Body image & why you're more than what you eat

Body image anxiety leads to self-loathing, self-esteem issues, and in extreme cases, illness and even death. A study cited in the Western Mail this week by the National Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE) suggests up to 1.6million people in the UK are affected by an eating disorder - with just under 90% of them women.


Liberal Democrat MP Jo Swinson chaired an All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Body Image, which set out to examine the causes of body image anxiety and "what steps can be taken to promote body confidence". As far as I know the APPG has now wound up so we'll hear more on that at a later date once all the evidence is collated and analysed.


Bethan Jenkins AM (Plaid, South Wales West) submitted evidence in her capacity as chair of the National Assembly's Cross-Party Group on Eating Disorders to the APPG which included testimony from eating disorder sufferers. In the Western Mail, Bethan is quoted as strongly condemning the music industry in particular, saying:

"....the evidence that I called for suggests that the music industry is in a state of regression, featuring as it does videos that dwell upon scantily clad women.

“The consequence of this is that women and girls believe they are under more pressure than ever to appear attractive, and this can only contribute to increased incidences of eating disorders and associated mental illness, as they struggle to present the perfect body.”

Very succinct and very accurate. I don't think there's anything there you can disagree with.


However much eating disorders may be the main focus when it comes to body image issues, there are also other issues that need further exploration - including pondering the reasons why we've all become such harsh judges of personal appearance in the first place.


The cult (and phobia) of youth


The baby boomers are getting old and retirement awaits. Isn't it funny how all that "life starts at...." stuff moves forward every decade? It's a race to stay young, and after the scandalous treatment of older female presenters at the BBC, it's publicly become a very important one, professionally, for high-flying women and women who want to be high-flying.


There's nothing that screams "youth" more than thinness. A hark back to that time before hormones and genetics decided where all those Big Macs and cider & blacks would find a long-term home. It's become an industry and a ideal to sell to people.

Salad is absolutely hilarious apparently.
(Pic: Jezebel.com)

Women who might have spend their 30s and 40s raising children can enjoy a second 20s as they fly from the nest – just watch what you eat. You can find that perfect man – just put down the Greggs sausage roll and run aimlessly around a park. Images of salad are almost always accompanied with smiles. Your generic advertising "giggle" of women walking four a-breast down the high street will be perfectly apparelled – none of them will be the average size 16.


The problem is the young - that is the proper young - are very impressionable. They pick up on all this and, as young people will do, like to play grown-up. If grown-ups are being told to be thin, that's what we should do to. If it's to our health's detriment so be it.


No desire, whether it's the desire to be thin, the desire to have "things", is without some suffering. No pain, no gain, right?


Yet at the same time, society has become afraid of the young - criminalising them, slapping them across the head telling them they should get a proper job, carrying out social experiments via the education system and trying to fit square pegs into round holes. This isn't very healthy, is it?

Machismo & Gynismo


"Fat is a feminist issue" is bunkum. I accept that the social pressure to conform, the snidey stuff, the harsher judging of appearance in the media is mainly reserved to women and much more widespread too. It's bad enough being giggled at in the corridor by the generic "beautiful people" you see in some saccharine, imported US teen drama. However, you rarely see women accused of eating all the pies at a football game. If you think the giggling is bad, try 3,000 people singing in unison about your lardy-gut and being expected to laugh it off as "a bit of banter". That's the world the fat man inhabits.


There's also a hidden crisis afflicting men and boys. The numbers might be small but so-called "bigorexia" (or muscle dysmorphia) is fuelling dangerous levels of steroid abuse. Bridgend-based drugs charity, Ogwr Dash, estimated back in 2010 that 80% of those using their needle exchange programme were steroid abusers. Steroid abuse is linked to testicular atrophy, aggressiveness (aka "Roid Rage"), liver damage and cardiovascular damage. Has something happened that makes men feel "smaller"?

Barri Griffiths (aka WWE's Mason Ryan)
Believe it or not you can get this
physique down the gym.
(Pic : Examiner.com)

You see, women aren't the only ones bombarded with images of
the "perfect" body. Although men are probably more likely to think they look like a WWE star or a footballer without putting in the hours in the gym, teenage boys are amongst the fastest growing group developing eating disorders. Last year, the English NHS said there was a 66% increase in the number of admissions of men to hospital with eating disorders over the last decade.


Men have spinelessly decided to let magazine publishers and pornographers decide for us what the perfect woman "should" look like (I can't speak for gay and bisexual men, but I presume there's a similar thing in reverse).

