We’re halfway through January, which means we are knee-deep in the sludge of tedious, inevitable “new year, new you” advertising messages.
Whilst some companies have stuck to the more traditional formula, assuming (often correctly) that we all feel unbearable amounts of guilt and shame about our physical selves following the overindulgences of Christmas, the trend now is to take a different tack. The shrewd brands have borrowed and bastardised popular sentiments from the body-confidence movement, ironically created and pioneered by women who are proudly, defiantly fat. These brands will insist that, rather than being entirely motivated by capitalist considerations centring around trying to flog their dubious weight-loss or fitness product, in fact, they care about your confidence. “This is about you feeling better about yourself. We don’t care if you’ve put some weight on over Christmas, but we suspect that you might. We’re here to inspire you to greater confidence, sisters!” I genuinely can’t decide which is worse.
We live in what is essentially a bulimic culture, characterised by the fetishisation of food on one hand and the unequivocal message that a lean body is not only desirable but also mandatory on the other. Never is this more pronounced than over Christmas and new year, when the population is encouraged to embark on a gigantic, collective binge-and-purge.
To demonise any food isn’t healthy. As I discovered during my own recovery from an eating disorder, it is mostly about how you eat, not what. Everything is fine in moderation and the healthiest people eat with untainted pleasure in response to physical, rather than emotional cues. A healthy relationship with food is increasingly difficult to sustain, however, in a climate where parents consider slimming clubs to be a “sensible” and viable option for their prepubescent children, preferable to the daft and dangerous body image rules they consume via the prism of reality TV stars on Instagram.
Yet, despite the deluge of media stimuli specifically designed to erode and assault our self-esteem, I still believe that parents and teachers remain the biggest influence over children’s self-image, especially at primary age.
This has particular (although not exclusive) relevance when considering anorexia in teenage girls. Girls grow up in an environment in which they are constantly told they are cute, pretty and gorgeous. This is largely instinctual and kindly meant. However, simultaneously they hear adult women complain about their weight struggles, thighs, cellulite, eyebags, skin, stomach - whichever part of our bodies the beauty industry has deemed we must be ashamed of this season. They’ll also overhear compliments centred around weight loss, looking “well” or having desirable accessories.
The message that children imbibe unconsciously from a very early age, therefore, is this:
- The way a female looks is the most important thing about her;
- A girl-child’s body is socially acceptable;
- A woman’s body is something that must be constantly criticised, worked upon and shrouded in feelings of shame.
It is well documented that anorexia often has its onset during puberty and represents an attempt to “turn back time” and re-enter childhood, born out of fear of becoming an adult. Whilst the above is almost certainly not exclusively responsible for that, it can’t help.
So in encouraging young people to have a healthy relationship and enjoyment of their bodies, the most proactive thing we can do is to address our own issues. Below are a few tips to get you started:
Acknowledge the phenomenon of ‘compartmentalisation’
When a person looks at us they view our bodies as a whole, before drawing their attention to our faces, where the noise and social cues are coming from. When we look in the mirror, our eyes are irresistibly drawn to our perceived “flaws”, which, in turn, makes them more pronounced in our minds than they are in reality.
The way you see yourself is, therefore, radically different from how you are perceived by others.
Compliments - giving, receiving, understanding
Dr David Bainbridge, of the University of Cambridge, said in his book Curvology that the act of female compliment-giving is a throwback to when women used to be cast out of tribes and had to ingratiate themselves into a new one by bonding with the Alpha Female. This rings true for me, in that when I say to someone “I like your shoes” I am usually trying to say “I like you and I’d like you to like me”.
Understanding this helps us to grasp that, actually, we are more than the sum of our parts, and the reason people are drawn to us has as much to do with our energy and essence as it does our earrings.
Similarly, when paying compliments we can attempt to tweak our language so that it more accurately conveys what we’re trying to say. “You seem really cheerful today, it’s lovely” is a better compliment than “you look well”.
Above all, when on the receiving end of a compliment it’s imperative that we learn simply to say “thank you”, rather than this bizarre cacophony of protests and self-deprecation to which British women, in particular, have become accustomed.
If we genuinely accept ourselves, we create an environment where it’s easier for the young people in our care to follow suit.
Natasha Devon MBE is the former government mental health champion. She is a writer and campaigner and visits an average of three schools per week all over the UK. She tweets @_natashadevon. Find out more about her work here
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