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a1000shadesofhurt

a1000shadesofhurt

Category Archives: Body Image

Body dysmorphic disorder: charity video reveals the image anxieties that can push people to the edge

11 Monday May 2015

Posted by a1000shadesofhurt in Body Image

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anxiety, appearance, BDD, body dysmorphic disorder, cbt, Depression, diagnosis, distress, isolation, medication, misdiagnosis, physical appearance, professionals, suicide

Body dysmorphic disorder: charity video reveals the image anxieties that can push people to the edge

It is a treatable condition suffered by at least 2% of the population, both male and female, that devastates the lives of those who have it and can lead to prolonged depression and even suicide. Now a fledgling charity, the Body Dysmorphic Disorder Foundation, hopes to raise awareness of the obsessive anxiety condition that leaves people convinced there is something flawed or “ugly” about their looks.

The foundation’s first conference, on 30 May in London, is aimed at health professionals, body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) sufferers and their carers, and is being promoted by a two-minute film, You Are Not Alone, directed by Steve Caplin, which tackles one of the greatest issues surrounding BDD: the idea that the person with it is isolated and cannot fit in.

“One of the biggest problems is that this is an under-researched disorder which is not fully understood by either professionals or laymen,” says clinical psychologist Dr Annemarie O’Connor, director of themindworks, a London-based psychology practice, who will be running a workshop at the conference. “This is not simply a case of feeling low or having to change your clothes a couple of times before you go out. It’s an obsessive anxiety disorder which can lead to huge levels of distress.”

That distress in turn can lead to prolonged bouts of depression and often suicide. “There’s such a high level of hopelessness and a real conviction among sufferers that they are ugly to look at or flawed,” explains O’Connor.

“Many sufferers turn to cosmetic intervention, but when that doesn’t change how they feel or how they see themselves. They become utterly convinced that a better way doesn’t exist, and this makes suicide a real feature of the disorder.”

Robert Pattinson, who was catapulted to fame after getting the role of vampire Edward Cullen in the Twilight films, told Australia’s Sunday Style magazine that he suffers from anxiety and BDD issues, which can become crippling before a red-carpet event.

“I get a ton of anxiety, right up until the second I get out of the car to the event, when suddenly it completely dissipates,” said Pattinson. “But up until that moment I’m a nutcase. Body dysmorphia, overall tremendous anxiety. I suppose it’s because of these tremendous insecurities that I never found a way to become egotistical. I don’t have a six-pack and I hate going to the gym. I’ve been like that my whole life. I never want to take my shirt off.”

Scarlett Bagwell’s 19-year-old daughter, Alannah, first began exhibiting signs of BDD at the age of 14. “I noticed that she had lost a lot of weight fast and at first I thought it was anorexia, but then other things began to happen – she would refuse to come out with us, didn’t want to leave her room … I still thought it might be teenage angst, but then one day she dropped out of school, despite having always loved it.

“There was so much turmoil in her head – she couldn’t get on the bus, I’d drive her to school but she wouldn’t go in. She really wanted to, but she couldn’t physically get out of the car. She’s a beautiful girl, but she was convinced there was so much wrong with her – she’d insist that her nose was too big and deformed, that she had tiny, piggy eyes and funny hair.”

As Alannah’s condition worsened, including bouts of self-harm and suicide attempts, so her family struggled to get a diagnosis. “I had to fight the system to get the proper treatment for her,” says her mother. “Just getting a diagnosis was so hard and meanwhile Alannah went from being very independent to being a baby again. At times I even had to force her to wash and I would wash her hair for her. Everything was a struggle. I felt I was failing my daughter.”

The hard-won key to her recovery was a combination of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) specifically tailored for BDD sufferers and anti-depression medication.

Alannah is now sitting her A/S exams at a local college and intends to go to university. Her mother hopes that the establishment of a regular conference will lead to further understanding, help and support for those with BDD. “I think that because everybody has slight issues with their appearance – they don’t like their hair, or they think a particular dress makes them look bad – they can’t understand the struggle that actual body dysmorphics go through,” she says. “It stops you functioning. People with body dysmorphia are very isolated; they often can’t bring themselves to go out, no matter how much they want to, they don’t want to be seen.

“We were lucky that Alannah has had help and the support of her family, but I wonder how many people struggle without that support because they are diagnosed later, undiagnosed or misdiagnosed,” she said.

A Beauty Industry Secret (aka Photoshop)

14 Thursday Aug 2014

Posted by a1000shadesofhurt in Body Image

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photoshop

Magazine considers reversing ban on professional models after two years

04 Tuesday Sep 2012

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Magazine considers reversing ban on professional models after two years

Germany’s top-selling women’s magazine is considering abandoning its use of amateur models barely two years after deciding to banish professional ones.

The fortnightly Brigitte hit the headlines in 2009 when it said it would feature only “real women” in its pages, part of a backlash against the use of ultra-thin professional models in fashion.

However, the magazine is reported to have found working with amateur models a challenge and the move has done nothing to increase sales.

Now, with Stephan Schäfer taking over at the helm as co-editor-in-chief alongside Brigitte Huber, the magazine is reconsidering the policy.

Schäfer has been brought in to give Brigitte, which has been providing German women with a mix of fashion, recipes and lifestyle tips since 1954, a facelift.

“Naturally there is now a new direction at the magazine, which means everything is under review and that includes the no-models policy,” confirmed Sabine Grüngreiff, spokeswoman for the magazine’s publisher, Gruner + Jahr.

Back in 2009, the former editor-in-chief Andreas Lebert had claimed he was fed up having to retouch photographs of ultra-thin models.

“For years we’ve had to use Photoshop to fatten the girls up,” he said. “Especially their thighs and décolletage.”

He said Brigitte’s readers had complained that they couldn’t identify with the women featured in the magazine. That prompted the magazine to make use of ordinary women, with the first model-free issue appearing in January 2010.

However, the new direction has proved more difficult than anticipated. For one thing, the magazine says, its stylists and photographers have found it is harder and takes longer to work with inexperienced non-professional models.

At the same time the models are being paid at a level “comparable” to professionals, the Süddeutsche Zeitung reports.

The magazine has to find the women without the help of model agencies. Arranging to shoot the women has also proved a challenge, as many work in other jobs and are only available at the weekends.

At the same time, the radical move has not had the desired impact on readers. They have complained that the women that now appear in Brigitte’s pages are just as skinny and pretty as the models previously used. They also point to the fact that the magazine has continued to feature diet tips.

Furthermore, the publicity gained by abandoning models appears to have done little for the bottom line. Sales have continued to slide, down from 801,574 in 2002 to 601,696 today.

“It is true that the numbers have fallen back,” Grüngreiff said, but she disputed that this could be blamed on Brigitte’s no-models policy. “It is similar to all women’s fortnightly magazines.”