They won't admit it in a group, but I bet if you ask men individually or anonymously what their ideal partner would look like, you'll get far more varied answers than you would if you asked them in peer groups.


The archetype of the perfect women in the male-oriented media is a docile, fake-tanned, "giggly-tits". The women the Daily Mail would describe as "pouring/plunging their curves" into various items of suspiciously undersized clothing. Even in serious genre drama aimed at men, women are rarely more than bit-parts only there to avoid it becoming a sausage-fest. You see, the key advertising demographic of 18-30 men doesn't like sausage-fests unless it's wrestling, a serious sport or some historical action-adventure show where men with digitally-enhanced six packs try to cut off each others bollocks with broadswords.


What men should be asking really - from purely selfish perspective - is how would we like our partners, mothers, sisters and nieces treated. Would we want them respected? Would we want them judged purely for their character and the quirks of their personality? Ultimately all those women in porn or magazines or revealing clothes are going to be one of those things to somebody.


It does go both ways of course. *Cough* True Blood *cough*. And fair's fair.


I'm not going to claim I'm enlightened. I'm as guilty of looking at pictures of Kim Kardashian's anti-gravity backside or Christina Hendricks generously ginger lumps of lady flesh as the next straight male. Perhaps this is too chauvinistic a viewpoint. It clearly shouldn't be for men to judge what women should look like. In fact, have women become the harsher judges of female bodies?

Even the World's most glamorous
women aren't allowed an "off day".
(Pic : wwtdd.com)

The 21^st century isn't only going to be a Chinese century, it'll be a women's century too. Women - although not being completely emancipated - are now bombarded with expectations fuelled by the hope and aspirations delivered by baby-boomer feminism. "You can have it all, don't let us down girls." Women are not only expected to have the perfect body but the perfect job, the perfect family, the perfect husband or partner or a perfect single life.


God help you if you have even a smidgen of fame. You're stomach will be expected to retract elastically after giving birth to your perfect children. You can't have cellulite, you have to humiliate yourself in front of a paparazzi camera exercising in a park in a perfect London borough. You have to be everything to everyone and no one at the same time.


Seeing as humans aren't robots, it's all enough to make you develop an eating disorder.

Remember those coming from the opposite direction – they're ill too

In society being too thin is a health crisis. It leads to specialised help and support. If you're obese though, it's your own fault and you're a drain on resources, excess fat acting as a sponge for taxpayers money.


As mentioned before, only 10% of those with an eating disorder are anorexic. I'm willing to bet most of the remaining 90% will be either overweight or obese. But is obesity an eating disorder in itself? Or is it a condition as the result of an eating disorder?

Weight loss is now presented as point-and-stare entertainment.
Trust me, it's even harder without an army of fitness experts,
psychologists, nutritionists and Davina McCall.
(Pic: Facebook)

I used to weigh close to 20 stone. You can do the maths. It's quite safe to say I was on the brink of developing serious health issues at a very young age (notwithstanding obesity being a health issue in itself). I'm sure there are plenty of others out there who are in, or have been in, the same position.


Obesity is a biological prison and a living death. Although I'm sure many people are quite comfortable or happy with the way they – more power to them - if anyone tells you they "feel healthy" like that they are probably talking out of their backside. I used to think the same, believing that I was predestined to be that size and I should just "accept it" - even as I was eating myself into an early grave.


I didn't want the sum of my existence to be a pile of junk mail by the front door and a smell emanating through the letter box. That mental image of my 20 years of Monster Munch, nutritionally bereft sweets, biscuits, takeaways and excessive drinking being fuel for maggots is what spurred me to take action.


Two years ago I made a New Years Resolution and I kept it. Last autumn I finally reached my target weight loss, and for the first time since before puberty I'm a "normal weight". I can't express how liberating it is to be able to walk short distances or climb a flight of stairs without sweating or being out of breath. I basically lost my adolescence and early adulthood because my eyes were bigger than my belly.


Don't let anyone tell you weight loss is easy – especially big target drops. It was painful. It was depressing. It was physically and mentally exhausting. Those who try to flog unproven short-cuts, those who try and push you off course deliberately, those who mock your exercise efforts or try to offer patronising advice – all arseholes. It takes sheer willpower and stubbornness. You have to visualise the end product.


I'm not exactly a "people person" but even I - one of the most asocial people around - could've done with support every now and again. I think that's more important than being constantly lectured and harassed about nutrition and exercise – just having someone, in a position of trust, who can give you that push over the line but won't judge you.


If we have similar publicly funded services for smokers, shouldn't have them for over-eaters, under-exercisers and under-eaters too?