Image by Sinead FentonAnyBody has contributed to the evidence gathered as part of a review of the Regulation of Cosmetic Interventions. The call for evidence was initiated by the Department of Health after the Poly Implant Prothese PIP scandal, in which faulty implants continued to be used despite knowledge of the risks, thereby endangering patients health.

On December 31st, 2012 the Summary of this call for evidence was published and released. Beyond PIP, it highlighted other serious concerns, including:

- concerns around the products used in cosmetic procedures;

- questions around the training of those performing them;

- and the treatment and procedures for managing complications that may arise, and caring for patients who suffer from them.

When people decide to undertake cosmetic interventions they are consumers as well as patients. However, their buying-decisions may have a profound impact on their health and wellbeing, and this emphasized by the fact that the current regulatory system does not support patient safety.

Patient protection

One of the positive outcomes of the review is that now a framework is in the process of being readjusted to accurately protect the patient. This is good and welcome news.

Regulation of advertising

There needs to be a tightening of the regulations on advertising for cosmetic surgery — and this report is attempting ways in which to do this.

This is an important point, as the external influences of advertising industry and the increased visualisation of our society play enormous roles in influencing peoples perspectives on their bodies and images.

Psychological care

Are current psychological assessments accompanying cosmetic surgery sufficient? 

The review concluded that, overall, respondents acknowledged the importance of the practitioner assessing the patients motivation, but felt the current use of psychological assessments to be sufficient. But is it really enough?

Beyond the regulatory piece is the reality of the individual. To take a few steps back and take the time to understand why the individual has decided in the first place to change a part of themselves — this should be an obligatory part of the procedure. The person performing the procedure needs to ask these questions and be trained enough to know whether the patient is emotionally prepared for whatever they chose to do.

Much of the time, because these procedures are so accessible, there is not much thought put into the ramifications of being cut open and re-arranged — it has consequences both for the outside and inside of us. The outcome may be very different to the celebrated ‘growing confidence’ which many cosmetic surgery adverts promise.

Image by Sinead Fenton under a Creative Commons license. 

Something we have realised with our Ditching Dieting Campaign is that ditching something you've always done, even if it's something that may not be working, is scary. So what to do instead? How to trust yourself around food without a 'plan'? Without a points structure? Meal replacements? Special recipes? We're led to believe that there's no way of doing it on our own, and enormous profits are made off the back of this common myth.

If you are moving around, living your life and listening to your own desires - eating when you are hungry, stopping when you are full, eating precisely what you need and want in that moment – then you should not feel your health threatened by being in the ‘obese’ box on a flawed BMI chart. However, this kind of intuitive eating becomes harder and harder under the onslaught of methods to make money from your body. The diet industry claims to offer comfort, support and solutions to make your world a happier, healthier place and it's completely understandable that many, many people choose to diet when in the thrall of anxiety about their bodies, something that is exacerbated by imagery in the media, gossip magazines and online news outlets that dissect bodies (women's especially) routinely as entertainment.

To help people who are dieting and are sick of it, or have given up and are not sure where to turn or for those considering dieting, we have made a free Intuitive Eating booklet to download (see below). It's based on Susie Orbach's book On Eating and gives you basic pointers to understand intuitive eating and how it might work for you. The whole book is great but it isn't practical to use discretely, so this guide has been designed (with instructions) so it can be made into a booklet or small cards, sized to fit into a credit card slot in a wallet.

Intuitive eating isn't easy and takes time, but it works for many as a way to be free of anxiety around food and to have healthy responses to all 'hungers' as we often mistake other feelings, such as boredom or loneliness for actual hunger, and food cannot alleviate such feelings for long.

Perhaps this approach might seem scary to try alone, so maybe do it with others, as one of the best things about diet groups is the mutual support people get from other members. This doesn't have to cost you a penny either: you could meet with friends to discuss how you are getting on, the breakthroughs and pitfalls, just like a regular diet meeting except you can banish the scales!

Last but not least: there are common misconceptions around the concept of eating whatever you want or are hungry for in relation to this kind of diet-free approach, and in the context of public health and the 'obesity crisis' some have criticised it as irresponsible to encourage people who are classified as "morbidly obese" to eat what they 'want'. Intuitive eating is not a free pass to stuff yourself with as much junk food as possible, or in other words, binge. Rather, it is about developing a new relationship with food and your body,

This misconception is rooted in the fact that there are no forbidden foods while practicing intuitive eating, so in the initial stages, some people’s bodies may ask for more of those “bad” foods they had previously categorized as off limits. With time and practice, those “bad” foods lose their power, so that a chocolate bar and a carrot stick ultimately can have equal appeal. Intuitive eating is about distinguishing between hungers and discovering what your body really needs by tuning into the messages we get naturally.

Learn more about our Ditching Dieting campaign and how to become part of the movement.

Download the Intuitive Eating Guide HERE.

Photo by Christian Glatz

Pregnancy is a time of hope, excitement, wonderment, anticipation as well as fragility, insecurity, and vulnerability. However you feel about it, which may actually be a combination of all those things, pregnancy is a milestone in your life.

Some women love being pregnant and enjoy their changing shape. There is a sense of joy and freedom whilst pregnant. This may be the first time you have given yourself permission to genuinely be in your body and relax about how you look. How refreshing!

