Negative Body Image is a Growing Concern
Until recently, the incidence of negative body image relating to body weight, body shape and other aspects of appearance was of most concern in western countries. However, because of the influence of social media, the phenomenon is now on the rise in low-income nations as well. As a result, negative body image is considered to be a significant global issue (1).
The most prominent effects of negative body image are on mental health: anxiety and depression are common outcomes. However, an additional impact is the diversion of resources - time, money and mental energy - into efforts to achieve an externally imposed ideal of beauty. Recent studies have shown that negative body image has an enormous impact on quality of life for the majority of teens and young adults, with lesser but still significant effects on older age groups (2, 3).
Learning new ways of thinking about our bodies
According to the Jed Foundation, we can approach the issue by changing the way we feel about our bodies, instead of focusing on changing our bodies. They recommend choosing ‘body positivity’ or ‘body neutrality’ as strategies to change our perspective about our bodies.
The 'body positivity' approach:
‘The basic idea behind body positivity is that all bodies are beautiful regardless of what they look like…Giving yourself permission to love and celebrate your body—especially for those whose bodies fall outside the cultural beauty ideal—can feel joyful, radical, and freeing for many people. ‘
'Body neutrality' is more achievable for those who find it difficult to feel positive about their body.
‘With body neutrality, you reframe your relationship with your body entirely. It’s not something to hate or love—it just is. Like body positivity, body neutrality pushes back on traditional beauty standards, but it goes further by challenging the idea that our appearance matters at all.’ (4)
Some tips for learning body positivity
According to the experts (5,6), there are proven ways to become more positive about our appearance, including:
Focus on functionality - where we pay attention to what our bodies can do rather than what they look like.
Practice self-compassion - learning to treat ourselves kindly and without judgement.
Challenge negative thoughts - where we learn to recognise when we are having negative thoughts about our bodies and respond by replacing them with positive ones. Sometimes this involves making changes to our environment: reducing our exposure to people, situations and social media accounts that make us feel inadequate, and replacing them with positive influences.
Nurture your body - when we think of our body as the precious home we live in, rather than an object that needs to be moulded into a particular shape, everything changes. We are motivated to eat healthy food, take exercise we enjoy, prioritise rest and sleep, and take care of our skin not for an improved appearance, but because we understand that our body is our health, our most valuable asset.
Practice mindful self care - where we enjoy practices that connect us to our body, like taking a massage, luxuriating in a warm bath, or doing yoga or any physical activity we enjoy.
All bodies are beautiful
Because the ‘beauty ideal’ pervades all aspects of our society, it is not surprising that so many people, especially the young, become caught in the negative body image trap. I find it helpful to take a step back and remember that we humans are creatures of the earth, like the plants and animals we share this planet with. As a lover of nature, it would feel perverse to consider any living thing to be less than perfect. In fact, the diversity of creatures makes the living world more, not less, wondrous.
As humans, we really are all perfect just as we are. The concept of attributing greater value to one appearance over another is nothing more than a whim - a groundless belief that hypnotises us into wasting our valuable lives and resources. It’s time for us all to reconsider how we think of beauty, and what we most value in ourselves and others.
REFERENCES
(1)https://www.researchgate.net/publication/368857271_Body_image_as_a_global_mental_health_concern
(2) https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/explore-mental-health/articles/body-image-report-executive-summary#:~:text=One%20in%20five%20adults%20(20,worry%20about%20their%20body%20image
(3) https://butterfly.org.au/news/more-than-90-of-young-people-in-australia-have-some-concern-about-their-body-image/#:~:text=29%20May%202023-,More%20than%2090%25%20of%20young%20people%20in%20Australia%20have%20some,highest%20levels%20of%20body%20dissatisfaction.
(4) https://jedfoundation.org/resource/tips-for-body-positivity-ways-to-feel-better-about-our-bodies/
(6) https://www.healthdirect.gov.au/body-image
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