Who is popular today?

There is a generation that has no concept of life without Instagram. Without a hundred ways to crop and filter images of the beach, your lunch, your friends, yourself. Perfection or something close to it is easy to achieve.
The generation before them knew a starker reality in looking for the perfect angle. This is a generation that was inundated with posters, billboards, glossy magazines. This was the golden era of photoshop. That is, the time when every image and every body was doctored, but the masses were still innocent and didn’t necessarily know.
That’s my generation I’m talking about. We thought those models ate or exercised their way into those bodies.
We are still so overwhelmed by images of perfection that most of us are familiar with feeling that our physical form could use a little improvement. We may wish to be thinner, rounder, smoother, tighter – somehow more or less than our current selves.
Fortunately, most of us will not experience full-blown body dysmorphia. Perversely, the fact that so many of us are accustomed to feeling a little physically inadequate is why it is suspected that body dysmorphia – or body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) – may be a lot more widespread than the already alarming estimate that it affects at least one in 50 people.
The theory is that because it is so common to want to lose a few pounds or gain some muscles, those suffering from an obsession with imagined or exaggerated physical flaws often fail to seek diagnosis and treatment for what they ought to recognise as a debilitating pathology.
To be clear, envying the gleaming beach bodies of Instagram is not in itself body dysmorphia. Nor is hoping to be frontline-ready in time for Carnival. Neither is BDD somehow a function of vanity or egotism.
Rather, it is an obsession with (occasionally) real or (often) imagined flaws in your appearance – flaws that will be insignificant or undetectable to the impartial observer.
The compulsion to “fix” these flaws can lead to behaviours such as constant self-criticism, obsessive grooming, the need to hide yourself away from the rest of society. This is what is ultimately damaging to your personal and professional life.
Living with the relentless conviction that you are irretrievably disfigured can of course lead to other serious mental health conditions, such as depression, anxiety, and eating disorders.
It is important to note that eating disorders and BDD are not the same things. If you have an eating disorder, you will be typically focused on your overall weight or body shape.
Someone with body dysmorphic disorder will tend to be concerned about a particular body part. Is your nose an object of distress? Is one of your arms bigger than the other? Can everyone see that weird mark on your neck?
At its extreme, BDD is not so hard to identify. Those suffering most severely may devote more time in a day to trying to fix themselves than they do to work or other responsibilities. They may become incapable of leaving the house owing to their intense anxiety about their appearance.
Some mental health professionals consider BDD to be on the spectrum of obsessive-compulsive disorders because common symptoms are compulsive grooming, mirror-checking, or skin-picking – whatever action is thought to potentially mitigate the perceived flaw.
Less obvious symptoms can include constant comparison of your own appearance to that of others, a seemingly insatiable need for reassurance about your appearance, or the belief that others are mocking your looks or otherwise negatively focusing on your own perceived physical flaws.
The common thread – and the cue to seek out the advice of your doctor – is that the desire to fix whatever flaws you may perceive intrudes on the rest of your life. There are both talk therapy and pharmacological approaches to treating BDD.
For this matter, as for so many, I turn to the great philosopher and film-maker, Baz Luhrmann and his ground-breaking work Everybody’s Free (commonly known as Don’t Forget to Wear Sunscreen).
In this disquisition, Luhrmann exhorts us, yes, to use sunscreen. He also bids us not to “mess too much with your hair/Or by the time you’re 40 it will look 85.”
But the take-away line, for just about everyone, is: “Do not read beauty magazines, they will only make you feel ugly.”
That’s a hard sell for any of us. Harder still for someone with a disorder that prevents them from seeing themselves as they really are. But advice from an ageing Australian hippie who made Hollywood notice him is not nothing.

Remember to talk to your doctor or therapist if you want to know more about what you read here. In many cases, there’s no single solution or diagnosis to a mental health concern. Many people suffer from more than one condition.

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