Sadly, not everyone "glows" or has a neat little bump during their pregnancy. Many women feel alien to their normal sense of self. Your figure, as you once knew it, will morph into something new and different. You become your body and your body becomes a home for your unborn baby which you begin to take care of and nurture. Your body is no longer your own. Sharing yourself in that way can be amazing and warm or it may be difficult for those feeling that their space is being impinged or intruded upon. 

As you navigate your way through the trimesters your weight begins to increase and some women feel "fat" as opposed to pregnant. Acknowledging and accepting that the weight gain is a sign of health and not something abnormal is often foreign and difficult.

This may be more difficult if prior to pregnancy you exerted control over your body by restricting your food intake. However it is important to know that there are two of you now, and doing so while pregnant in an attempt to prevent any further changes to your growing body, puts you and your unborn child at risk. 

A pregnant body has a life of its own and is meant to move and change in its own time through its own rhythm. This is nature's way of growing, protecting, and keeping your baby safe, not your body betraying you.

Being pregnant affects everyone differently. There is no right or wrong way to be pregnant. However you experience this stage of your life, it prepares and shapes who you are and who you will become as a mother.  

Image by Christian Glatz under a Creative Commons license. 

By Amy Anderson, AnyBody team member

As the clocks chimed midnight on December 31st the grimly inevitable diet industry wheels – oiled by millions of pounds of profits – rolled into action. Forget focusing on spending time with the important people in your life, or your work, or your interests or what you’re really hungry for – people across the UK instead woke up on January 1st to the usual soul-sucking exhortations from adverts and magazine features about shifting those pounds, toning those thighs, flattening those stomachs. 

This year however these messages have not been restricted to magazines or weekend supplements. They have been screamed at us from the main media outlets: “Bulging Britain's fatness epidemic” shrieked the Daily Express; “Fat fighters” hollered The Sun; “Fat Britain: NHS can't cope, say doctors” was the ominous headline from the Daily Telegraph.

The source of these headlines is a report by the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) entitled: “Action on Obesity: Comprehensive Care For All”.

The Royal College of Physicians, a registered charity, outlines its aim as “to ensure high-quality care for patients by promoting the highest standards of medical practice”. It also advises the government, public and the profession on healthcare issues.

However, the authors do not reference the report from the Body Confidence Parliamentary Inquiry held last year. Witnesses included eating disorder specialists, Weight Watchers and Slimming World, and Dr Susie Orbach, psychotherapist and the convenor of AnyBody/Endangered Bodies UK. This report’s recommendations include:

• A review into the use of BMI as an indicator for health
• A reframing of health message from a focus on weight-loss to health-enhancing behaviours and the adoption of weight-neutral language
• A review of the evidence-base to support the long-term efficacy and safety of diets

But on closer inspection of the RCP report perhaps this glaring omission isn’t so peculiar.  I was shocked to see, as stated in the report’s conflict of interests section, that some of the members of the working group that produced the report – some of whom are medical doctors - have financial links to Weight Watchers UK, the Cambridge Weight Plan, Counterweight Plc and Rosemary Conley Diet and Fitness magazine.

Is it really any surprise then the report recommends "commissioning weight management services which have proven effectiveness”?

Much has been written about the ineffectiveness of dieting and the research that backs this up. 95% of people who lose weight on diets put it all back on and more within five years. This is one of the reasons we organised our Ditching Dieting campaign outside Parliament last year, timed to coincide with the diet clubs giving their evidence. Diets don’t work because diet clubs’ profits depend on us returning again and again

We are continually scolded that we’re getting bigger and that our bodies are not acceptable as they are and we’re also blamed if we go on diets and don’t lose the weight that an external authority has deemed we must get rid of. The diet industry has infiltrated the health sector and it would seem that, judging by the RCP’s report, doctors are not immune. Indeed it has been the aim of certain diet companies to influence commissioning groups within the NHS to buy in their services for their patients. No surprise really when they are being paid by the diet clubs.

The thrust towards dieting is backed up anecdotally too. I know women who have gone to see their doctors for anything from hearing problems to smear tests who get told that they’re too heavy, that they must lose weight. This is despite the evidence which shows that our weight is not an accurate gauge of our health. Please see the latest research from the Center for Disease Control at NIH which published a major review of mortality and size in JAMA ON January 2nd. This is a very different kind of post Christmas message than the diet industry would like us to hear.

We need open and transparent conversations in the health debate and it’s absolutely imperative that, in order for these to take place, our health professionals are not financially invested in the diet industry. They need to be on the side of their patients, fairly and objectively.

Image courtesy of Marc Samsom under a Creative Commons license

By Jessica Zucker, Ph.D., Guest Contributor

A close friend of mine from graduate school was in town over the weekend, someone I hadn’t seen since I was mid-way through my pregnancy. As we briskly walked toward each other, arms outstretched, brimming with wild enthusiasm about our long overdue rendezvous, Amalia blurts out from across the toddler trafficked park, “Oh my God, look at you, you don’t even look like you had a baby! You’re smaller than you were before.”

I wasn’t sure how I felt as we hugged, in the midst of awkwardly digesting her jubilant albeit off the cuff comment about the apparent erasure of my pregnancy. The embrace was cut short as she gently pushed me back to scan every inch of my postpartum body, unable to contain her energized description of how “little” I look, how “tiny” I am – spilling with words she defines as every woman’s dream. Or more to the point, every woman’s goal. 

I want to be marked, in some way, by pregnancy, by the birth of my child. This is not to say that I would have wanted to maintain all the weight gained during pregnancy, but I do feel the body as well as the mind/psyche/heart go through a series of metamorphoses as life is being nourished inside and outside of the body.

