Women and Leadership Project. The state also ranks 10th nationally for the number of active American Society of Plastic Surgeons members, and 2024 research found Latter-day Saints have more cosmetic surgery than the average American.
But there’s a growing movement fighting against that — over 100 people of all sizes and ages recently gathered at Utah Valley University to learn how to love their bodies as they are. It was the school’s second annual “Beauty Beyond the Mirror” event.
During the keynote speech, everyone recited together, “My body is an instrument, not an ornament.”
Student Yissella Bringhurst came for extra credit in a class and didn’t expect much. The event, however, was a breath of fresh air, she said.
“It's so weird to see people that actually invite you to look at your body in a different way,” Bringhurst said. “Instead of seeing it as an object, seeing it as something that is real and that it's way deeper than just how you look on the outside.”
Keynote speaker Lexie Kite asked the UVU crowd to raise their hands if they had ever skipped an event because they didn’t like how their body looked. Most hands in the room went up.
Kite and her twin sister, Lindsay, earned their Ph.D.s in body image studies at the University of Utah and co-wrote a book called “More Than a Body.” They also founded a nonprofit called Beauty Redefined. In an interview before the event, she said women invest a lot of time, effort and billions of dollars into their bodies, at the expense of investing in other things.
“The world is missing girls and women,” she said. “The world is missing out on what we can say, on who we are, on what we can do to contribute to a world that desperately needs our viewpoints, our voices, our power.”
Research shows that women who self-objectify — view themselves as an object to be looked at — do worse on math tests and can’t throw a ball as far. And body dissatisfaction can lead to eating disorders, which can be deadly.
Kite believes the problem is more acute in Utah, partly because it’s so homogenous — when everyone looks like you, it’s easier to compare yourself, and there’s less diversity of beauty. Plus, she believes the emphasis on modesty in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints can make some women and girls fixate on their bodies more. She believes that when religions prioritize the voices and power of men, women look for power elsewhere.
“In Mormonism, we find that many girls and women find their value through their bodies and their sexual appeal to men,” she said.
Kite is hopeful because some change is happening. She said she and her sister met with church leaders more than a decade ago to talk about what they found harmful in the church’s For Strength of Youth pamphlet. The church updated it in 2022 to give girls more freedom to choose what they feel is modest, and a 2025 change to the temple garment allows women to wear sleeveless shirts.
Media like “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” have brought more attention to cosmetic surgery, and those procedures are on the rise. Kite said she will never shame someone for getting something like breast augmentation because she knows how hard it is to be a woman in our society.
“And yet, if we cheer on every individual girl or woman in the name of fixing herself or beautifying herself in some way, we are forgetting that we do not exist in a vacuum,” she said, adding that we live in a culture that tells women their bodies are projects.
Systemic change starts at an individual level, she said, with people working on their own relationship with their body. Kite poses these questions: “How can I prove my worst fears wrong? How can I maybe step back on my beauty routine a little bit? How can I do a little less and still prove to myself that I can still show up and still be loved and still have the social power I had before?”
She added, “No amount of hiding and fixing will ever help you gain the resilience you need to live happily in a world that will always objectify you.”
Kite’s top tip in her keynote was curating a healthy body image environment by training your social media algorithms to work for you — swipe past things that make you feel bad about yourself.
People are working to help Utah women improve their body image. UVU, Brigham Young University and Salt Lake County all host a free 4-week program called “The Body Project.” Utah State University is putting on a week of events Feb. 21-24 called “Powered by Your Body.”
Southern Utah University’s counseling center just started a new Eating and Body Image Concerns Group, and Weber State University has an employee body acceptance program called The Confidence Project.
Plus, the initiative A Bolder Way Forward from The Utah Women and Leadership Project recently published information sheets to help parents and coaches talk with girls about body image and eating disorders.
At the UVU event, there was a breakout session to create a collage with things that bring you joy, no matter what your body looks like. As she put hers together, 28-year-old Alexia Oswald talked with her younger sister about swimsuits. She said her sister’s two-piece suit looks good on her, but more importantly, it helps her move better. And then Oswald echoed what she learned from Kite’s keynote: “So that's what the goal is, is being an instrument and not an ornament.”
Oswald has always struggled with feeling bad about her body, she said, but this event was life-changing.
“Going home after this, I will be able to look at myself as somebody worth doing things,” she said. “Like, so many opportunities that have gone missed because I didn't feel like I looked put together enough to leave the house, or I didn't feel fit enough to join the people dancing freely somewhere.”
She’s not the only one who’s been changed. Event organizer Kerri Scott, the program director of UVU’s wellness programs, said she’s heard from others that they’ve been positively impacted. She thinks that will have a ripple effect.
“Each person that learns that will then go and teach that to those around them,” she said. “So even though it feels like it's very small and we're starting in a small circle, I have been able to see the effects, even in my own life — me being able to teach that, teach what I've learned and what I know to my children, and them teaching it to their friends.”
And that, she believes, will start to make a dent in Utah’s body image problem.