Male Anorexia

18 Saturday Aug 2012

Posted by a1000shadesofhurt in Body Image, Eating Disorders

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anorexia, anxiety, binge eating, Body Image, bulimia, Depression, fashion industry, health problems, Male Eating Disorders, mental health issues, obsessive compulsive hoarders, perfectionism, skinny male models

Male Anorexia

When in history has a male ever been concerned about fitting into a pair of skinny jeans? Media has hyper-focused on the skinny male model. Today’s fashion is geared towards the emaciated male in a pair of skinny jeans. This male body image does not occur naturally unless someone is ill. We now have a whole culture of men trying to obtain an impossible body image.

There appears to be a rise in the number of males with eating disorders. According to NEDA, at least one million males in the United States have an eating disorder such as anorexia or bulimia. But these numbers are skewed due to the high prevalence of undiagnosed males with eating disorders.

Twenty years ago, very few people even knew what an eating disorder was. Today, the public awareness of eating disorders has allowed some men with anorexia to come forward. But most males will not seek treatment for eating disorders because of the shame, the fact that there are fewer male residential treatment centers and the misperception that eating disorders only occurs in females or gay men.

How can you tell if someone has anorexia nervosa? A male with anorexia nervosa is less than 85 percent of normal body weight. He avoids eating, has poor body image and may exercise obsessively. He is intensely concerned about losing flab or building muscle. He believes he is fat when others are telling him that he is too thin. It is important to note that he really does see himself as fat. It is caused by deficiencies in the brain brought on by starvation. Anorexia nervosa may actually compromise the ability to reason in its victims.

People with anorexia usually also have one or more co-occurring disorders such as anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder or depression. Males and females both suffer many of the same symptoms of anorexia, such as:

  • Dehydration (fainting)
  • Performing food rituals
  • Bursts of energy followed by fatigue
  • Constantly talks about body image, weight and diets
  • Avoids eating
  • Purges (anorexia nervosa — purge type)
  • Isolates
  • Thin hair and brittle nails
  • Excessive movements even when seated to burn calories

When someone with anorexia under-eats, the brain may dispense feelings of euphoria that briefly counteract anxious or depressed feelings. In this way, food restriction is used as an anti-depressant or a way to “zone out.” A male with anorexia uses the obsessive thoughts of weight, diet, food (not eating) and body image as a way of pushing down feelings or past traumas. This is common for all types of eating disorders.

The highest number of males with eating disorders have binge eating disorder, compulsive overeating or obesity. These boys and men often do not get treatment until they have diabetes, heart attacks or other weight-related diseases.

There are many causes of eating disorders. Genetics can make a person more predisposed to acquiring an eating disorder. This usually occurs in families who have eating disorders or other addictions.

The desire for control makes a male more vulnerable to the disease. This is often the result of feeling smothered or abandoned and misunderstood by their families. Many males report that they had parents who overemphasized physical appearances. In these families, the individual learned to keep his feelings, doubts, fears, anxieties and imperfections hidden. There may be family issues that they try to avoid by focusing on their disorders and their ability to control their food intake.

Having a perfectionistic personality type can be a factor in the development of anorexia. Most males with anorexia are above average students and may have excelled at sports. Some say perfectionism is the leading cause of male anorexia. Perfectionism leads to the desire to be good, accepted, perfect and in control — all of which are prerequisites of anorexia.

Male anorexia is lethal. When the body is not fed it will take fat from the muscles and organs to sustain life. Males generally have less fat than females, so there is the added complication of losing muscle mass. The heart is an important muscle that may be affected. In addition, potassium and electrolyte imbalances may be a risk factor for cardiac problems such as heart attacks.

With the rise in male eating disorders and associated risks, it is imperative that men with eating disorders seek help!

Girls petition for Teen Vogue to put an end to airbrushed photos

15 Sunday Jul 2012

Posted by a1000shadesofhurt in Body Image, Young People

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airbrush, Depression, Eating Disorders, magazines, photoshop, Self-esteem, sexualisation

Girls petition for Teen Vogue to put an end to airbrushed photos

Teenagers Carina Cruz and Emma Stydahar delivered a 28,000 signature petition to Teen Vogue today to express their distaste for the common magazine practice of airbrushing images.

A group of approximately 10 girls staged a protest fashion show outside the Condé Nast building in Times Square to deliver the petition. Smiling for the cameras, the teenagers walked up and down a makeshift runway (which consisted of a 15-foot long red carpet produced by one of the activists and rolled out on Broadway) holding placards like “Let’s get real – all girls are beautiful” and “Teen Vogue #KeepItReal.”

“I don’t think girls should grow up in a world where beauty magazines dictate they should have a low self-esteem,” said Emma Stydahar, 17, a high school senior from Croton-on-Hudson, New York.

According to Stydahar, 75% of girls get depressed within three minutes of shuffling through a beauty magazine’s pages because the beauty patterns they convey as ideal are unattainable.

“Images that have been photoshopped have a bad effect and can really hurt young girls. We’re looking for more diversity of girls and body types [in these publications],” added Stydahar, whose younger sister, Hanah, 14, was also at the protest and said she wants to follow in her older sister’s footsteps.

The girls were part of a similar fashion shoot outside the offices of Seventeen magazine in May, when a 15,000-signature petition requesting the magazine to promise one un-photoshopped spread a month was delivered to the magazine’s editor-in-chief Ann Shoket.

Julia Bluhm, 14, along with Stydahar and Cruz, is a member of Sparksummit, an activist movement demanding the end to the sexualization of girls and women in the media. Bluhm’s petition quickly gained support after the Seventeen magazine action and ended with more than 84,000 signatures.

In Seventeen’s August issue, the editor promised to limit photo-editing to things like stray hair and zits, but not bodies. She also said the magazine would post before and after pictures on the magazine’s Tumblr.

“We’re focusing on Teen Vogue now, and then we’ll see what happens,” said Stydahar.

To organize the action, Stydahar started a petition on Change.org, an online social action platform, with activist friend Carina Cruz, 16.

“They are one of the lead mags on teen fashion, and if we can accomplish something with them then hopefully we can keep going,” said Cruz.

Teen Vogue has an audience of more than 3.5 million readers, 93% of whom are female. Outside their offices on Wednesday, the makeshift photoshoot was meant to show the magazine what kind of girls they would want to see on the cover of the popular fashion magazine.

In an official statement, Teen Vogue said: “Teen Vogue makes a conscious and continuous effort to promote a positive body image among our readers. We feature healthy models on the pages of our magazine and shoot dozens of non-models and readers every year and do not retouch them to alter their body size. Teen Vogue pledges to continue this practice.”

The magazine’s adult-targeted inspiration, Vogue, announced in May that it would only use models who are aged over 16 years and who, based on the editor’s judgment, do not have eating disorders.