Women are constantly shamed for their shape. Prepartum, postpartum, and never-partum. All but the smallest sizes are viewed as less than, not driven enough to surveil every morsel of food ingested, not vigilant enough to carve out time for daily workouts. Even women I know who do embody the cultural ideal – trotting around in the smallest sizes the jean manufacturers are producing these days- even they don’t feel at home in their bodies.

The droning laundry list of things that women say about how they “got their bodies back” include and sadly are not limited to: “breastfeeding is definitely what made the baby weight fly off”, “I got the food delivery service straight away. I was determined to return to my pre-baby wardrobe as quickly as possible and that way I didn’t have to think about what I was eating, it was done for me”, “I started counting calories while in the hospital. I was surprised by how long it took for the weight to come off but I feel like it’s the only thing I can control right now so my focus is sharp”, “not even a moment goes into thinking about my food intake.  I guess I lost it all while running after my rambunctious toddler. He never gives me a break.” 

Amalia is freshly married, 38, ambivalent about having kids. As she blithely puts it as she considers raising a family, “I could take it or leave it.” The ubiquity of psychological disconnection and body disenchantment is illuminated in Amalia’s detailing of my presence. My physicality is noticed first. My size is experienced and discussed in relationship to banishing pregnancy. The absence of body change is asserted as an enviable compliment. Meanwhile, my darling toddler is resting on my hip and I look into his eyes knowing that he grew inside of me and together we altered the feel and shape of my body. And then I think to myself, “Why would we want to erase that?”

Amalia provoked me to reflect on hundreds of fragmented interactions I’ve had with women since my baby was born. Women who are mothers themselves, women dying to get pregnant, women who share their horror of giving birth, “getting fat”, “staying fat”, women who asked me how much weight I gained while pregnant, my own mother reflecting on her speedy loss of “baby weight” and curious about why mine wasn’t slipping off as quickly. The dynamics of women and what we unwittingly do to each other is devastating.  Paralyzing. A cultural vestige all too pervasive.

And then of course we are inundated with endless magazine images of emaciated post-pregnancy “stars” who “got their bodies back instantly.” They pontificate about the various ways women must expunge maternity. The pride taken in shrinking one’s body at any cost is emblematic of a cultural obsession with women not being real women.

The intimacy I experienced with my body and my developing baby during pregnancy was perhaps the most compelling transformation I have ever known. It became, in a way, a metaphor for how I feel about parenthood—a striking awareness of loss of control, simultaneity of surrendering to change on a moment-to-moment basis while experiencing more joy and more fear than the heart can contain. Pregnancy and parenthood invoke an unprecedented heightening of anxiety—excruciating awareness of vulnerability, altering one’s perspective on the fragility of life, as well as a depth of love that redefines the concept. Why would we erase all of this complexity– the physical and psychological makings and markings of pregnancy and parenthood?

I am not necessarily idealizing the experience of pregnancy. I’m not saying women should necessarily enjoy gaining weight, being tattooed with stretch marks, or relish the postpartum belly jiggle. I am attempting to call attention to cultures calamitous requirement that women erase the life-giving process.

As Amalia and I make our way through the throngs of sweaty and spirited toddlers and exit the park, she turns to me and reiterates, “You’re so lucky, you look exactly like you did before.”  There’s a pregnant pause. And I say, “Actually, my body’s changed from having a baby, and that is why I’m lucky.”   

 * * *

Dr. Jessica Zucker is a clinical psychologist in Los Angeles specializing in women’s reproductive and maternal mental health with a focus on transitions in motherhood, perinatal and postpartum mood disorders, and parent-child attachment. Jessica studied at Harvard University and New York University. She is an award-winning writer and a contributor to The Huffington Post and PBS This Emotional Life, among myriad other publications. Dr. Zucker is currently writing her first book about mother-daughter relationships and issues surrounding the body (Routledge). Jessica consults on numerous projects pertaining to the motherhood continuum. www.drjessicazucker.com

Original image by Debs via creative commons. 

By Jo Harrison AnyBody Activist

In July, we received the news of BBC3’s planned Body Image Season with great enthusiasm, as we believe there are crucial issues within this topic that need to be made part of the public debate, and the BBC is a fantastic arena to raise important issues and question common assumptions. As an organisation that focuses on the cultural and social causes of the distressed and damaged relationship many of us today have with our bodies - relationships which can limit the full potential as of people as human beings - we know that the way we perceive ourselves has a huge effect on what we feel capable of, how we treat ourselves, how we will allow ourselves to be treated and how we treat others.

We know that there are huge problems with the representation of diversity in terms of the body in our culture, especially for women, although men are definitely feeling the burn of our culture’s very narrow ideals, and much needs to be done to make sure people see themselves first and foremost as human beings who have something to contribute to the world, not to feel their potential is rendered unworthy because they don’t match up to an ever shifting (and therefore elusive) idea of perfection.

Unfortunately, upon seeing the first outcomes of the Body Beautiful Season we were concerned about some of the messages being propagated, and the opportunities missed. For one, that the season was finally titled “Body Beautiful”, we felt it sent a slightly skewed message about the cultural value of appearance. The banal tyranny of the word “beauty” stalks most women on a daily basis; in fact, the average British woman thinks about the size and shape of her body roughly every 15 minutes. Whether you’re berating yourself for not being beautiful enough or berating yourself for not waking up every morning with a body-positive “I’m beautiful” feeling of wonder at your own uniqueness, it can hover about like a bad smell. Yes, it’s a word that grabs attention and that’s probably why it was chosen, but body image is a broad topic and under such an umbrella, beauty goes hand in hand with “ugly”, in a world where the pop-cultural go-to format is relentlessly competitive we felt this had an exclusive edge. The tag line of the season, “A new season of BBC Three programmes exploring whether changing your body makes you happy” along with the title seems to suggests that changing one’s body, rather than changing one’s mind, is considered the norm in the quest for happiness.

