[Article] Her Beautiful Mind
January 19, 2010
QUESTIONS FOR SUSIE ORBACH
Her Beautiful Mind
Interview by DEBORAH SOLOMON
Published: March 4, 2009
As a British psychoanalyst known for your social activism and literary output, you argue in your new book, “Bodies,” that all of the globalized world — men and women alike — is suffering from a warped sense of beauty.
What I am seeing is franticness about having to get a body. I wish we could treat our bodies as the place we live from, rather than regard it as a place to be worked on, as though it were a disagreeable old kitchen in need of renovation and update.
“Body hatred,” as you call it, has become a leading Western export. Young women in South Korea are undergoing surgery to Westernize the appearance of their eyelids.
It’s supported by their parents. They don’t experience this as a terrible thing, that they’re being passive victims and idiots. They see it as a chance at modernity. Fiji is the country where 11.3 percent of girls were bent over the toilet bowl three years after television was introduced. [ Click here to read the full article. ]
I just want to say Thank You! Being a mom of a pre-teen girl the issue of how she views her body has always scared me. It really is time for this change, a healty body matters and so does a healthy mind. This scale promotes both.