Mirror, mirror

THERE have been just two ??aha?? moments
in my life when the reality of my own body
image has smacked me across the head and
dealt me a stern talking to.
The first was as a 14-year-old student,
sitting with my peers on the asphalt, skirts
rucked up, ??tanning?? our legs in the hot
summer sun. Sweating and headachey as I
squinted at the models in the teen magazines,
I realised that it didn?t matter how
sunburnt my legs got, it would not address
the key issue ? they were way too short.
Trying hopelessly to tan would not change
my genetics. I got up and sought shade.
The second took place 25 years later,
wandering happily lost through the Musee
D?Orsay in Paris when I stumbled upon the
Renoir room. I stopped at the nudes in a
shock of recognition. Those same beautiful
women had exactly my body ? feminine
curves, small breasts, rounding belly and
cushiony thighs. ??It?s not that I?m not
attractive,?? I realised. ??It?s my shape that?s
not currently fashionable.??
Within a heartbeat, more than 10 years of
feeling negative about my body melted away.
I celebrated my new sense of self with a
lunch that included a flute of champagne
and the attention of a flirtatious waiter.
It?s been 18 years since Naomi Wolf
argued in The Beauty Myth that women are
coerced or seduced into conspiring to
become their own jailers and torturers, by
subscribing to the compulsive pursuit of
personal improvement.
But nothing has changed. If anything, the
pressure to conform to an unobtainable
expectation of what success looks like is even
greater ? with a daily diet of images of
skeletally thin celebrities, screaming obesity
headlines and good and bad food obsessions
that are now directed not just at teenagers
and twentysomethings but women throughout
pregnancy and menopause and,
increasingly, men and young boys as well.
Christine Morgan, chief executive of The
Butterfly Foundation, which seeks to raise
awareness of eating disorders and body
image issues, says Australian society is in the
grip of a body-image crisis.
??We are talking about people feeling they
don?t fit the stereotype and as such they don?t
fit in,?? she says. ??It is the most predominant
issue for young people and it is coming
through at a younger and younger age. Kids
as young as five years old are starting to talk
about the need to diet.
??Our unhealthy obsession with body image
? which is on the increase ? has resulted in
a health crisis that crosses gender and
cultural borders. There is particularly a crisis
in the lack of appropriate health services.??
A study by the Children?s Hospital,
Westmead, and the University of Sydney
released last year found 80 per cent of
Australian children with eating disorders
were admitted to hospital, almost half with
life-threatening illnesses. Australia also had a
higher proportion of boys affected: 25 per
cent compared with 20 per cent in Britain
and 17 per cent in Canada.
The overall mortality rate for anorexia
nervosa is five times that of the same aged
population in general and the risk of suicide
by people with anorexia is 32 times higher.
Although the incidence of children with
eating disorders ? which include anorexia
nervosa, bulimia and binge eating and are
defined as psychiatric disorders ? is slight at
1 in 100,000, Morgan says the incidents of
??disordered eating?? are now increasing
dramatically across the population as our
relationship with food, exercise and the
perfect look becomes obsessive. Disordered
eating is defined as skipping meals, excessive
exercise, regular dieting and feeling bad
about yourself because you do not fit a
prescribed image.
The issue of just how much popular media
affects body image came home to Morgan
personally when she realised just how many
calls to the foundation?s help line were
coming from young men.
??Initially, it was young men wanting to
build up their six packs and become musclebound
and fit,?? she says. ??Then skinny jeans
came in and the calls changed to men trying
to achieve the emaciated look.
??One young man wanted to know if it was
normal not to eat for three days.??
To combat the pressure, the Butterfly
Foundation is working with St Andrew?s
Cathedral College in Sydney to teach psychological
and emotional resilience to male and
female students at every level of the school.
The Resilience Program will help students
deal with the influx of messages that set
expectations around body image and help
them become ??disorder proof??, says St
Andrew?s principal Phillip Heath, who is also
lobbying for the issue to be addressed as part
of the national curriculum.
??Apart from the appalling statistics on
mental health in young people that do
compel us, we know this generation faces a
far more complex and arguably less friendly
world than their parents. Students are being
assaulted by a range of messages and some
of them are quite pernicious.
??We talk about preparing our students for
life as being one of the jobs of schools but
life is changing. It?s about teaching good
habits of mind and behaviours that will
help them become a more resolved and
intelligent generation.??
The initiative comes on the heels of a plan,
anounced by the Federal Minister for Youth,
Kate Ellis, late last year, to create a national
media and industry code of conduct on body
image. The code, which would be voluntary,
would consider the need to notify audiences
about digital alterations to pictures, seek to
set a 16-year-old age limit for adult fashion
shows, magazine shoots and television
programs, obtain a commitment to the diversification
of body shape and size and an end
to the glamorisation of severely underweight
models or celebrities. A committee, which
includes fashion models and magazine
editors, as well as eating disorder experts,
will report back in August.
The proposal follows a federal announcement
of $500,000 being spent funding
research into the causes of eating disorders.
??There has never been a generation that
has been so subjected to the media, popular
art and digital images as this generation of
young Australians is going through,?? Ellis
says. ??It is not just magazines ? it is through
the internet and online communication, chat
rooms and social networks. Young people
today are constantly bombarded by the
media and the media says that there is only
one version of an ideal body.
??We have to help young people understand
that they should not let these images affect
their self-esteem ? they are just fantasy.??
See butterflyfoundation.com.au.

First published in Spectrum, in The Sydney Morning Herald, March 22-23, 2009