MT: "My body is disgusting."

[Knowledge Bot]

"My body is disgusting." By Flea - 11-24-2009 07:14 PM

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This isn't really connected to MA, but I thought it might be worth exploring here. When I first checked into my hotel a couple weeks ago, my mother came over for a short visit. I told her to bring her bathing suit because the hotel has a nice hot tub. She launched into a soliloquy that lasted a good 3-4 minutes about how disgusting she looked. She even itemized the problems with her appearance - liver spots, weight, wrinkles, arthritic joints - and said she wouldn't be so cruel as to inflict that upon hapless strangers who jumped into the tub alongside us. It broke my heart.

I could be wrong, but in my experience this particular flavor of self-loathing seems to be mostly a female phenomenon. It's unhealthy psychologically of course, but it also keeps people from doing things that would enrich their lives. For the same reason she won't go to a gym, so the weight gain is a vicious cycle. I don't know why people do this to themselves, or internalize this message coming from others.

Any thoughts?


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[Garland]

This isn't a gender isolated issue, and such self-criticism, or even body image dysphoria afflicts men and woman the world over and leads to eating disorders.

As for the etymology of such issues, I'd say it varies person to person, but most certainly input from the surrounding environment whether explicit (i.e. you're a fat fugly ho) to implicit (the popular idealized image in the media of what people are supposed to look like) contribute and perpetuate the issue.

It's interesting that it takes the "I'm too out of shape to work out" course...as is something I hear alot from alot of people these days...and it makes absolutely no sense. It's a cop out at best, an indicator of mental illness at worst.