By Clare Mann -
Our bodies are our closest environments and yet many women see their bodies as threatening, distasteful, unacceptable and even downright ugly. Why is it that so many women simply do not like their own bodies and what can be done to improve their relationship with the one environment they will carry with them for life?
We learn about our bodies from a young age. Being an infant is a state of total dependency with reliance on our carers for the fulfillment of our most basic needs. To an infant, feeling hungry or cold is a terrifying reality, since, until they come to know the world as separate, they just feel the pain of absence or discomfort without the ability of knowledge that the pain is ‘out there’ and outside of their bodies. The carer’s attunement to the baby’s needs plays a large part in educating the child to experience the world (initially ‘their’ body) as threatening or comfortable. Hopefully, appropriate and timely meeting of the infant’s needs creates in the child a growing confidence and understanding of their bodily needs. However, this is not always the case.
Learning to understand and accept our bodies from infanthood is only part of the challenge to liking or loathing our bodies. At school, feedback about our size, agility or ability to run and be good at sports, provides more feedback. Depending on whether this is positive or negative, a healthy or unhealthy relationship is made with our bodies. The changing years of adolescence pose another challenge and then we are faced with the social world of exclusive beauty. Images from society that there are certain ways to be to be beautiful is enormously powerful upon women – makeup, clothes and diet industries thrive on it. When this approach is exclusive i.e. when one is only acceptable if fitting a certain mould, it raises anxiety about being ‘less than’ or unacceptable and needing to change. However, images that are inclusive and which celebrate diversity in beauty with a focus on enhancing or nurturing ourselves, encourage far more positive relationships with our bodies.
When there is an over-reliance on external beauty which is unmatched by a strong, positive internal picture of self-worth, a woman can literally be ‘Stunning on the Outside, yet Dying on the Inside’. Because she may receive positive compliments, interest or envy at the same time as feeling unworthy, inadequate or even desperately unhappy, she can feel totally misrepresented and confused. Additionally, external pressures and myths to conform to externally presented images of beauty can increase the confusion, leaving her feeling increasing lonely and bewildered.
What can a woman do to develop a greater sense of self esteem, acceptance and love for her own body? This can be a difficult and long journey, especially where such self-loathing has resulted in denying the body true nurturing and care. However, beginning a journey of recovery begins with recognising there is a problem. Seeking help from others in the form of reading, online and face to face support groups that focus on positive self-development, supportive counseling and a commitment to challenging society’s norms of beauty, all form part of a journey to recovery. Change begins with a choice to fully commit to knowing and loving yourself and becoming your own best friend during this journey called Life.
Clare Mann is a Counselling Psychologist in Sydney Australia who specialises in assisting people to remove the myths of limitation in their lives. She is the author of the “Myths of Life and The Choices We Have” and joint author of “Stunning On The Outside Dying On The Inside” http://thesydneypsychologist.com
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http://EzineArticles.com/?Women-and-Body-Image—Stunning-on-the-Outside-and-Dying-on-the-Inside?&id=4065065
China, in its desire to impress the world decieved the world in its opening ceremony, perhaps to the lasting detriment of a little girl. Yang Peiyi, the little girl with the beautiful voice was not cute enough – did not fit the image they wanted to portray to the world – so they had a “cute” little girl lip sync to the singing of Yang Peiyi, the little girl who didn’t measure up. They got caught.
Some of you have written to find out why there haven’t been new articles on this blog and I am grateful for you. It’s nice to be missed. Thank you, Lou for telling me so. I didn’t abandon the blog and looked longingly at it each day. It had a virus and the virus was on its server rather than on my computer. No one knew what to do about it and no one seemed to know if it could hurt anyone else’s computer. So I left it alone, not knowing what else to do. I removed all the most recent articles but that didn’t help.
I returned from my wonderful trip to La Paz and Cobo San Lucus, Mexico on Thursday. On Friday I took my computer to the shop because it had a CD stuck in it and this was the start of a downhill slide. They removed the CD easily and quickly for no charge. So far, so good.
