#259 Redefining Body Image: From Trends To Truth

We pull apart what body image really is, how it’s shaped by culture, friends, media, and why trends keep moving the goalposts. We share a personal story about diagnosis and change, unpack bias around fatness, and end with practical steps to build steadier self-respect.

• Defining body image as a mental model
• Why compliments and jabs distort self-perception
• Positive body image as protection and steadiness
• Body neutrality and focusing on function
• How body checking and comparison fuel shame
• Culture, family, and comments that stick
• Beauty trends and the profit motive behind insecurity
• Personal journey through diagnosis, weight change, and strength
• Anti-fat bias, language, and BMI limits
• Risks of dieting and key stats on eating disorders
• Scripts to reframe self-talk and curate your circle
• Everyday practices to appreciate what your body can do

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Tune in weekly to Wellbeing Wednesday with Gurjeet Gill on The Universal Radio Network, 97.9 FM in Edmonton, or globally at www.theuniversalradio.com

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Transcript

Setting The Stage: Body Image

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Hey everyone, welcome to the Universal Radio Networks podcast. This is Gruji. In today's episode, we are discussing body image. We're talking about what body image is, what does a negative body image look like, what does a positive body image look like, as well as how our body image changes through our lifetimes and how exactly is our body image shaped. So we're gonna discuss all of that today. We have survived full spring number one, so congratulations to us. I'm sure we have another full spring coming in soon, though. So have no fear, weather will return to a warmer, more survivable state. But for now, this is what we gotta deal with. Before I get too much into complaining about the weather, it's well-being Wednesday, guys. It's it's also G, your host. That's something to look forward to. It's not all doom and gloom, thankfully. As always, you can follow us on socials at the Universal Radio. Let us know what you'd like to see discussed on air. So today's topic is about body image. And the reason why I chose this topic is because I thought it would be really interesting to do after February. I know at this point a lot of New Year's resolutions have died down a little bit, but a lot of New Year's resolutions, and this was especially around the time that I was studying habits and trying to see like what the most common New Year's resolutions was. The most common ones were related to health and physical well-being. A lot of people wanted to lose weight. A lot of people wanted to go to the gym more. A lot of people wanted to eat healthier. And all of these kind of struck me as very odd because some of them were about health, like wanting to eat better, healthier, wanting to have more physical activity, fair, understandable, wanting to lose weight. I guess so for health reasons, but kind of all together, they kind of pointed towards a dissatisfaction with our body's existing state. So it got me thinking. So that's why I wanted to talk about body image today. I had a lot of fun researching this topic and a lot of fun thinking and challenging my own beliefs about my body. So I hope that we have a really interesting conversation about it today. I still haven't figured out a name for it, so I need your brilliant brains to help me work on it, figure out what it is. But it's kind of like a gratitude exercise, a call to mindfulness, a call to thinking about what's going on in your brain today. And today's question is were you nice to yourself today? So a little bit of a thinker. Were you nice to yourself today? Did you give yourself grace? Did you compliment yourself when it was necessary and when it was deserving? Or were you kind of a little bit of a jerk to yourself? Something to think about. Sometimes it's a question we gotta ask yourselves. Have I been nice to myself? Sometimes the answer is yes, and to be honest, sometimes the answer is no. And it's not something we're really trained to think about when we're growing up. For example, we're taught to be nice to others and not hit and share and be kind and use nice words, but no one ever really reprimands us for speaking to ourselves poorly until a therapist does, and that's expensive. So ask yourself, have you been nice to yourself today? I can think of a few times today that I was nice to myself. I let myself move a little bit slower at work without adding extra pressure or shame. I was also nice to myself because when I got home from work, I wanted to eat a cupcake instead of dinner, and that's what I did. I'll have dinner later. I know that, but I just felt like having a sweet little treat to survive getting through this traffic and the snow on my way home. So that was my way of being nice to myself. Uh, I was also nice to myself over the weekend. I cleaned up my space. That was my way of being nice to myself. I knew I would enjoy it, and future me is very thankful for past me for doing that. So think about some ways that you are nice to yourself today. And if you can't think of one, take this as an opportunity to think of a way to be kind to yourself. So we're talking about body image today, and one thing I want to get straight off the bat is a definition of body image. Because some people feel like body image is related to an actual physical thing, and that's not necessarily true. It's the mental representation that we create of ourselves, it's how we think our body looks like in our brain. And it may or may not have any connection to how we actually look. For example, some of us may feel that we're of a certain height before we actually realize, oh no, I've actually grown. This is something really common in teenage boys, where their body image is that they're quite smaller and lighter, but because they grow so fast all at once, they bump into things. They're clumsy, they forget how heavy and