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Mirror, Mirror

Dr. Susie Orbach discusses the pressures girls face to present a perfect appearance.

For girls today, the message is clear: Looks matter. And it is a theme that is constantly reinforced in the subtext of their lives — from models seen in fashion magazines to Mom sighing at her reflection in the mirror. In this question-and-answer session, esteemed psychotherapist Dr. Susie Orbach explains how society has affected our perceptions of beauty and what we can do to boost our self-esteem.

Q: What’s the downside of the pressure to look beautiful?

A: Girls can grow up feeling inadequate, fret about their bodies and their looks, and feel bad if they don’t conform to the pictures of beauty they see on TV screens, and billboards and in ads. They can feel the need to change their appearance — to diet away their natural shape, exercise compulsively or have cosmetic surgery.

Q: How sure are we that society plays a destructive role in the beauty agenda?

A: For years, magazines and the fashion industry and Hollywood said that glamour was just fun. Girls and women, so it went, like to dress up. They like to press their bodies into different shapes — just look at the corsets of 100 years ago.

But beauty was never an imperative before. And it never involved so many women for so many years of their lives. In our grandma’s time, it was important to be beautiful for a few years. Now girls as young as six and women in their eighties worry if they aren’t sufficiently beautiful — and beautiful today means being skinny, big-breasted, long-legged and so on.

Q: What other kinds of harmful things are happening because of the narrow definitions of beauty?

A: Recently we’ve seen the rise of early cesarean births. A few celebrities elected to have their babies at 36 weeks because of the myth that this would make it easier for them to return to their prepregnancy bodies. That ignores the importance of those extra pounds for the health of mother and baby.

Q: Do you think the Dove® Campaign for Real Beauty is helping change things?

A: I think Dove’s promotion of the gorgeousness of ordinary women is important. It gives women a lift to see versions of themselves portrayed on billboards, and it allows them to appreciate their own appearance.

Q: What can I do to help myself? I don’t always feel good.

A: You probably have friends who are beautiful, but they don’t feel it. See if that applies to you too. If it does, consider just for a few seconds (and build up to a few minutes) a day that you too are beautiful.

Dr. Susie Orbach is a psychotherapist and writer who in 1981 co-founded the Women’s Therapy Centre Institute in New York City. She is a visiting professor at the London School of Economics and is a frequent contributor to newspapers and magazines, as well as a guest on radio and television programs.