AnyBody has been watching…

Holli Rubin, Psychotherapist specialising in Body image, watched: I Want to Change My Body

I attended a season preview of the documentary, I Want To Change My Body directed by Sam Emmery. The programme followed 30 young people aged 16-25 as they went on a personal quest to transform their bodies with the hope that the changes would make them happier. Some of the issues explored were extreme weight loss surgery, hair transplant surgery and nose jobs.  Some of the emotions revealed were anxiety, excitement, pressure and fear.  Whilst the feelings were named, they were not expanded upon with enough time and depth to genuinely understand the meaning behind why these youngsters were deciding/choosing to go forward with these drastic physical changes to their bodies. This documentary highlights body-obsessed Britain and reveals the problems through exposing the participants’ dangerous behaviors. On a greater scale, the quest for perfection is societal failure. That stops there. In fact, all of these stories might even entice more young people to consider enhancements to change their own bodies.

The question, “What happens if changing my body doesn’t change the way I feel about myself??” is asked. This is a very important and excellent question. The answers were cursory, shallow and not truly thought about. Questions like this are big and require time to reflect upon. The culture we are living in doesn’t allow for that space or time needed to properly formulate a sound decision. Besides which, there is no one facilitating this process- where are the parents? Or what about the professionals who have an obligation to ask these questions and truly be available to help young adults process the content of their feelings, and then help them weed through understanding the repercussions of their choices should they be disappointed with the outcome?

A general feeling of “needing to get rid of “or “get more of” is what the film reveals. There is no mention, no presentation or suggestion of learning to accept what you have and who you are. Learning to appreciate yourself flaws and all. The theme of striving for unattainable perfection is rampant. There was a comment made about how there is so much available to fix yourself that why wouldn’t you?

The young girl who had always wanted to have a nose job was very fixated and determined. Her excitement throughout the process was real and palpable. I could understand how desperate she was to see herself differently and that because her dissatisfaction was so specific, it felt contained and her desire reasonable; she was convinced, on side and empathic. Until a month later when she had been living in her new nose and was continuing to feel good about this new change that she revealed what I always worries about after her clients have elective surgery:  “I like my nose so much that now I think I will do my boobs - I don’t mind them really but they could be a bit more round”. Oh no, there it was,,, the moment of truth! Do these changes address underlying dissatisfaction? If after one area is “fixed” is it only replaced by yet another target for dissatisfaction? This situation mirrors what the research shows. Many of these young people were suffering from some form of Body Dysmorphia.

There was one young woman whose story was dissimilar. She was a victim of a terrible accident, which left her face scarred and disfigured. This was very different than the others who were wanting to change themselves because of their perceived disfigurement. Ironically, it was she who was the most grounded in her perspective and her reality. There was a mourning that she seemed to be going through and ultimately an acceptance of her situation. She had an accident, which left her scarred-physically and emotionally. She needs to wear a type of mask to keep her face protected and to help the skin heal. The sadness and loss were expressed. Her surgery seemed necessary, and can be validated in a different way than those of the others. 

I Want to Change my Body presented us all with a massive cultural problem, which needs addressing on many levels.

 Jo Harrison watched: Transsexual Teen Beauty Queen 

This isn’t an ideal starting point for discussing the very complex area of what it means to be transgender, since gender and sexuality are intimately linked to body image but are also enormous subjects in their own right. In an ideal world, perhaps it would not be complex at all, where gender fluidity would be an accepted human trait, and physical characteristics such as genitalia might be less of a hindrance to expressing a person’s multifaceted self. But at present such a utopia is not in sight, and what it means to be a woman is so often depressingly surrounded by on all sides by the spectre of beauty.

Eighteen-year old Jackie is seamlessly female to anyone and everyone who doesn’t have access to the chromosome codes in her DNA, and even if they did, what does that matter? She lives as she sees fit, she has done what she felt she had to do to carry on living in a world that has very divisive gender norms. She uses the term gender variant which is very pleasing, after all we know that variety spices up life, for all but lovers of absolute uniformity. The documentary was intelligent and sensitively handled, but it’s a shame that the main crux hinged on participation in a beauty pageant. Jackie’s desire to be an ambassador is brilliant, and the fact that she is funny and bolshy and stylish and swears like a sailor is awesome and shows someone well-rounded despite a very difficult childhood. However, the competitive leitmotif of this season of programming just seemed to reinforce the problems it purports to want to understand, after all, what of other transexual teenagers who may not fit the prescribed “norm” of the gender they ascribe to as successfully as Jackie?

Roanna Mitchell, Body Image Activist and Movement Director, watched: I Hate My Body: Skinny Boys and Muscle Men

This programme appeared to be merely another version of the stream of body-as-freakshow TV, comparable with Channel Four's Supersize versus Superskinny. It may make for 'good TV', however, its content encourages radical and fast-paced transformation (which can have severely detrimental psychological and physical effects). 