potentially strong they are. So sometimes, you know, your kid brother's joking around with you one day and pushes you on the couch, and you're like, oh man, he got me. And then, like, three months later, he does the same thing, and you're like, Hold on, dude. Who made you so mad? Why are you being aggressive? And it's because he just grew so much. His body image is that of someone who's smaller and stature than he is now. So it's kind of like a wholesome and like less relevant example of body image. A more relevant example would be about uh a classmate in grade four makes a comment about the size of your ears. Now suddenly you have this mental representation of yourself where your ears stick out a lot, and your ears are really big and they're a prominent feature. So now you worry that everybody looks at you, is looking at your ears, and that's just the way your body is built. But it may or may not be true. Your body image is that mental representation, and what we hear from other people shapes our mental representation. Body image is a collection of thoughts and feelings that we have about our body, and those shape our mental image. A lot of distortions can happen with body image, and they can happen just off of one or two compliments. I remember I had someone tell me that I was so pretty, I made them mad, and I took that as the highest form of compliment, and my body image was through the roof, ego. I thought I was God's gift to this planet. Of course, it's centered down a little bit since then, it's been more realistic, but that was the easiest example of like my body image was distorted based on someone else's comment. Positive body image is a lot more difficult than you would think it is to gain, right? Because having a positive body image means accepting and appreciating your body, having a broader concept of beauty and not being restricted to kind of what's trending right now or what do you see around you, and taking steps to care for your body and appearance in ways that are healthy and fulfilling and not necessarily vapid or hollow or dangerous for your long-term health. Striving for a good relationship with your body outside of external influencers or societal messages is the way to go. Because if you feel confident and happy and you're a body and you have a positive body image, that's not gonna go away. Like you might fluctuate a little bit, but it's not gonna come and go like trends do around bodies. And I'm gonna talk about this a little bit later. So I don't wanna put the cart before the horse here. So we'll get to it in a little bit. Positive body image is also an important protective factor to make people less susceptible to developing an eating disorder. And these are disorders that disproportionately affect women. It can also affect men. Uh, a lot of people think that it might be underdiagnosed in men because a lot of gym culture, like eating right, getting your protein goals, getting like minimum calorie intake, but also maximum protein intake at the same time, some of it is reflected in the same way that we would see people with eating disorders behave and feel about food. The relationship with food and relationship with body is just so different. Positive body image is also associated with higher self-esteem, and self-acceptance makes a person more likely to be comfortable and happy the way they look, and less likely to be impacted by unrealistic images and expectations in the media. This is something that disproportionately affects younger women, and there's a lot of societal pressure, changing trends and advertising that goes into creating these unhealthy expectations of what a teenage girl should look like. Teenage girls nowadays look like what 24-year-olds looked like back in the day, just with access to the internet, access to advertising images, consistently influencers, micro-influencers. It's changed the way that like a teenage girl is expected to look versus 15 years ago what a teenage girl was expected to look like. Having a healthy outlook and behaviors around body image leads to a more balanced lifestyle as well, with healthier attitudes and healthier practices relating to food and exercise. And the food and exercise will be more in sync and more in tune with the needs of your body rather than an expectation you place on yourself. So, positive body image is something that I've always strained to have, and it's something that I've not always had. I like to prescribe to something called body neutrality, and it focuses more on the functionality of my body. But that of course can also change. So I haven't quite figured it out as well. Because body neutrality is more about can your body get you through the day? Can your body sit at your desk and work? Can your body get you up to shower and do your self-care? Can my body take my dog for a walk? Can my body do the sports that I like? Can my body play in the sports teams that I like playing on with my friends? Can my body handle a night of dancing? These are all things that kind of tune into my own body image, but I also have to learn how to accept those when those things change. I used to be able to hit a quick workout and be totally fine. But now I have a day full of soreness the next day, no matter how used to my workout program I get. It's just the way it is for me. My recovery is bad, my nutrition isn't great. Okay, I don't want unsolicited advice. I know it's not good. So her body function changes with times, our body changes with time, and her body image does as well. So a negative body image is one where you feel dissatisfied with your body and its appearance, and you're just not okay with it. And it's inherently negative to the point that it's maybe not accurate to what you look like. Oftentimes, people compare themselves with others and feel inadequate when doing so, feel compelled to monitor their body by measuring, weighing, or looking in the mirror frequently. There is a concept called body checking where people will stand facing like 90 degrees away from the mirror to check how thin they are from the side. And that is