Australian of the Year for 2023 | Taryn Brumfitt, a body image activist wins top prize

South Australian filmmaker and public speaker Taryn Brumfitt leads the Body Image Movement.

Ms Brumfitt said it was her mission to get people to love their bodies.

"It is not our life's purpose to be at war with our body," she said.

"This is something the world has taught us. Body shaming is a universal problem and we have been bullied and shamed into thinking our bodies are the problem."

Her activism started when a partially-naked photo she posted on Facebook in 2013 went viral.

The "before and after" image showed Ms Brumfitt in a bikini, covered in fake tan and competing in a bodybuilding competition as the before shot.

It was taken after she had cancelled plastic surgery to alter her body, which had given birth to three children.

In the after image, she sits side on without clothes, showing off a body which was curvier and softer.

It was captioned: "Be loyal to your body, love your body. It's the only one you've got".

Ms Brumfitt's journey from a South Australian mother of three and photographer, to a global body acceptance activist, was chronicled in her 2016 documentary, Embrace.

The Australia Day Awards council said the film has been seen by millions of people in 190 countries, and is available on streaming platform Netflix.

The 45-year-old has written four books, and created another documentary called Embrace Kids, to encourage children to have a healthy relationship with their bodies and movement.

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She has said her goal is to positively impact women's relationships with their bodies.

Accepting the award at the National Aboretum, Ms Brumfitt said we have created a world putting our young at greatest risk.

"We're facing a paediatric health emergency with rates of suicide, depression, eating disorders, anxiety and steroid use related to body dissatisfaction soaring," she said.

"It is not our bodies that need to change, it is our perspective."

A 2021 Mission Australia survey found 47.2 per cent of young females aged 15-19 said they were concerned or very concerned about body image.

For males of the same age, it was 15 per cent; and for gender diverse people it was 49.1 per cent.

One in three Australians are unhappy with how they look, a 2018 survey by the Butterfly Foundation found

"What's most important to me [is] that we start a new, fresh, positive conversation about our bodies and take the first steps towards embracing and unconditionally loving our bodies," she said.

"I want to be doing this for the rest of my life because it's such a big problem."

Ms Brumfitt has been previously recoginised in the 2018 Australian Financial Review 100 Women of Influence, 2018 SA Award for Excellence in Women's Leadership, Women and Leadership Australia and 2018 EY Entrepreneur of the Year, South Australia.

She also graduated from Unley High School, the same school former prime minister Julia Gillard attended.