There are two major concerns with this programme. Firstly, it offers inspirational material for those who want to change and re-shape their muscle-mass. In the same way as individuals with anorexia may keenly retain any information that will help them to loose weight, those people whose thoughts circulate obsessively around their muscle mass may collect the 'tips and tricks' from this programme: that, if we are not mistaken, was not what the Body Image season was about.

This then leads to the second, and major concern with the programme: Skinny Boys and Muscle Men does not question the concept of an ideal body. It takes for granted that these men need to change in order to be 'happy', rather than asking the obvious question of what is wrong with a society in which a body must always  be monitored, evaluated, and forcefully transformed.

While the inclusion of men and the topic of muscle is an important part of the Body Image debate, this programme does not seem to offer anything much different to what a quick flick through Men's Health magazine can provide. Crucially, what needs to be asked iswhy these men are compelled to do what they do — simply showing how they do it, and turning it into a 'hero's journey', is not enough. 

Jo Harrison watched: Inside the Body Beautiful

The standout comment for me on this programme was the young woman, Lucy, at the beginning discussing her reason to have breast augmentation: “No, I’m not happy with the way I look and I know I can change it.” She wasn’t asked, “What if you couldn’t so easily change it?” and for many it’s not so easy, despite cosmetic surgery being more affordable than perhaps it once was, especially with many clinics offering finance, some people, approximately 3 in 10 according to a cosmetic surgery expert on another programme, are turned away from having surgery for a variety of reasons, medical and psychological. Some argue that surgery offers everyone equal access to beauty, when we do not even have equality in far more fundamental areas, this can’t possibly be true.  

Roanna Mitchell & Jo Harrison watched: Body Image & The Media on Class Clips in the Learning Zone 

This film is also offered as source material for curricular activities around body image. However, the celebrities (often role models) who told their stories within this video merely display their own dissatisfactions with their bodies, normalizing the idea that it is accepted to hate our bodies and that there will always be something we must improve on. These sorts of messages can easily serve to encourage especially young people to further doubt their adequacy (e.g. Do I have man-boobs? Should I always walk around with my chin up to hide a double chin?). What is missing here is the question of why these celebrities feel that way: where are the pressures coming from, and who is profiting from them?

In addition to this video, Nobody’s Perfect on Radio 1 Surgery website, shows deejays from Radio 1 and 1Xtra who volunteered to have their photos dramatically airbrushed to show how far images in the media are manipulated. This website offers the opportunity to distort and re-assemble bodies and faces. We believe that the playful approach to the dissembling and re-arranging of features here encourages a view of the body as an object which can be changed at will, and engages the topic of digital re-touching in a way that offers no creative and productive engagement with the subject.

Jo Harrison watched: “Free Speech” Clips “Bald vs Styled”, “Weave vs Afro”, “Buff vs Skinny”, “Implants vs Natural” and “Hairy vs Smooth”

It’s great that they got people to discuss their various choices but was a shame they added the vs element, which is frustrating, inclusiveness is key to this issue, not divisiveness. On the whole, the individuals speaking who had chosen a more natural appearance seemed more relaxed and confident than those who had chosen the more ‘high-maintenance’ route, even though some had overcome issues to get there. This is not to say that altering one’s appearance will make a person miserable, rather, it seems it is the pressure to do so that causes problems, the freely chosen modifications in some cases seemed to generate an added fear of their loss, or as a condition for being able to indulge in certain activities, like being always ready to go on holiday. On the whole good debate starters.

Jo also watched: Free Speech

Rosi Prescott CEO of Central YMCA, Sabrina Mahfouz Performance Poet and Playwright and Grace Woodward fashion creative, stylist and TV personality were thoughtful and engaging panelists. Venice Fulton, personal trainer, self-regarding “maverick” and author of 6 Weeks to OMG: Get Skinnier Than All Your Friends was largely at odds and frustrating to the rest of the panel, not least when he reduced a girl who’d nearly died from an eating disorder to tears for suggesting the title of his book promoted unhealthy attitudes and practices. He had the peculiar air of a cult leader and contradicted himself when insisting that to suggest people with eating disorders or body anxiety were vulnerable to media pressure was a dumbing-down of the issues, despite suggesting that he had to name his book very sensationally to make sure people took note, as Mahfouz insightfully pointed out. Prescott kept the debate grounded with research findings and urged for treating body distress and low self-esteem holistically: “We’ve gotta get away from ‘skinny is great’ and fat is to be vilified, we’ve got to stop stigmatising people on the basis of the way they look and their weight”. Mahfouz and Woodward were both thoughtful and sensitive in handling what for many are provocative issues.

One person watching tweeted that people should have the common sense to see that advertisements are real, but the lines between entertainment, editorial and advertising can blur to the point where a magazine article is a thin veil for an ad and a viral ad is something people share to amuse or wow their friends.

On the subject of the cause of body anxiety and media regulation, Fulton was emphatic that, “The Media” is merely a mirror of society, one that does not influence us but that is influenced by us. If that were true then advertising, marketing and spin doctoring would be not be aspirational career options. Both Prescott and Woodward disagreed explaining that the truth is more complex and we absolutely agree. In all fairness though, Fulton's metaphor was insufficient since the media's mirror-like qualities cannot be unbiased and is more comparable with a fairground hall of mirrors, mirrors after all are not all reliable in showing us our true selves, they can distort and also only present us with evidence of the two-dimensional.

At the beginning of this episode there was a great clip with Olympic athlete Zoe Smith, who publicly responded to internet trolls who criticised her appearance during the games, her attitude is great, she's smart, likeable, inspiring and accomplished, why there wasn't more of this throughout the season is anyone's guess.

