Top Aussie on a mission to save men from body-image hell

Taryn Brumfitt has been named the 2023 Australian of the Year for creating healthier self-esteem within the nation’s boys and young men.

The Australian of the Year 2023 winner Taryn Brumfitt.

Taryn Brumfitt has laid out her mission as 2023’s Australian of the Year – making sure the nation’s boys and young men have a better relationship with their bodies.

The South Australian has spent the past 10 years campaigning to protect women from the damage of body shame in the age of Instagram, and is now warning young men are suffering from the same issues and getting hooked on steroids.

Before she was awarded the nation’s most prestigious honour in Canberra, Ms Brumfitt – the creator of a 2016 documentary, Embrace, backed by Hollywood A-listers including Ashton Kutcher – told The Australian she wanted to help Australians recognise their bodies as “their home”.

The Australian of the Year’s major campaign in coming months will be called “embrace men”, as she says young men are facing the same body issues ­plaguing the nation’s girls.

“Men have been left out of the discussion and, like a lot of subjects, they haven’t been asked to explore the feelings that they’re feeling,” she said.

“For a long time we were ­focused on women and how women feel about their bodies and we ignored men. But men have a lot to say … about how they feel about their bodies.

“My biggest concern is around young boys and steroid use, which is on the rise and comes with a whole raft of issues including toxic masculinity and how they treat women.”

The 2023 Australian of the Year is South Australian Taryn Brumfitt. She arrived with her partner Pearson. Picture: The Australian / Gary Ramage

Ms Brumfitt was joined in Canberra on Wednesday by one of the architects of the Indigenous voice to parliament, Tom Calma, who was selected as the Senior Australian of the Year.

Professor Calma made no ­secret of the fact he would use his platform to campaign hard for the voice, which is currently facing opposition from the Left and Right of politics.

“It will be an opportunity to promote … the voice and the referendum and to get people to think about our future,” he said.

“We’ve seen a bit of a game going on at the moment between political parties. Let them get that off their chest and start to get into the real discussion.”

Ms Brumfitt’s fellow South Australian, Socceroo Awer Mabil, was chosen on Wednesday night as the Young Australian of the Year.

The 27-year-old grew up in a Kenyan refugee camp after his family fled` civil war in Sudan, before coming to Australia at 10, making it into the Socceroos squad in 2018 and founding Barefoot to Boots, which aims to improve the lives of refugees.

Amar Singh, the founder of Turbans 4 Australia, which each week distributed up to 450 food and grocery hampers to people ­experiencing food insecurity in Western Sydney, was chosen as the 2023 local hero.

Ms Brumfitt’s next documentary project Embrace Men, which she is working on financing, follows her first two successful films Embrace and Embrace Kids.

The first of the trilogy, Embrace is one of Australia’s most successful documentaries, having generated more than $4m worldwide and reached over 100 million people across almost 200 countries.

Australian football player Awer Mabil was named the Young Australian of the Year.

It followed Ms Brumfitt first coming to prominence in 2013, when she went viral for a before-and-after photograph that captured a transformation very unlike those circulating on social media.

Rather than showing a woman who had lost weight and sculpted her body to perfection, Taryn’s post captured quite the opposite.

Her “before” shot showed her in a bodybuilding competition, complete with sparkly bikini and immaculate tan, while her “after” shot captured a softer, more normal body, along with a clear smile that said more than the caption could: “I love myself the way I am.”

Ms Brumfitt said that, for a long time, she felt she wanted “a different body”.

“The way I describe it is I just wanted ‘her’ body,” she said, referring to the “perfect” female body type portrayed in just about every medium.

“But when I learned to embrace my body, it was like winning the golden ticket and it was something that I wanted for every woman, every man, every child on the planet … to feel that sense of joy and freedom that comes from not worrying about your body.”

The response to her before-and-after photo was overwhelming, with the post being seen by more than 100 million people and launching Ms Brumfitt on to the global media circuit.

Shortly afterwards, she launched the kick-starter for Embrace, which raised more than $330,000 in two months and was publicly backed by Rosie O’Donnell, Ashton Kutcher and Olivia Newton John, who said the film made her “cry so much”.

Ms Brumfitt has since written four books, launched a four-week online program for people to learn how to “embrace” their bodies and created a study guide for schools to teach positive body image.

Ms Brumfitt said the pathway to healthier body image was not getting kids off social media but teaching them how to better ­interact with it.

“Everyone wants to blame social media. But here’s the thing: social media is here to stay,” she said.

“So we’re going have to learn to adapt to it and to use it effectively.”