something that is really prevalent in the eating disorder community, and it's something I check myself on all the time. If I ever stand sideways in the mirror and take a look at it, I quickly look away because I know all it's doing is connecting my body to thinness, which in no way, shape, or form impacts my body's function, my body's ability to be there for me and take care of me. A lot of times negative body image is associated with feeling ashamed or embarrassed, feeling uncomfortable or awkward in your body, or seeing parts of your body in a distorted way. A person can also pursue unnecessary surgery, unsafe weight loss habits, fad drugs, or inappropriate use of drugs to build muscles. There is a very, very strong link between eating disorders and negative body image. Because remember, body image is the mental representation of what we look like. And the mental representation isn't always next to the truth. Sometimes our brain has ways of thinking negatively for no reason. We see it with anxious thoughts, we see it with hopeless and helpless thoughts, and we see it with body image as well. Sometimes our brains need a little bit of rewiring because they don't always say the most helpful things. Body image doesn't just happen overnight, okay? And it's not stagnant. We know there's a lot of different factors that affect it. So let's talk about them. Culture, family, friends, these are all different things that convey positive and negative messages about our body. Friends that hype you up, that make you feel good no matter what you're wearing, what your mood is, where you're going, that can contribute to a positive body image because they have influence over how we feel about ourselves. We may not like to accept that, but it's just the way things are. Likewise, friends that tear each other down or make negative comments, those can strip away positive body image and maybe even lead to negative body image, depending on the comments that are made. A long time ago, when I was quite young, someone put a necklace on me who is a friend of mine. We were volunteers together, and she made a comment about how she was so glad that she wasn't the only person who had a hairy neck. I'm sorry, as a brown kid, that was a devastating thing to hear. I can't see the back of my neck. My hair is always down. How am I supposed to know there's hair on the back of my neck? I'm like 12 at this point. This was wild to me, and it was so upsetting because it made me so self-conscious and have a terrible body image around my back. I thought I was walking around like Sasquatch with the hairiest back ever. But in reality, everyone has hair on their back, everyone has hair on their neck. It's just that my hair is very dark and it sticks out more. So I had a very negative body image about my back, and I was really scared to wear anything with low backs, like Punjabi suits that are a little bit of a scoop back. I was so self-conscious about it. And I look back on that incident and I think about how that poor girl had been told by someone that she had a hairy neck and that was not a good thing. And it makes me so sad to think because she was also 12. Who's going around telling 12-year-olds this? And it's likely a mix of family, friends, or culture that put this idea in our heads that make us self-conscious, that give us poor body image, that make us feel insecure and unsteady in our bodies. The media, different peers, and family members all have a huge influence on a person's body image. It doesn't go much longer than maybe five seconds meeting someone new who immediately comments on your body weight, like Antiar that will always talk about how skinny you've gotten, or how you put on weight, or how you need to eat less, and or how you need to eat more. And even going to Godur all the time, it was kind of a traumatic, not traumatic, that sounds a little bit traumatic, but it was not a positive experience. The way people would often comment about how I need to eat more and would try and put more food on my plate. And likewise, I saw my cousins who are a little bit bigger than me, get smaller portions because the auntie doing seva that day decided that my cousin needed to eat less. It's kind of messed up, and I'm sure these situations don't happen in isolation. They're just the way they are sometimes in our culture. It's not healthy, and it definitely can stop with us. We can be the people to stop making comments like that untowards about people's body, especially if they're negative or have negative implications. It's just not fun for everybody involved. The consistent commenting on bodies by DC people is really unhealthy, especially for a culture that deals with pre-diabetic and diabetic populations, like quite often. And I don't know how they're connected, but I swear there's a connection there somewhere. I just haven't found it yet. And it's probably staring you in the face. So if you're brighter and smarter, more put together than me right now, let me know what that connection is. I need someone to draw it out with a pencil because I, for the life of me, can't figure it out. What's really tough about negative body image is that fashion and beauty industries and advertising industries they make bank off of negative body image. Don't get it twisted. It is absolutely profitable for us to have poor body image, to feel dissatisfied with our appearance, to feel bad, because then people can sell us solutions. Do you feel like, oh, your ears stick out a lot? Well, here's this head wrap you can put on when you go to sleep and it'll tuck your ears in. Are you worried about your kid's nose coming out very flat? Well, don't worry, because one of the babies that picks up your kid will be trying to stretch their nose out to make it nice and pointy, because that's what a Punjabi person's nose should look like. There's so many weird, messed up ways that we talk about bodies and trends and things like that. For example, for female body types, right? It became trendy around like 2014, 2015 in the King Kylie era to have a full lip and a big butt. That's