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Susie Orbach, famous Feminist author has slammed the regressive social media for keeping young women and girls under extreme pressure more than ever before to have a perfect body. The psychoanalyst Orbach has said such pressure was unimaginable by the feminist of the 1970’s.
Susie Orbach was a therapist of late Princess Diana and the author of a book ‘Fat is a Feminist issue’ published forty years ago. She said that women are under extreme stress to modify their bodies, a body insecurity that beauty influencers fuel further on social media.
“Girls as young as six were being conditioned to think about cosmetic surgery, she added, with a host of industries fuelling and profiting from body insecurity. It’s much, much worse than we ever envisioned”, said Susie Orbach.
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“This is not just a problem related to girls and women, and it’s very, very profitable if you can destabilize people’s bodies,” she added further.
“There are all kinds of industries both creating and feeding off these insecurities.” “We’re so self-focused now, we produce our bodies, rather than live from them. Your body is your product.”
She added: “If you just dropped in on any conversation, the amount of mental space that people take up with what they’re eating, what they’re not eating, their yoga routine, is expressive of the level of distress in our society.
“It’s not about contribution, it’s about how I manage this horror I’m personally living with.” She added that women felt liberated during the 1960’s when they strongly reacted to the beauty pageants and objected to the body standards set by the society.
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Orbach elaborated that as opposed to the current scenario the conditioning back then began at the age of 18 and not at the age of 6 or 7.
“It happened at 18, it didn’t happen at six. You didn’t have girls and boys saying ‘Have I got a six-pack?’ or ‘I’m too fat’ at six and seven. You didn’t have girls throwing up over the toilet bowl at nine.”
She also blamed the influx of fast-food outlets that have boosted the trend of expansion of the waistline created to counter the dominant image of beauty-slimness in the UK.
“As long as you’ve had one dominant image — of skinniness, of slimness, of beauty — that is everywhere, you’re going to have people in rebellion against that,” she said.
“Sometimes that rebellion is going to show in fatness.” “I think the rapaciousness of late capitalism is really a problem,” she said.
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“We are seeing ourselves not just as consuming centers but brands. Young women are now being encouraged to see themselves as brands, and influencers.” The author, however, expressed her displeasure over how men and women are constantly under pressure of ‘perfect body’.
“It was a terrible period, but this is a much worse period because women are allowed and are in all jobs, but they still have to look like dolls when they are going to their jobs and they still have to emotionally look after everyone at work.
“It’s a very bizarre moment. I never expected this.”