Stydahar’s mom, Sheila Kelly, 54, attended the protests and told the Guardian: “I think it’s wonderful what they’re doing. They’re constantly bombarded with images that are overly sexualized and unattainable, and that clearly don’t contribute to their self-esteem.”

Kelly was a feminist activist in the late 70s in Chicago, where she went to DePaul university.

“I think young women are very active again, and with social media you can get your message out much quicker,” said Kelly.

Elderly struck by ‘epidemic’ of body image and eating disorders

11 Monday Jun 2012

Posted by a1000shadesofhurt in Body Image, Older Adults

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age, anxiety, Body Image, Depression, Eating Disorders, elderly, Self-esteem

Elderly struck by ‘epidemic’ of body image and eating disorders

A growing number of older British people – including those in their 70s and 80s – are suffering from low self-esteem and anxieties relating to body image.

Interviewed for the Observer Magazine this weekend, Professor Nichola Rumsey, co-director of the University of the West of England’s centre for appearance research, suggests that “as adults, 90% of British women feel body-image anxiety”.

She said: “It doesn’t wane – many women in their 80s are still anxious about the way their bodies look, which can even affect their treatment in hospital when their health choices are influenced by aesthetics.”

Popular opinion suggests that body image-related anxiety is a young person’s problem, with recent reports focusing on the age (five years old) at which we are now vulnerable to pressures to conform to an expected ideal. Constant media coverage of the debate on teenagers and their negative relationship with their bodies has served to reinforce the message that it is predominantly young people who suffer such anxieties.

However, Rumsey’s studies in Bristol counterbalance this with evidence that these anxieties do not dissipate as the years pass, but merely evolve into different types of concerns about appearance and how we are seen by others.

“We have conducted a study of about 1,200 people, which confirms that appearance-related anxieties persist well into later adulthood,” Rumsey said. “At an age where most healthcare professionals focus on controlling pain and body functionality, many patients feel the way they look is as much of a concern, but isn’t a legitimate topic of conversation.

“It can cause substantial distress to look in the mirror and see an ageing body, especially if they have very visible conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis or an obvious skin condition, for example, yet in the UK we can be very dismissive of what is often construed as vanity. GPs are not trained to deal with the psychological impact of these anxieties, which can have a significant influence on overall wellbeing.”

Even those who are relatively fit and healthy in later years struggled with the idea that they no longer conformed to a youthful ideal, said Rumsey, who recently co-wrote The Oxford Handbook of the Psychology of Appearance. “It is a myth that older people don’t care what they look like: the ‘normal’ signs of ageing can prove very depressing and many people find it hard to see themselves in a positive light when they see a wrinkled face and a sagging body looking back in the mirror. We are now at a point where there is a social stigma around the effects of the natural ageing process, and this can lead to very low self-esteem and the classic signs of body dysmorphic disorder.”

These observations are echoed by the increasing number of body image-related cases in older people being seen by Dr Alex Yellowlees, medical director and a consultant psychiatrist at the Glasgow Priory Clinic, who is witnessing “an epidemic of self-consciousness. We are suffering from a collective body dissatisfaction, which is a contagion in our society, and we must acknowledge that it affects all walks of society, young and old.

“It was once the case that we were happy to coast into retirement and relax in our old age, but now even in these later stages of life I am seeing people who are preoccupied with shape, weight and looks in a way that was once the domain of younger people who had yet to find their path or identity in life.”

Yellowlees reports an alarming rise in older patients with eating disorders, as all sectors of society strive to achieve what he calls “an unrealistic physical ideal”.

“Today everybody is acutely aware of how they look, and our appearance has become a currency we trade on,” he said. “That means we value old people less because they don’t fit the currency of ‘youth’. This in turn leads to a lack of self-esteem in older people, because they don’t feel valued by a culture that can’t get past superficial image. Appearance is a very fragile currency to trade in because a civilised culture interacts on more sophisticated values such as character, behaviour and language.”

In a culture where increasing value is placed on our appearance, Rumsey voices concerns that we must look beyond the superficial. “Older people are the wise ones we have always looked to for their experience and knowledge, and if they are preoccupied with appearance anxieties this becomes the norm for future generations.”

Uncomfortable in our skin: the body-image report

10 Sunday Jun 2012

Posted by a1000shadesofhurt in Body Image

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airbrush, anxiety, appearance, Body Image, Bullying, cosmetic surgery, Depression, Eating Disorders, Exercise, Self-esteem, Teens

Uncomfortable in our skin: the body-image report

Outside, on a warm morning in March, students at the University of the West of England are shading their faces with textbooks, legs rippling in the sun. Inside, in a cramped, bright room lined with ring binders labelled “Intimacy”, the women who make up the world’s only Centre for Appearance Research (Car) are talking quietly about perfection. I arrived here after following a trail of newspaper reports – on the effect of airbrushing in the media, on men’s growing anxiety about their weight – reports used variously by politicians and educators to highlight the way our world is collapsing. It’s here, with their biscuits and gentle, resigned chatter, that a team led by Professor Nichola Rumsey and Dr Diana Harcourt is compiling the research required to understand how we deal with changing attitudes to appearance, and along the way helping answer the question: why do we hate the way we look?

Two years ago I started writing a column for this magazine, illustrated by a photo of my face. At times it made me feel odd (I have never liked photos), at other times sad, often anxious. It made me more aware that I don’t like the way I look, but more, I don’t like the fact that I don’t like it. But it’s not just me. All Car’s research suggests that Britain’s body image is in crisis.

Body image is a subjective experience of appearance. It’s an accumulation of a lifetime’s associations, neuroses and desires, projected on to our upper arms, our thighs. At five, children begin to understand other people’s judgement of them. At seven they’re beginning to show body dissatisfaction. As adults 90% of British women feel body-image anxiety. And it doesn’t wane – many women in their 80s are still anxious about the way their bodies look which, Professor Rumsey explains, can even affect their treatment in hospital, when their health choices are influenced by aesthetics. Many young women say they are too self-aware to exercise; many say they drink to feel comfortable with the way they look; 50% of girls smoke to suppress their appetite – is it too strong to suggest that these things, these anxieties, are slowly killing them?

Liberal Democrat MP Jo Swinson (who has succeeded in pulling a number of L’Oréal ad campaigns for being unrealistic) is one of a growing group of people whose campaigning indicates that it’s something worth worrying about. Last year I attended every session of her government inquiry into body image, the results of which were published in a report this month. She cited research showing how current “airbrushing” culture leads to huge self-esteem problems – half of all 16- to 21-year-old women would consider cosmetic surgery and in the past 15 years eating disorders have doubled. Young people, she said, don’t perform actively in class when they’re not feeling confident about their appearance.

