Body image is how you see yourself, and how you feel about your physical appearance, size, and weight. Your body image affects how you feel as a person, your value as a person, and how you feel inside your own skin. Body image is not a concrete feeling, though. It changes with mood, environment, and circumstance. It is by and large a learned response, which is taught by parents, friends, and others in society. The development of body image is mostly affected during puberty. How you see yourself can mean the difference between a healthy and happy lifestyle, and one filled with self-destructive behaviors.
Someone with a poor or negative body image often finds him or herself physically unattractive, and feels that others are likely disgusted by him or her. Today’s media has a powerful effect on an individual’s body image, with notions of ultra thin women and perfectly muscular men being pushed to the masses. These so-called ideals are often impossible to achieve for the average person, without resorting to extreme, and often unhealthy, measures, such as eating disorders, excessive cosmetic surgeries, or even using steroids.
This negative reflection of one’s own body can cause a great deal of harm, both physically and emotionally. Negative body image usually causes a person to often make unwise and unhealthy lifestyle choices, which never really solve the perceived problem. Decreased self-esteem can result, which can lead to:
Depression
Withdrawal from society
Dangerous dieting
Suicide
A negative body image can also lead to a mental disorder known as Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD), where a person is convinced that they are deformed or disfigured when in fact they look completely fine. Those suffering from BDD often feel that they are too repulsive for others to see them, and they fear rejection, ridicule, and embarrassment. Therefore, they often withdraw from society altogether.
Having a positive body image is about acceptance of one’s physical appearance – both features and size. Someone with a good body image sees himself or herself as being normal or attractive, as well being normal or attractive by others. However, a person with a positive body image might not be considered attractive by everyone, just as someone with a negative body image will likely be considered attractive by others. Beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder.
Because of the attitudes toward body shape and size that have evolved in the last decades, it is important that the encouragement of a positive body image and acceptance be taught early on. Rather than focusing on an unreasonable picture of physical perfection, children and young adults need to be encouraged to look within themselves, and accept who they are. Everyone should be different, and look different, or life would be extremely boring.
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