Image from Wikipedia.

Beauty Sparring

The Free Speech episode was probably the high-point of the Body Beautiful season since it wasn’t concerned with maintaining any particular entertainment-heavy narrative and was open to discussion. What came up over and over again was the normalisation of cosmetic surgery, artificial enhancements and superficial “fixes”; yet the absence of questions such as, “Would you prefer to feel better without going through all of this?” or “What if there were a way to feel better without physically changing a thing?” is bewildering, especially if this is to be a one-off season rather than an introduction to more exploratory programming on what people really need to feel contented with themselves. There’s also the fact that this season, by and large, dealt with quite extreme body issues, pushing the discussion to limits where there is fear and heightened emotions around inadequacy, exclusion and health hysteria. What is also important are the issues surrounding what is becoming the norm, and many efforts to make decent change and promote body diversity (something research suggests is beneficial to all) is met with the dull thudding of obesity-scaremongering and BMI-loving tub-thumpers who insist that representing diverse body shapes promotes obesity. They seem to have failed to notice that while we’ve been fed a meagre visual diet of impossible flawlessness and ever shrinking thin models for years, we also have a very, very prosperous diet industry that seems to create more problems than it solves. 

The biggest issue was the emphasis on competition, the use of versus and pageant culture throughout the programming, the online clips and educational content reflected that which pervades much of pop-culture fare such as celeb mag staple Who Wore it Best?, or TV's Supersized versus Superskinny and Next Top Model etc. Our consumption of the idea that everything is a battle and there must be winners (which inevitable creates losers) is hugely problematic, especially when dealing with body image which is so often linked to self-esteem, a topic ill-served by lazy formatting. We’ve had a great deal of competition on our screens this year, some healthy some less so, it’s not great to see athlete’s Olympic hopes dashed, but we accept that for most people sporting prowess is only one element of a person’s worth, otherwise we’d all be racing each other to bus-stops and getting hernias showing we can carry our weekly shop to the car without a trolley. Pitting people against each other and requiring external approval, as if there is a general consensus and only a limited number of ways to being considered “beautiful” or acceptable, is one of the reasons people feel distressed enough to want to drastically change their bodies. The vested commercial interest in encouraging competition is as divisive as any means to exert or accrue power, we’re encouraged to take against one other rather than the system that suggests we’re all somehow inadequate based on a criteria that is like shifting sand.  What seemed to come up over and over was the need for those who are perceived to be somewhere outside the realms of acceptable - whether as a fat woman, a skinny man, or a transgender individual - to be able to “do what everyone else does”, which boils down to taking the format of a contest, in which there is only one winner, and apply it to themselves despite their potentially subversive power as individuals with qualities that exist beyond the edges of a mirror. Of course, being different is never easy and anyone who has ever been bullied or singled out for difference will want in some way, or at some point, to assimilate. But this is social failure on a large scale,  a failure of our society to see the beauty in people as the same and yet different, for allowing ourselves to be coerced into valuing the things that money can buy and disregarding those things which are completely recession-proof.

As an example of the media, the BBC's Body Beautiful Season seemed to be a reflection of a reflection of a reflection, suggesting we are doomed to endless demonstrations of oneupmanship, that even factual entertainment cannot see beyond the “reality” format of weeding out a “winner” from a group of hopefuls, who lay some of their self-worth at the feet of judges. If this continues, don’t we all lose?

www.endangeredbodies.org

www.shapeyourculture.org.uk

Other related & excellent links:

Central YMCA

Girl Guiding’s role models

All Walks Beyond the Catwalk

Body Gossip

Campaign for Body Confidence

Centre for Appearance Research

Health at Every Size?

B-eat  

Yesterday this piece: "'Ugly girl': The negative messages we send to our daughters:We tell young women that they can achieve anything they want, but the extra pressures are everywhere to be seen." by Laura Bates appeared in The Independent. It's heartbreaking and sadly very true. Most women can sympathise with the words by a 15 year old girl that prompted the piece.

"I always feel like if I don’t look a certain way, if boys don’t think I’m ‘sexy’ or ‘hot’ then I've failed and it doesn't even matter if I am a doctor or writer, I'll still feel like nothing...successful women are only considered a success if they are successful AND hot, and I worry constantly that I won't be."

As Germaine Greer wrote in her 1999 book The Whole Woman “Every woman knows that, regardless of all her other achievements, she is a failure if she is not beautiful.” I was at college when I read that book and quoted it in a presentation, I remember a fellow student named Guy being aghast at that statement, I explained that it wasn't about women being shallow, but rather that the feeling comes from societal expectations, and his precise words were "what kind of women are we raising?" Well twelve years on and things have only gotten worse. There are now a great deal of twelve year old girls who were babies when Guy and I had that conversation, who are now scrutinising and berating themselves in the mirror daily, trying to lose weight, hoping for the right kind of breasts, considering surgery once they're old enough, having absorbed so many messages throughout their young lives that makes such preoccupations not only understandable but inevitable. These messages will have come from their mothers, sisters, aunts, cousins, friends, TV programmes, advertisements, magazines, cartoons, movies, newspapers, everywhere, it's practically in the air we breathe. 

Our very own group member Holli Rubin is quoted in Bates' piece, “this is a problem of epidemic proportions. Over 60% of adults feel ashamed of how they look…when we put ourselves down in front of our children we are modelling a very negative view.  This gets passed down to children who internalize it and consequently begin to feel the same way.”