It is research backed up by a new documentary by Jennifer Siebel Newsom,Miss Representation, about the under-representation of women in positions of power – women who are high “self objectifiers” have low political power. They’re less likely to run in politics, and less likely to vote: if value lies in their imperfect bodies, they feel disempowered. The long-term effects, the piling on of pressures one by one, like a dangerous Jenga tower, means women’s – and increasingly men’s, 69% of whom “often” wish they looked like someone else – lives are being damaged, not by the way they look but by the way they feel about the way they look. It’s complicated.

Even researching such a thing is tricky. The truth feels slippery. “Why,” I asked the psychotherapist Susie Orbach (who, since publishing Fat is a Feminist Issue in 1978, has become a loud and public voice in the conversation about body image), “when I know that beauty is subjective, that nothing terrible would happen if I put on weight, when my desk is covered in annotated research on bodies, do I still feel bad about the way I look?”

“Because none of us lives in a vacuum,” she said. Simply acknowledging the pressure doesn’t eliminate it. “We don’t even know we hate our bodies because we take that for granted.” She sighed. “When I wrote FiFi there was a pretty bad situation,” she said, “but the women of my generation have given birth to… this.” To my generation – 60% of whom feel ashamed of how they look. But before anybody begins to deal with this, this crippling western-worldwide anxiety, it’s important to try and work out why. How did we get here?

At the Centre for Appearance Research, they discuss with me how invested people have become in their appearance. And how central it now is to the value they place on themselves. We’ve always compared ourselves to other people, but what has changed is the way we use images. There’s a famous study which looked at teenage girls in Fiji after television was introduced to the island for the first time in 1995. After three years with TV, the girls who watched it the most were 50% more likely to describe themselves as “too fat”; 29% scored highly on a test of eating-disorder risk. One girl said of the western women she watched on Beverly Hills 90210: “In order to be like them, I have to work on myself, exercising, and my eating habits should change.”

Today the web ensures that we are drowning in visuals: we’re no longer comparing ourselves to “local images” – our friends – instead we’re comparing ourselves to social-networked strangers, celebrities, and to Photoshopped images, of which we see around 5,000 a week. I always bristle a little when “airbrushing” or Photoshop is blamed for the rise of body-image anxiety. It seems too simple. While I was impressed by Jo Swinson’s campaign to ban airbrushing in advertising, I did cheer, a little, when I read Tina Fey’s thoughts: “Photoshop itself is not evil,” she wrote. “Just like Italian salad dressing is not inherently evil, until you rub it all over a desperate young actress and stick her on the cover of Maxim, pretending to pull her panties down. Give it up. Retouching is here to stay. Technology doesn’t move backward. No society has ever deindustrialised.”

The problem is not the Photoshopping itself – the problem is that Photoshopped images threaten to replace all others, and that in slicing off the rounded hip of an actress it reveals our difficult relationship with the female body. The problem is that, in their ubiquity, Photoshopped images have changed our standards of comparison. So that’s one reason. Images. I started to make a list.

The “size zero” debate that began a few years ago led to an angry dissection of the fashion industry’s preference for skinny models. In response, a circular argument was repeated, laying blame on fashion magazines (for printing the pictures), then model agencies (for hiring the models), then designers (for making samples that only fit the very thinnest of them). In this month’s Vogue, editor Alexandra Shulman launched the Health Initiative, a six-point pact between the editors of the 19 international editions, aimed at encouraging a healthier approach to body image within the industry. They promise to encourage designers to “consider the consequences of unrealistically small sample sizes of their clothing, which… encourages the use of extremely thin models”. Is this the industry taking responsibility for our broken body image, for its power? Acknowledging that they help sell not only clothes, but ideas of which bodies are acceptable?

“We’re not taking responsibility for it,” Shulman says firmly. “We’re saying we realise we’re in a powerful position and we can do something about it.”

We’re sitting in her bright white office, beside shelves displaying internationalVogue covers. She points at them one by one. “There’s Kate Moss in Versace. That [sample-sized] dress is tiny. You can see it’s pretty tight on her. Then there’s Scarlett Johansson in vintage Prada – you see, ‘real people’, actors as opposed to models, don’t fit sample-size clothes.”

Caryn Franklin, Erin O’Connor and Debra Bourne, whose All Walks Beyond the Catwalk initiative encourages diversity in fashion, talk to designers and students about creating more “inclusive” designs. “The fashion industry has changed in the past decade,” Franklin explains slowly, trying to put her finger on why our body image is in crisis. “The catwalk used to be a factory space. But digital changed everything – it’s now become a luxury positioning experience, a consumer space.”

It’s helpful for fashion buyers (the audience at catwalk shows) to see clothes on a shape that is as close to a clothes hanger as possible – hence the tall, bony models whose breasts will not bother the line of a shirt. But since catwalk imagery has gone mainstream, these model shapes have drifted into the public subconscious. “We’re helping the industry understand this,” adds Franklin. “This inconvenient truth.”

Shulman has been pushing for larger sample sizes since 2009, when she wrote a letter to major international designers complaining that their tiny designs were forcing editors to shoot them on models with “no breasts or hips”. Has she seen any change? “Hmm. There is still a bit of a… blindness. I think fashion is a bit out of step with this. They don’t realise that people would really like to see something different.” She’s right – Ben Barry (a PhD student at Cambridge University) surveyed 3,000 women, the vast majority of whom “significantly increase purchase intentions when they see a model that reflects their age, size and race”.

Shulman was invited to give evidence at Jo Swinson’s inquiry but turned her down. “I’m very anti-legislation, anti-government initiatives. I don’t think they need to get involved. God knows they’ve got enough to be thinking about without worrying about sample sizes. And it isn’t just about ‘common sense’.”

I’m learning this. I ask her about other myths – are there any commonly held beliefs about Vogue, the industry and body image? Her eyes fall on the magazine shelf. “Ah! I know one!” she says, leaning in. “We shot Adele for our October cover, and everyone said: ‘How typical of Vogue – they shoot Adele and only show a head shot.'” It’s true – bloggers were disgusted that they hid her size-16 body.

“But Adele would not let us pull the camera back,” Shulman explains. “As soon as any of her body was shown on the camera’s digital screen she’d say no. It was her desire to have a head shot, which I found very frustrating. I was desperate for a full-length picture.” That issue was one of the worst-selling inVogue’s history.

I remember Orbach explaining that none of us lives in a vacuum. “Vogue,” Shulman continues, “is one of very few [women’s interest] magazines that never publishes diets, never points out when someone’s put on weight. We don’t come from that unhelpful culture where you forensically examine the way a woman looks. That’s appalling. We don’t have to put our hands up about that.”

Are today’s diets – the way we are encouraged to eat cognitively – to blame for our anxiety? An eating-disorder specialist at the inquiry confirmed that the “Atkins diet generates many cases for my work”, but the problem is not eating disorders but disordered eating. Disordered eating includes competitive dieting and eating in secret – it can lead to both eating disorders and obesity, but more commonly just adds to the eater’s anxiety.