when the Kylie lip kits were popular. That's when Kim Kardashian's popularity was at an all-time high, and they were celebrated as the ideal body type. Big, full lips, long straight hair, and very, very curvy. And now you look at all the brands and all the advertising, and being skinny and thin, is back in style. Think of the Pilates body, where you're just like a little tiny dainty girl, and you could just like float away in the breeze. Thinness and toned bodies are where it's at. And so this coupled with the rise of 90s and 2000s fashion, where body shaming was at such a all-time high in the 2000s, look no further than America's next top model to see the extent to which body shaming and thinness was lauded. And like the fashion trends, the body trends have also come back from that era. I'm also convinced that it's a recession indicator somehow, some way. And it's just unrealistic because as our bodies change, right? We age, we grow, life happens to us, and we make decisions about life as well. Our weight fluctuates, our diet changes, our activity level changes, our lifestyle changes, we have children, we age. If our satisfaction and body image changed every time that our body did, we'd be in for a constant roller coaster of feelings and thoughts surrounding our body. It would just be exhausting and you wouldn't be able to keep up with it. And life is hard enough as it is. So maybe practicing something that takes off a little bit of that stress. Don't be a victim to all the advertising and being told what is beautiful right now, what is acceptable right now. If your body gets you through the day, that is a good body. It's something I tell myself all the time. And sometimes you need to adjust your day for your body, and that's a-okay too. Now, I kind of have a personal journey throughout this as well, as I probably all do. You know, I am now 27, so I don't know how I feel about sharing my age with y'all, but there, I'm saying it. I'm 27, and I've gone through some weight and lifestyle changes and appearance changes in just the last four years, and it's been difficult to kind of adapt my head around what my body looks like because I have spent 23 years of my life, 22 years of my life, looking the exact same. Growing up, I was super underweight, I was underweight to the point that it was unhealthy. I was also very inactive, but I was thin. So I didn't really get a lot of negative comments about my weight. I often got told by family that I needed to gain weight, I got told by doctors I needed to gain weight, but from people out in the community and out in the world, they treated me perfectly fine. I was skinny, therefore I must be healthy. Only to find out, and this is the too long, didn't read the TLDR, but I had celiac disease, and so that meant as I consumed gluten, I damaged my intestines. Making it impossible for me to properly digest and absorb nutrients from my food. So it wasn't that I was underweight and thin because I was healthy. I was underweight and I was thin because I wasn't properly absorbing the food that I would eat. When I got diagnosed with celiac, I started eating gluten-free, like totally entirely cut out gluten out of my life. And I immediately started gaining weight. It was pretty quick and it just kept growing and growing. And suddenly I was the same weight for most of my teen years and my early 20s to then become 30 pounds heavier than what I was used to in a year or two. And that was a big change for me. A lot of my clothes stopped fitting. I felt bad to be entirely frank. I didn't feel like myself. I didn't know what my body looked like. I didn't feel attractive. I didn't feel like anything. And I also noticed that when I went out, people treated me a little bit differently. They what I now perceive is like treated me normally. Versus when I was thin, I felt like people were a little bit nicer to me. I'm not overweight by any means, and probably the change in how people treated me is in my head, but that was what I felt. And I I still to this day do feel a little bit of the difference in the way that I was approached now by strangers and how I used to be when I was thinner. Now, my weight has changed suddenly, and my appearance has, and my clothes have, and it's the first time in my life that I've had to adapt to this change, and that was where I started pursuing body neutrality. Now, I may be the heaviest weight that I've ever been in my life, but I've also never been able to lift more, squat more, run farther, run for longer. I've never been healthier, I've never had bigger muscles. So there are a lot of upsides, but it's really hard to see them when you're fed this culture of thin being healthy, thin being healthy. And especially right now where the trend is thin-toned bodies, it can be really difficult to be happy with what you have. When we think about comments from others and how they influence our body image, one of the biggest things that come up is fat phobia. Now, this is a term that we probably hear a lot, and it basically talks about the disparagement, the bias, the prejudice against larger bodies and around becoming fat. Now, some people think that this isn't the best term to describe this situation, this scenario, this prejudice, because it sounds like like a phobia. Like I have a phobia of the dark, I have a phobia of spiders, but it's not necessarily that. And some people prefer to use the term anti-fat bias in terms of the prejudice. Now, I personally feel it's okay to use both terms. For example, homophobia, transphobia also use the phobia um suffix, and those cover the same things discrimination and prejudice to people who are part of the LGBTQ community, who are trans. And I think fat phobia also applies to those who are fat, who are larger bodies, who have more weight. A lot of people also treat the word fat when describing people as like a no-no or a taboo term. And that just adds to this stigma as well. Like most people who are of larger bodies will be okay with the word fat. They'll describe themselves as fat. And using the word fat in a derogatory