Kids listen and absorb a hell of a lot, they're sponges for information explicit and implicit, that's why most adults try not to swear around children, because they have great memories. I remember a lot of things about my mum from when I was little, I recall I was gleefully able to say "shit" over and over with impunity after she burned herself getting cake out of the oven and said..."shit"; she listened to Radio 4 a lot and I'm told I sat in my high-chair saying "Order, Order"; I remember her being tired and having headaches all the time, which I thought was normal but it was because she suffred from anxiety and depression and one of the first things I said was "Mummy I'm worried". I'm now a member of the adult anxiety and depression club, it wasn't her fault, she told me all the time that I was special and clever and I was a confident kid but her actions betrayed her words. And when school bullies swooped in, as they do for most people, perhaps there were cracks in the armour she'd tried to build for me and my confidence took a battering. But it's what we take from those external things and tell ourselves over an over that settle and spread. And those external messages come from people that love us and want to keep us safe even while they hurt themselves and they come from mass media.

Gossip magazines such as Heat and Tabloids like The Sun, that revel in celebrity culture and set out to "reveal" the truth about the lives and bodies of a privileged and notorious few, only really reveal an editorially endorsed hatred of women's bodies and a desire to capitalise on insecurities and rivalry between people who might otherwise be able to admire each other, or at least legitimately dislike each other for good reason, if for once they/we were allowed to be valued for things other than physical attributes. 

Many of us are complicit in this culture, buying these magazines even though we know they're "trashy" and mean, it can be seen as ironic, as if somehow that view renders the reader immune. The tabloid press have adapted along the same lines seeing the success of Heat and all the others (there's a reason it's often referred to by an anagram of its title "Hate" magazine) The Daily Mail's femail bar on its website drools revoltingly over the bodies of women, slavering praise on taut, post-baby bodies and spitting venom upon women who perhaps don't do their hair to go and buy stamps and so fall short of whatever contradictory ideals they're promoting that week. Like the celeb mag, the journalists peddling these opinions, who often aren't named (hmm wonder why?) write as if their inspiration is the nastiest school bully, you know, the kind who pretends to be your best friend one second only to dismiss or tear you down the next. Bullies want an audience, willing devotees, control. The best way to do that is to always make sure your victims are on the back foot, unsure of where they stand, insecure. Being consistently mean to someone is upsetting, but people can rely on consistency, you know where you stand with consistency, it's easier to say "ENOUGH" when someone's being consistent. But it's a different story with someone that charms you, promises things and tells you you're fabulous no matter what, but the next day is slagging off a girl just like you...or paying back-handed compliments. You loved the charm, you want it back, you go back for more, as long as they're poking fun at others they're leaving you alone right? Ever read The Game by Neil Strauss and the bit about "negging'?

Negging

It's a way to pick up girls. How it works is you use remarks to tap into female insecurity; Shake their confidence. Neg is a negative remark wrapped in a back-handed compliment. 

So your neg will confuse and intrigue them and maybe even shake their confidence a little bit...[Urban Dictionary]

The report is based on evidence submitted to a public Inquiry which was conducted between November 2011 and February 2012.  It includes evidence from a range of organisations and individuals, including representatives from industry, the voluntary sector, healthcare professionals, academics and the general public; Professor Susie Orbach, convenor of AnyBody/UK Endangered Bodies provided evidence, as well as AnyBody member Sue Thomason. The report can be accessed here:

http://www.ymca.co.uk/bodyconfidence/report

Central YMCA, a national health and education charity, will now be working with the All Party Parliamentary Group on Body Image and a number of other non-commercial organisations to take forward the policy recommendations in a campaign which will be launched later this year which will raise public awareness of many of the issues contained in the report.

We would encourage you to complete a short survey on the website and to comment on the report  – it will help us inform the campaign we are launching later in the year.

UN Commission on the Status of Women 2012 Image © UK Home Office

© Susie Orbach 2012

I’m very pleased to be speaking here today on this historic occasion.

It has been customary for the west to bemoan and critique the appalling forms of violence practiced against girls and women in the rest of the world – FGM, rape as a tactic of war, forced marriage.

In this focus what has been overlooked have been the vicious body practices that girls and women have come to take on themselves in the west in the mistaken belief that they are doing good for themselves.

 These include:

• Self-starvation and the often bulimic response--compulsive eating and vomiting.

• The surgical transformation of breasts, legs, stomachs, cheek bones to conform to the latest beauty ideal

• The use of diet and pharmaceutical products to suppress appetite

• The botoxing of 5 year olds

The west congratulates itself on its distance from Eastern practices of foot binding which constrained and limited women. It fails to see the links between toe operations carried out now to enable women to fit into the latest 4 inch high heels.

The west smugly criticises FGM while sanctioning labiaplasty and the remaking of the genital lips which has become a growth area for cosmetic surgeons.

The west makes appeals about famine victims in the southern hemisphere but has failed to notice the voluntarily insane food practices that exist in their own countries.

The west hasn’t noticed that these are forms of violence and constraint for women. And they haven’t noticed for three important reasons.

The first is that the idea of beauty has been democratised – extended to all. The second is that simultaneously, the ideal of what beauty is has narrowed.

Beauty is no longer seen as intrinsic to the individual. Instead the individual is judged on how well she can shape herself to today’s aesthetic which is tall, white, blonde, long haired and big breasted.