Rates of depression in women and girls doubled between 2000 and 2010; the more women self-objectify, the more likely they are to be depressed. Could the mainstream media’s warm embrace of disordered eating have contributed to that rise? Grazia reports that Beyoncé lost 60lb of “baby weight” by eating only lettuce. Cosmopolitan wrote about Kate Middleton’s “Dukan diet”, which begins with seven days of pure protein, and later two “celebration meals” a week. If women don’t look like Beyoncé or Kate Middleton, their flat stomachs a testament to their stamina then, it seems, they are not working hard enough.

One celebrity whose body is frequently scrutinised (and scorned) by the tabloid media is The Only Way is Essex‘s reality star Lauren Goodger. “Never heard of Spanx, Lauren? Miss Goodger shows off muffin top in very unflattering dress,” read one Mail Online headline. There are 546. “Oops, maybe you should’ve tried the next size up. Lauren Goodger’s tiny dress feels the strain.” “Haven’t you learned your lesson? Lauren Goodger steps out in ANOTHER pair of unflattering leggings.” Rather than the corrosive dripping-tap effect of reading these once a day over the last two years, read together these 546 headlines feel like quiet waterboarding.

I meet Goodger at Max Clifford’s office. She is weeks into a “drastic diet plan”. Many women feel judged on their appearance in some way, but what does it feel like to have those verdicts read by 99 million people a month? “It is quite… draining,” she says. “I can’t look at comments. I can’t buy the mags any more. I used to love them, but I was happy then. Then my weight became a story, not just for the show but for the press. Yeah, I’m definitely aware of the online scrutiny. My body becomes my work.” She thinks for a bit. “But just because someone’s not a size 10 it doesn’t mean she’s a bad person.”

Last year Goodger had a nose job because, she said, she’d hated seeing her profile on TV. Most of her female Towie cast members have had cosmetic surgery – mainly breast implants, a bum lift, Botox, lip fillers. “Where does it come from, the idea that natural is not beautiful, that we all need the model look?” Goodger asks herself. In response to Jo Swinson’s inquiry, the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons (Baaps) has called for a ban on adverts for cosmetic surgery, highlighting promotions that play on vulnerabilities, such as “divorce feelgood” packages of breast augmentation and liposuction, and surgical procedures sold via online discount sites such as Groupon.

“Do you think there should be psychological screening for those seeking surgery?” I ask Goodger tentatively. “It’s a subject that’s hard to talk about,” she says. “Especially because I’m… within it.”

We talk about the idea of “naughty” food, about the different expectations for men and women, about the celebrities who say they’re “big and happy” then suddenly lose weight. There’s a pause.

“My little sister was anorexic at 11,” she says suddenly. “It started with someone at school calling her Miss Piggy. I mean, I didn’t even know about dieting until I was 18. Things have changed so much. She gets the mags, she wants the bags, the Prada shoes. It’s crazy. She’s a baby! She wears lashes, make-up. But you do what everyone else is doing – you compare yourself. She’s fine now, a year and a half later. But she’ll message me going: ‘Have you lost weight? You look really good’ and I’ll think: God, don’t say that.”

Goodger and I were both born in the 80s. In our lifetime (one that has seen the internet enter our homes, along with hundreds more television channels), expectations of beauty have changed enormously. What must it be like growing up today, when cosmetic surgery is advertised on public transport, when “baby-weight loss” diets are rife?

I gather together a group of under-20-year-olds at Livity, Brixton’s “youth engagement agency”, to talk about body image. It’s not a concept that needs explaining to them. Apart from Stephen (who says: “The fact that I don’t have an opinion on body image probably says something itself. Boys have it easier, definitely”), they have much to say.

First, some fictions they are keen to shatter. The pressure, the girls agree, is not, in fact, to be skinny – instead it’s to look sexy. “Hot.” “Everyone wants to look like Kim Kardashian, even though we know she’s a boring person – we don’t want to have her personality, just her body,” says Claudia. “Not Kate Moss’s. Curves, not bones.”

This is the first time sex has been discussed – until now, everybody has talked about thinness and control, rather than changing your body to attract a boy. But as Bridget points out, you can starve yourself bony: “The sexy body is much more unattainable.” “I think our generation is really savvy about the media,” says Amber as they move quickly on to the subject of airbrushed ads. “So you know an image has been manipulated, but I suppose… you don’t know what that’s doing to you.”

I wonder about the fact that these young people are so literate in the issues of body image (as opposed to simply “bodies”) that their thoughts on the subject are so close to the surface. “We’re forced to think about it!” says Bridget. “It’s on every channel, every night. Programmes like Supersize vs Superskinny, orHow to Look Good Naked, or freaky ones like Half Ton Mum, or A Year to Save My Life.” Everyone shouts out names – programmes about overhauling your body with diets, clothes or surgery. “They have mixed messages,” says Amber. “On one hand they’re saying ‘love your body’, then on the other ‘fat’s bad, the worst thing you could do is be obese’. The message ‘be healthy and do exercise’ is a bit different from ‘be happy in your skin’, isn’t it?” The rhetoric of empowerment, here, actually disempowers.

Do we hate our bodies because of reality makeover TV? Susie Orbach describes how they often provide “dysmorphic and distressed women” the opportunity to “compete over their body distress and win the prize of radical restructuring”. The earliest technologies of body enhancement utilised techniques used on Second World War burn victims. “To hear [winning reality show contestants] tell it,” Orbach says, “they’ve been through their own individual wars, too… Their compulsion to change their bodies is a result of a different kind of assault on women, and increasingly men, which is sufficiently damaging to have persuaded them that the bodies they live in are urgently in need of transformation.”

Both the cosmetic surgery and the cosmeceutical industries (anti-ageing products) are growing, fast. It’s these industries, “along with the fashion houses, the diet companies, the food conglomerates [which own the diet companies], the exercise and fitness industry, and the pharmaceutical and cosmetic surgery industries”, that Orbach is now combating, because, she says, “they combine, perhaps inadvertently, to create a climate in which girls and women come to feel that their bodies are not OK”.

Orbach debated with representatives from the diet industry in parliament to applause from the public gallery – outside women protested with placards saying: “Riot, don’t diet.” Discussing Weight Watchers’ recent £15m TV ad, she suggested it was affordable to them only because their members are locked into lifelong “straitjackets” of unrealistic weight-loss expectations. When I speak to her later, she goes further. “I do think we should be prosecuting the diet industry for false advertising,” she says firmly. If dieting worked, she argues, you’d only have to do it once. There is evidence that diets may in fact contribute to fat storage and that, in giving a sense that food is “dangerous”, create conditions for rebellion, which eventually makes people fatter than they were to start with.

