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| The
Media: To Blame or not to Blame?
|
How
can we talk about BDD without bringing the media into the discussion?
Many people nowadays are complaining that the media is responsible
for everything from anorexia, to normal self-esteem concerns, to
the increase in plastic surgery cases, to the number of divorces.
I believe the media aggravates BDD, but by no means causes it. Sure,
when I see a magazine cover plastered with an airbrushed model,
or a movie with a glamorous actress decked out in the newest hairstyles
and outfits after three hours in the makeup chair, I will probably
start experiencing a BDD episode. I'll start comparing myself with
this idea of perfection, and assume that I do not match up to it.
Nobody can match up with it. It's not real. But, even without these
magazines and movies, I am certain that I would have developed BDD
giving the previous circumstances during my childhood.
BDD has been a recorded disorder for over 100 years. That was before
TVs, before movies, and before magazines had pictures of smiling
girls on the cover. It was before pin up girls. It was before the
supermodel era. It was before the time that women could get plastic
surgery and turn themselves into a form that couldn't humanly be
possible. BDD has truly little to do with looks. BDD is a coping
mechanism that uses looks as an excuse. In fact, it's ludicrous
to say, but we may even be lucky to live in a day and age when babes
come at a dime a dozen, because it makes our BDD rituals much easier.
We would try to perform rituals no matter what era we had lived
in, so at least over time, society has created the optimal environment
for BDD rituals to flourish. My main concern with this is that when
we are performing rituals, we have an easier time avoiding the real
problem that lies deeper than our surface ritualistic behaviors
related to beauty allow us to see. |
| Childhood
"Deformities" |
I
do not believe that this has anything to do with whether a not a
person will develop BDD, but it may play a role in our emphasis
on appearance and which features we choose to blame our imagined
ugliness on. I was born with an underbite, and spent eight years
in treatment, which included braces, headgear, rubberbands, retainers,
getting teeth pulled, etc. Although nobody ever teased me about
this, which is surprising to me, it still added to the feeling of
being different and born "wrong". It was often brought
to my attention that I had to go through this treatment because
I had a "problem" with my teeth and jaw, and even today,
I notice that my main BDD concern deals with my jaw and general
facial structure. I assume that it is different than other people's
and sets me apart as being different. Even though I've been told
that my jaw is now in the correct position after years of treatment,
I still feel like they could never quite "fix" me and
make me like other humans. So if you were overweight, had to wear
glasses, went through braces, or had any feature that made you stand
out as being different, and could have been considered "wrong"
by society, you may have blamed these features specifically when
you developed BDD. If you did not have any feature specifically
pointed out to you as being wrong, you may develop the sense that
you are just overall ugly, and can't quite pinpoint what makes you
this way. |
| Theory
Submitted by BDDer |
The
sociocultural context one is born into obviously plays a huge factor,
not only in terms of how strongly that culture attempts to dictate
it's own ideal but also what that ideal consists of. A genetic component
must also play a part in things due to the neurological parallels
with obsessive compulsive disorder. Finally there is a complex interplay
of psychological variables which I'll attempt to offer my opinions
on. I believe that people with BDD, due to unique upbringings, have
a different psychosocial reality than everyone else. This in turn
affects the social impressions and reactions we make and/or our
perceptions of those impressions and reactions, and causes us to
have differing social feedback or feel as though we do. Many view
the impressions, reactions and feedback in a negative light, whether
real or perceived. All of this then either creates or contributes
to a feeling that we are different than others and reinforces what
seem to be universal feelings of low self-esteem. This also heightens
social sensitivity and social impressions, and a link has been established
between individuals sensitive to social impressions and being especially
influenced by physical attractiveness. For me it's not too difficult
to imagine that for someone who lived with the above, and for whom
physical attractiveness was such an important variable, the problem
they felt existed with their self would be transferred to their
body, especially if you add feelings of bodily ineffectiveness to
feelings of psychosocial ineffectiveness. All of this is in accordance
with both a psychoanalytical perspective, "The mechanism of
symptom formation is a simple displacement of the feeling that there
is something wrong with the self from the psyche to the soma"
and a developmental contextual one, "...body image not only
derives from person-social context relations and the individual's
cognitive and emotional developments, but also contributes to both
of these processes" and "The person's appraisal of his/her
body - that is, cognitions and feelings about his/her body are reactions
which (1) derive in part from the socializing others' reactions
to the person". What I feel must be added to the last quote
is that not only do socializing others' reactions play a part but
also the individual's perceptions of socialzing others' reactions.
The result of all this is the individual pursuing beauty, a "normal"
appearance, or the removal of some perceived flaw in an obsessive-compulsive
manner (congruently with the depression, social phobias and other
characteristics of the disorder). This pursuit of beauty or a "normal"
appearance is not only a pursuit of a psychosocially satisfying
body image but also of a psychosocially satisfying self. Or to put
it another way, this is another instance of the beauty is good stereotype,
with the afflicted individual also unconsciously pursuing the assumed
social confidence and adjustment characteristic of that stereotype.
However psyschosocial self change is made that much more difficult
because the warped body-image ends up continuously reinforcing the
aforementioned feelings of being different, simply due to the fact
that one's experience of one's body is fundamental to their experience
of reality and oneself. Furthermore the neurological underpinnings
(which parallel those of obsessive-compulsive disorder) can also
make change extremely difficult, because of the inherent qualities
of those neurological pathways. |
| Other
Theories to be Included on this Page in the Near Future |
Unprotected
and Afraid
The Inner Child Speaks
Dreams |
|