The imperative of beauty traverses class and age. From 5 to 80, girls and women learn they need to look at themselves from the outside whatever they are doing to make sure they look good. This demand can produce severe anguish, self-alienation, eating problems, body distortions and disturbing mental health issues.

The third reason is connected to the other two in significant ways. It is the engine which feeds the tyrannical hold that beauty exercises on girls and women’s energies, dollars and sense of self. It relates to those industries which grow rich on creating body distress and body hatred in girls and women.

These industries look like they are benevolent and helpful. In fact they are quite the opposite.

The beauty companies, the fashion houses, the diet companies, the food conglomerates who also of course own the diet companies, the exercise and fitness industry, the pharmaceutical industry and the cosmetic surgery industry combine together, perhaps not purposefully or conspiratorially, to create a climate in which girls and women come to feel that their bodies are not ok. They do this through the promotion of celebrity culture, through advertising on every possible outlet from billboards to magazines to our electronic screens, through the funding of media outlets which can only exist because of their economic support.

Taking on any one of these industries is difficult and will pose the same kind of challenges as taking on tobacco who also portrayed themselves as health giving and benevolent. The profits of WW’s for example were up 25.3% in 2011[1]. We are talking big money. We are talking about a company whose product needs to fail in order for it to keep selling. If dieting worked you would only have to do it once. There would be no repeat customers.

As immoral and unethical as the activities of these companies are in and of themselves, the economics of growth as we currently conceive it depends upon their extending their markets. L’Oreal’s growth rate in China is 26%. They achieve this not by marketing their lipsticks and hair products to Chinese women per se but by marketing the western body as the body to have to Chinese women. They and the other beauty, fashion, media companies promote the western body to the new economies as a way of finding a place to belong in the maelstrom and confusion of modernity.

Alongside the disseminating of western ideals of beauty to Asia, Africa and South America, is the export of the consequences of these ideals: body hatred and body anxiety. This is the emotional fallout from the endeavours of these industries and the basis on which they make their extraordinary and obscene profits.

This is a not an easy target to attack. These industries are not small and their damage is great. They are mining bodies as though they were a commodity like coal or gold.  Women’s bodies all over the world are being designated as profit centres.  

As the western ideal becomes plastered over the globe we bear witness to the loss of indigenous bodies. This is a new frontier of colonialism. Mad eating is normalised. Western style bodies are revered and local bodies are swallowed up as fast as demise of local languages. We must stop it. And now.

Thank you.

[1] Weight Watchers International, Inc. (WTW) Q4 2011 Earnings Call February 14, 2012 5:00 PM ET

Argentine Mannequins: Size 46 (L) vs. "One Size Fits All" (R) Photo Credit ©Sharon Haywood

In Argentina, I’m a size 44 (UK 16/US 14)[1]. I feel branded by this number. Last year when I was searching for a wedding dress, all I had to do was observe the saleswoman’s reaction when she looked my way and I knew that I wasn’t going to find anything. Almost always, I heard the same worn-out phrase, “We don’t carry your size.” In the majority of shops I’m lucky if I fit into the largest size. In other stores, they only offer “one size fits all”: sometimes it fits; a lot of the time it doesn’t. In spite of all this madness, I don’t have a problem saying that I use a size 44. I am one of the majority, I am part of the average female population. Even though I’m Canadian, I’m also of Italian descent and short in stature, so as long as I don’t speak, people think I’m Argentine. But many Argentine women have bodies similar to mine and they’ve said they would like to lose weight to be able to fit into a size 42 or even a 40. Others say that 38 is their ideal size.

This is what AnyBody Argentina’s[2] ongoing investigation has revealed after surveying hundreds of women between sizes 36 and 54. Through our research we discovered that more than 50% of women would like to drop a dress size. As well, approximately 65% have trouble finding fashionable clothes that fit. If we combine this information with the extreme lack of size law compliance[3], and the fact that eating disorders for Argentine girls and women are at epidemic levels, what we have is a profound health crisis.

When considering how to attack the issue of retailers not respecting the size law, we were guided by the quote commonly attributed to Albert Einstein: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” In this spirit, we decided to take a different route. Instead of punishing the brands with fines, we choose to congratulate those that are making a sincere attempt at complying. In July of 2011 we launched our campaign with the objective of positively contributing to the health of girls and women by singling out the brands that respect body diversity. Consumers can identify these retailers via the AnyBody sticker featuring the internationally recognized female symbol in shop windows. When we launched the campaign, we congratulated two Argentine brands, VER and Portsaid, and now we are extremely proud to add another national retailer, Yagmour, which now offers various items that range between sizes 38 and 54. Furthermore, Yagmour is committed to work with AnyBody Argentina until it achieves 100% size law compliance.

On a personal note, I am thrilled that these brands provide me with a wide variety of the latest fashions so I can now avoid the trauma of being rejected. It’s important to underscore that our campaign is designed for all women who fall within the average, in other words, women who wear up to a size 52 or 54. They only need to come across our pink sticker and they can be sure to hear, “Yes, we carry your size.”

 * * *

Página 12, a leading national Argentine daily newspaper, published the original article on January 13, 2012 in Spanish titled “65% of Women Have Problems Finding Clothes in Their Size”

[1] When shopping in North America I typically wear between a size 6 and 10, much smaller than is indicated in conversion charts revealing sizing issues are not just an issue confined to Argentina.

[2] Part of the global campaign www.EndangeredBodies.org.

[3] The current law in the province of Buenos Aires mandates that stores offer most clothing items in standardized sizes of 38 to 48.