When I began my research, all roads led back to Orbach. She’s been crucial in hammering home the dangers of body-image anxiety, yet figures show that we are feeling worse about our bodies than ever. “You have to make the argument that this isn’t trivial, then you have to make the argument that this is a substantial issue, then you have to combat the industries. I’m exhausted by it,” she says, throwing her head back. “But what other options do we have?”

She’s working on a psychoanalytic research project on the transmission of body image from mothers to daughters, and she’s pushing for interventions by midwives, trained to show new mothers how their own body-image dissatisfaction will affect their babies. “New mums are caught up in problems with their own bodies when they’re bringing a new body into the world. We need a counterpoint to the nonsense that you should have a pre-pregnancy body six weeks after having a baby, or ever. What’s the erasure about? That’s where it should start.” She takes a breath. “And teachers – it’s all very well them taking classes about body image, but if they don’t raise their own awareness about their own distress, then they’re just passing it on.”

Back at the Centre for Appearance Research, we make our way down the narrow university corridors for lunch. In this surprise heat, the café is full of academics fanning themselves with menus, the odd bare-legged man. I am feeling a bit hopeless. All the statistics about sadness; all the people, like me, who aren’t able to enjoy their own health, privilege, relative youth, because of this niggle. This feeling that we don’t look right.

Jo Swinson’s report detailed various recommendations being put to government, regulators, voluntary organisations and the private sector. In light of Orbach’s evidence, they call for a review of the “inaccurate” body mass index as the standard way of determining whether somebody is overweight, and for better support for new mothers. They ask advertisers to reflect “consumer desire for authenticity and diversity”, and for tougher regulation of the cosmetic surgery industry. But all the people I interviewed balanced their delight at the inquiry with a healthy wodge of cynicism at how much change these recommendations would effect.

And I wonder what we can do – us lot, the people with the faces we don’t like, with the cankles, the muffin tops, the limp, lifeless hair. It’s in the personal, day-to-day things, I think. Like consuming media critically. The media is a construction – this is no secret. Magazines, film, TV, newspapers – they all rely on advertising. So reminding ourselves that the body types we see represented are the body types that generate purchases. Asking ourselves: “Am I being sold something here?” It’s not a terrible thing, being sold to, it’s just a… thing. Unpicking the media we consume, and talking about it, will help us feel better eventually. Cognitive dissonance programmes in schools have been effective – encouraging young people to speak out against the unrealistic ideals of beauty they see. In talking about it we reduce the internalisation of beauty ideals, and feel less awful about our implied failings.

I tell Car’s Dr Phillippa Diedrichs about something Amber mentioned – about femininity and dieting.

“Eating becomes a means of communication,” Diedrichs says after lunch. “In our food choices we’re demonstrating our femininity.” But it goes further than that. “We’re socialised to be negative about our bodies,” she says, and a slideshow of moments flashes through my head. Women standing in the ladies’ loos complaining about their boobs. Or comparing their limbs to their colleagues’ unfavourably. She introduces me to the idea of “fat talk”, everyday conversation that reinforces the “thin ideal” and contributes to our dissatisfaction. Like: “You look great – have you lost weight?” Or, on being offered a bun: “Ooh, I really shouldn’t.” “After three minutes of fat talk,” says Diedrichs, “there’s evidence that our body dissatisfaction increases significantly.” Naming this – fat talk – makes much sense to me.

After a day at Car, my body-image anxiety hasn’t disappeared, but I can at least see a way to control it. We hate how we look because of our new, complicated visual culture, because of a fashion industry that has not adapted, a media that forensically analyses women’s bodies and saturates our culture with body-change stories. Because of the rise of cognitive eating, the increasing abilities and accessibility of cosmetic surgery. Because to be feminine, today, means to hate your body.

I leave their building feeling quite different from when I arrived. I have the same legs, the same face, the same teeth, but something in my mind has changed.

Five-year-olds now worry about body image

30 Wednesday May 2012

Posted by a1000shadesofhurt in Body Image, Young People

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body dysmorphic disorder, Bullying, cosmetic surgery, Eating Disorders, health problems, Self-esteem

Five-year-olds now worry about body image

More than half the British public suffers from a negative body image, an inquiry by MPs has heard.

The problem is so acute that girls as young as five now worry about their size and appearance, with children in danger of picking up their parents’ body-related anxieties, their report said.

Cosmetic surgery rates have increased by nearly 20% since 2008 and the rise was said to be fuelled by advertising and “irresponsible” marketing ploys, the cross-party group of MPs was told.

According to Reflections on Body Image, co-authored by the MPs and health and education charity Central YMCA, negative body image was seen as an underlying cause of health and relationship problems, a key contributor to low self-esteem and a major barrier to participation in school and progression at work.

Appearance is also the greatest cause of bullying in schools, evidence suggested.

The report, published by the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Body Image after a three-month public inquiry, identified a growing amount of evidence that body image dissatisfaction was on the increase, with the issue seen to be one affecting all of society regardless of age, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, disability, body size or shape.

Children and adolescents were seen to be more vulnerable to body image concerns however.

Around half of girls and up to one third of boys have dieted to lose weight and children and young people with body image dissatisfaction were less likely to engage in learning and participation in school, the report said.

Parents were identified as one of the main influences on children but by secondary school age, the peer group was seen to become a more important influence.

The inquiry heard that health issues attributed to excess body weight may be overstated meanwhile because body mass index, the measure commonly used, was seen to be an inaccurate way of classifying all individuals and their health risks.

And although being overweight or obese was associated with a range of health conditions, the inquiry received evidence challenging the notion that weight always entailed poor health.

The diet industry acknowledged the public had “unrealistic expectations” about weight loss, while critics argued there was no evidence diets work in the long term.

The inquiry, which took evidence from academics, the public, industry, charities and other experts, heard that:

:: Getting rid of dieting could wipe out 70% of eating disorders;

:: More than 95% of dieters regain the weight they lost;

:: 1.6 million people in the UK suffer eating disorders;

:: Up to one in five cosmetic surgery patients could suffer from body dysmorphic disorder;

:: One in three men would sacrifice a year of life to achieve their ideal body;

:: One in five people have been victimised because of their weight;

The report made a series of recommendations targeted at policy-makers, healthcare professionals, industry and the education sector designed to change public perceptions, attitudes and behavioural patterns.

These include compulsory body image and self-esteem lessons for primary and secondary schools, getting advertisers to commit to running campaigns that reflect consumer desire for “authenticity and diversity”, and reframing public health messages in “weight-neutral” language.

It also called for a review of broadcast and editorial codes on reporting body-related issues, a review of the evidence base to support the long term efficacy and safety of diets and a separate code of regulations governing cosmetic surgery advertising.

