Bodies under fire

Susie Orbach, the expert on eating disorders and people's negative attitudes to their own bodies, has written a new book* about what she calls "body distress".

In an interview in the Irish Times, she says that for many women (and girls) today, their bodies are no longer their own. Instead of just being something they live in, they've become public property, something that has to meet other people's expectations and images.

They have to be constantly upgrading and enhancing their bodies to meet these expectations, and they are never happy with their body as it is, as it was given them.

It's become increasingly normal to openly criticise women's bodies and make them feel inferior and inadequate. Every woman is fair game, from celebs to office workers to schoolgirls.

Rather than just enjoying their body and taking it for granted, they are on a constant quest for smoother skin, firmer flesh, thinness, shapeliness, or whatever other people see as female perfection.

There is an insatiable demand not only for creams, lotions and cosmetics, but for extreme measures like plastic surgery and gruelling workout regimes.

As Susie Orbach says, bodies have become another form of work requiring perpetual effort and commitment. We no longer treat them casually or naturally.

She says this distorted view is creating an impaired society, both mentally and physically, which is distressing and disturbing huge numbers of women (and increasingly, men too).

As a therapist who has helped many such women, she has profound insights into the social attitudes causing their distress. I shall certainly read this book.

A typical example of body-knocking: the Daily Mail concludes that Liz Hurley is looking old, that she is "haggard and wrinkled" with "saggy skin" and "is no longer fresh-faced".

* "Bodies", Profile Books, £10.99, €12. Her best-known book is "Fat Is A Feminist Issue"