way is what gives that word power. It's really common for people to criticize their own bodies in casual conversation. It's really easy to get casual remarks made by other people. It happens especially in school groups, with friends, with peers, with family, less so from strangers, but you will get treated differently when you're fat versus when you're of a healthy weight. Now, even that itself is quite loaded in the sense that a healthy weight is very, very ambiguous. There's a few female power lifters who have shared that their BMI, based on their height and weight, puts them in the overweight category. Even though they are competitive athletes, even though they are like some of them are like crazy, crazy strong, crazy, crazy healthy as well. Now, body disparaging conversations can include negative comments or comparisons about a person's body, and it becomes really commonplace. Oftentimes, people discuss their weight openly, they'll talk about how they haven't been eating healthy, about how they've gained weight or how they eat too much. And all these comments carry a load with them. They're a little bit judgmental and they're weighted. I personally have had a very healthy friend group who doesn't really talk about bodies in this way, and they practice body neutrality kind of based on default. And I spent a lot of time over the summer with people who commented about weight really often, who talked down to themselves, who spoke about it often, who spoke about their weight gain, and all of it very, very negatively. So making unprovoked comments about your own body and other people's body in negative ways has an impact on other people. Viewing yourself negatively based on your body image and your weight gain or weight loss and verbalizing it has an impact on other people, just like the comments people have made about your body and about your weight have impacted you. It's also really important to consider the risks that dieting brings in terms of developing an eating disorder. Nine percent of the US population will develop an eating disorder in their life, and only 6% of those who are diagnosed are considered underweight. So it's really important to remember that thinness has nothing to do with health. It has everything to do with weight. Just like being on the larger end has nothing to do with health, it just has to do with weight. Eating disorders also have the highest mortality rate of all other mental health disorders, second only to opioid overdoses. And this is true for people regardless of their size. We've talked a lot about body image today, and I don't want to leave you all with the impression that it's just something to be thinking about all the time. So I do want to leave you some, leave you with some tips and tricks and strategies to improve body image. Now, one thing that's something to be careful about is when you hear a 40-minute conversation about body image, it can get really, really exhausting and can also trip you out a little bit. Kind of like if you've ever stared at your face in the mirror for a really long time, your brain just starts to distort and perceive your face in like super whack ways is kind of jarring. So I want to make sure that you're all equipped with the skills that you need to make sure that you can improve your body image rather than just become aware of it without any guidance. So, some people suggest that rejecting beauty ideals and placing less value on appearance and appreciating your body can contribute to a positive body image. So I think we should all sit here and reject a beauty ideal. So name one that you kind of see in media. So it could be thinness, it could be um what's it called when people lighten their skin? Skin bleaching. Another beauty ideal you can reject is pierced ears if you want to. It could be, you know, not being too muscular. That's a beauty ideal that men can reject. Having a full hairline, that's a beauty ideal you can reject. There's so many to think of. And then we could place us value on appearance, which isn't really something that you can do in just a second over the radio. So I'm gonna skip that one. And appreciating your body. So think of one thing that you can appreciate your body. Uh, I myself really appreciate my hands, they take a big beating from rock climbing. Um, and I have injured my wrists, I have felt injuries in my fingers, and my hands still do so much for me, even though I used to be a baddie with long nails before I started rock climbing as my main sport. And now I always have short, stubby fingernails, but that's okay because they're functional. I'm rejecting the beauty idea of women having dainty, pleasant hands, and mine are covered in calluses and a little bit stubby. So I appreciate my hands for what they do for me, and I hope that contributes to a positive body image. Some other tips that you can do are spend time with people who have a body positive outlook. If you're always spending time around friends or family that are making negative comments about their own body or making negative comments about yours or pointing things out in your body that you just don't want to hear about, spend less time with them or change the conversation to be less about bodies. Practice positive self-talk. So instead of saying, oh, my arms look so big, you could say, my arms look really strong. Wear comfortable clothes that fit you well and feel good because your body can change, but your clothes don't often. So when that happens, it's your clothes that are the problem, not your body. It's important to remind yourself that beauty is not just about appearance. Appreciate what your body can do, like laugh, dance, and create amazing things, and be critical of messages that media sends you. See yourself as a whole person and not an imperfect body part. So do your part and be nice to your body, and your body will be nice back to you. Thank you for tuning in today and stay up to date with our podcasts on our socials at the Universal Radio and stream us wherever you get your podcasts. This is Gurjeet, and keep turning it up with us.