Patients should be screened before undergoing cosmetic surgery and a review should be carried out into whether the Equality Act ought to be amended to include appearance-related discrimination, the recommendations said.

Central YMCA will launch a campaign on the issues in the autumn after consulting the public beforehand.

APPG chairwoman Jo Swinson MP said: “Body image dissatisfaction in the UK has reached an all-time high and the pressure to conform to an unattainable body ideal is wreaking havoc on the self-esteem of many people.”

Central YMCA chief executive Rosi Prescott branded the report’s findings shocking.

“It’s clear that there’s something seriously wrong in society when children as a young as five are worrying about their appearance, based on the messages they are seeing all around them,” she said.

“Body image has become more important in our culture than health, and children are mimicking their parents’ concerns about appearance.

“We all have a responsibility to act now to bring about the attitudinal and behavioural change that’s necessary to prevent damage to future generations.”

The British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons agreed a separate code of regulations should be drawn up governing cosmetic surgery advertising and called for an outright ban on adverts of this type in public places like billboards and public transport.

BAAPS also announced it was funding long-term research into psychological assessment of patients.

:: The finding that more than half of people have a negative body image comes from a study by the Centre for Appearance Research at the University of the West of England, to be published in full later this year.

Would you dare to wear Lycra outside? Half of women put off exercise in public

23 Monday Apr 2012

Posted by a1000shadesofhurt in Body Image

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Exercise, Self-esteem

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/would-you-dare-to-wear-lycra-outside-half-of-women-put-off-exercise-in-public-7669143.html

It is good news for the celebrity fitness DVD industry, if no one else. More than half of the women in Britain are too embarrassed about their bodies to exercise in public, a survey suggests.

Nine out of 10 women over 30 have low self-esteem and poor body image, which forces many of them to exercise indoors or go running in the dark. The findings, by the mental health charity, Mind, are particularly unfortunate because outdoor exercise is known to be far more effective at improving mood and mental wellbeing than an indoor workout.

“We all know walking, cycling, even gardening are good for our mental health,” said Beth Murphy, the head of information at Mind. “However, for many of us, exercising outdoors can be incredibly daunting, especially if you are already feeling low and your self-confidence is at rock bottom.

“At these times you can feel like the only person in the world experiencing this, but our research highlights that far from being alone, 90 per cent of women are in exactly the same boat. It is time we start talking about how exercise makes us feel. We urge women to take the first step, invite a friend on a nature date and begin to support each other in taking care of our mental wellbeing.”

More than half of the 1,450 women surveyed said they exercised very early in the morning or late at night, solely to avoid being seen by others. Nearly two-thirds said they exercised in a location where they were unlikely to bump into anyone they knew, and a similar proportion said they wore baggy clothing to conceal their figures.

Gym classes are also a no-go area, it seems. Two-thirds of women said they did not think they would be able to keep up in an exercise group, that they would look silly, or that the women there would be “cliquey” and unwelcoming.

Sixty per cent were nervous about exhibiting themselves while sweaty, and were worried about their “wobbly bits”, passing wind or going red. Only 6 per cent thought they would be likely to make new friends.

Mind’s researchers found that women were acutely aware of the importance of keeping fit and active lifestyles, and therapists were increasingly prescribing outdoor exercise as a way to fight stress and depression.

But the charity said that, rather than exercising, women reported that they were more likely to spend time eating comfort food (71 per cent), listening to sad music (32 per cent), spending time social networking (57 per cent), going to bed (66 per cent) or finding a way to be alone (71 per cent).

Mind, which offers advice and support people with mental health problems, has launched a “Feel Better Outside, Feel Better Inside” campaign to encourage women to start talking about outdoor exercise, and to encourage friends to exercise outdoors together.

Case study: ‘I always felt so self-conscious and anxious’

Tracy Bell, 38, lives in Bedford and has suffered from occasional bouts of depression for 10 years

My GP prescribed me gym membership as therapy. I went to the sessions because I felt I had to, but I hated every minute and stopped as soon as I could.

I went time after time because it was my prescription, but I felt so self-conscious and anxious. The exercise environment is just so cliquey – I would never have made any friends.

Everyone there was completely different to me. They were thinner, fitter and better at exercise. To make things better, I would time my trips really carefully. I would make sure I went mid-morning, so I missed the morning rush and then the lunchtime rush, too – just to make sure I would be seen by as few people as possible.

I’ve been asked if I talked to my friends about how I felt, but there’s no way I could. They are so much thinner and more sporty than me.

A lot of my friends who live near me are a little bit younger and I just know they wouldn’t understand. I don’t know how to put it – I guess I feel like I must be the only one who feels like this.

Skinny male models and new fashions fuel eating disorders among men

05 Sunday Feb 2012

Posted by a1000shadesofhurt in Body Image, Bullying, Eating Disorders

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'bigorexia', 'manorexia', anorexia, binge eating, Body Image, bulimia, Bullying, Eating Disorders, fashion industry, Male Eating Disorders, mannequin, masculinity, skinny male models, stigma

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/may/16/skinny-models-fuel-male-eating-disorders?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487

Skinny models, clothes designed for unrealistic body shapes and pressures at work are all fuelling an increase in eating disorders and body anxiety, as well as a rise in demand for cosmetic surgery. For men. Fat is no longer just a feminist issue, since the number of men suffering problems with food and body image is rising fast, with experts suggesting that 40% of binge eaters and a quarter of anorexia and bulimia sufferers are male – compared with 10% a decade ago – while the equivalent rates for women have not changed significantly.

Along with the rise in so-called “manorexia” is the body dysmorphia condition of “bigorexia” – men who become ever more muscle-bound in their obsessive pursuit of the perfect six-pack body.

Eating disorder campaigners are worried that a shift in men’s sizing in fashion is exacerbating the crisis and have criticised a British mannequin manufacturer for its latest super-skinny male model that they say could encourage vulnerable boys and men to starve themselves in a repeat of the “size zero” trend that encouraged many women to endanger their health. Next month Rootstein will debut a mannequin with a 35in chest and a 27in waist – 12in smaller than the average British man.

The firm said it was just reflecting demand and a shift to gender-blending fashion led by the slim and cool: Mark Ronson, Russell Brand, designer Hedi Slimane, and a new crop of male models, like Calvin Klein’s Tomek Szmulewicz and Top Man’s Sam Bennett. It talked of allowing “the boys a little of what the girls were getting with a beautifully angular physique that’s all about the youthful thrill of life on the edge”.

The mannequin’s designer, Kevin Arpino, said demand was up for smaller models. “It is a collection dictated by current fashion trends for skinny jeans and very tight tailoring, as seen everywhere from Topman to Gucci and in the edgier fashion magazines like Numéro. It’s a trend which you can see in celebrities and rock stars – Russell Brand has a little bit to do with it. But I am sure that muscle boys will have their time again.”

But for Rob Richman, 35, a recovering anorexic from London, it’s a deeply worrying shift. “I’m staggered, shocked, at what the fashion industry is doing now, trying to mould men to aspire to a different shape than one that is natural, the same as they did with women. Between the tiny sizes and the six-pack look, the pressure on men just seems to have escalated,” he said.

“In my early 30s I couldn’t get clothes to fit me and I would have to buy girls’ jeans; now I can get tiny sizes on the High Street. You’re telling teenage boys to reach unrealistic and unhealthy sizes. Of course you get guys like Pete Doherty and Stephen Merchant who are naturally tall and thin, but this is about pressure to conform to a false ideal. We should allow men and women to be the different shapes and sizes they naturally are.”

Richman, who developed his eating disorder aged 12 after years of vicious bullying at his public school, said he used to be the only man at treatment clinics or hospitals. “Now I’m never the only guy. Ten years ago if a guy went to his GP it’s unlikely they would think of him having anorexia.

“Now all the ones with the really chronic levels are the men.”

But whether men are developing the “excessively muscular or excessively skeletal” shape, said Dr John Morgan, a leading eating order specialist, the risks are high.

Eating disorders have the highest morbidity and mortality rates of all psychiatric illnesses. Bullying can be a major trigger towards eating disorders in boys as young as seven.

“Ironically the government’s anti-obesity campaign has had a flip effect of making perhaps slightly overweight boys more likely to be picked on and bullied. Interesting that, while one in four children are overweight, two in three think they are,” said Dr Morgan.

“The rates of body image disparities are indeed rising among men. Ten years ago a young woman and a gay man suffered similar rates of risk while the attitude of the heterosexual male was much more ‘we’ve got beer bellies because we’re men and we don’t care’, but now that’s changed quite significantly.

“There’s a broader crisis of masculinity in our society and men are facing the same growing pains that women went through in the 50s and 60s.

“Men are being presented with many more choices, and while choice is liberating, for many young men they struggle through and there remains a lot of stigma attached to them admitting weakness; it’s such a threat to the male identity.

“The difference between men and women,” Dr Morgan went on, “tends to be that men focus on shape more than weight, and also men have the extra issue of being expected to be an ideal which is not incompatible with health, so George Clooney might have a great body but we’d also expect him to scale Mount Kilimanjaro, whereas Keira Knightley would struggle with the mountain, but that would be expected.”

The eating disorder charity Beat protested furiously at the Rootstein mannequins. A spokeswoman for Beat said that men and eating disorders was an issue that now had to be taken seriously and the charity was campaigning hard for more awareness among GPs.

“More and more men are coming forward. Generally speaking, there is just as much pressure on guys as women to have a certain body shape. Imagery presented as something to attain, skinny styles, and making sizes smaller, it’s all a dangerous ideal,” she said. “Men are subject to the same insecurities around their body and self-image as women are.”

Former TV host Steve Blacknell, 57, developed bulimia months after starting a new job in the image-obsessed music industry.

“The pressure to be thin and lovely is the same whether you’re a girl or a bloke in that world, and it’s impossible, just as the washboard stomach is an unreachable thing.

“I’d take down and burn every image on those men’s magazines and advertising hoardings of rippling abs, along with those mannequins.

“It’s hard enough being a bloke coping with an eating disorder – imagine then having to look at images like that, imagine the pressure.

“I work with the corporate world now, with men who know that how you look is very much part of the package you are presenting and so how you look is important.”

And that workplace image is what is fuelling the increase in men going for cosmetic surgery, said Liz Dale, director of the Harley Medical Group. The company has seen a 55% increase in men having “tummy tucks” and a 23% rise in Botox treatments, in the first two months of 2010 compared to the same period in 2009. “Men are a lot less embarrassed than they would have been 10 years ago. Now they are quite proud of looking after themselves and coming in for Botox and skin peels. They don’t want to look like celebs, they want to look thinner and healthier. We see a lot of City men where the pressure is more pronounced to look good,” said Dale.

John Updike wrote in a 1993 essay: “Inhabiting a male body is much like having a bank account; as long as it’s healthy, you don’t think much about it. Compared to the female body, it is a low-maintenance proposition: a shower now and then, trim the fingernails every ten days, a haircut once a month.”

Lord Byron thought having to shave every day was as bad as women having to deal with the pains of childbirth. Although Byron had his own issues with food – he was a binge-eater, according to Dr David Veale, consultant psychiatrist and co-author of Overcoming Body Image Problems – neither he nor Updike would have recognised the expectations placed on the modern man.

“There is still greater pressure on women than men,” said Veale. “But undoubtedly some men are more vulnerable – they put all their worth and identity into their appearance. At the severer end of the spectrum it is just as common to have a male sufferer as a woman.

“Eating disorders in women may well be more biologically driven with genetic links, but for men it seems to have a more sociological aspect. An individual who is teased or bullied or humiliated or suffers emotional neglect at a crucial stage of their life obviously is going to feel that impact.

“Generally human beings go around thinking we are a lot more attractive than we actually are, and the greatest paradox is that men with eating disorders are actually more unattractive the harder they try to sculpt themselves into the perfect aesthetic, not because of their bodies but because of the behaviours and their obsessions.”

PERFECT FIGURES

■ Byron, Kafka, Elvis Presley, Elton John, Uri Geller and John Prescott all suffered from eating disorders.

■ The average British man is 5ft 10in tall, has a 39in waist and weighs 13 stone, heavier than most fellow Europeans.

■ The Royal College of Psychiatrists estimated last year that one in every 1,000 young men and seven in 1,000 young women have an eating disorder.

  • Symptoms of anorexia include worrying about weight, exercising more, and being unable to stop losing weight. In men and boys, erections and wet dreams stop and testicles shrink.

■ Overall male cosmetic surgery grew by 21% last year, including an 80% rise breast reductions. The most popular treatment remains nose surgery

More: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/may/05/skinny-male-mannequins-eating-disorder?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487

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  • Glasgow STEPS The STEPS team offer a range of services to people with common mental health problems such as anxiety and depression. We are part of South East Glasgow Community Health and Care Partnership, an NHS service. We offer help to anyone over the age of 16 who n
  • Mind We campaign vigorously to create a society that promotes and protects good mental health for all – a society where people with experience of mental distress are treated fairly, positively and with respect.
  • Research Blogging Do you write about peer-reviewed research in your blog? Use ResearchBlogging.org to make it easy for your readers — and others from around the world — to find your serious posts about academic research. If you don’t have a blog, you can still use our
  • Royal College of Psychiatrists Mental health information provided by the Royal College of Psychiatrists
  • Young Minds YoungMinds is the UK’s leading charity committed to improving the emotional well being and mental health of children and young people. Driven by their experiences we campaign, research and influence policy and practice.

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