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HONG KONG (AFP) – Girls and young women are under the pressure of a social media-driven world that could not have been imagined by 1970s feminists, says psychoanalyst and bestselling author Susie Orbach.
Forty years after the publication of her seminal book "Fat is a Feminist Issue", the British Writer – who was once Diana's princess therapist – said women were made to conform to their views.
Girls as young as six have been made to think about cosmetic surgery, she added, with a host of fuelling and profiting from body insecurity.
Faced with the reality of modern life, many women are turning inward, obsessed with diet and fitness or embracing being overweight as a sign of rebellion.
"It's much, much worse than we envisioned," Orbach told AFP on the sidelines of the Hong Kong International Literary Festival, where she was speaking about her new book "In Therapy: How Conversations with Psychotherapists Really Work."
Apple, Google and Amazon to remove cosmetic surgery apps targeting primary school-aged girls, in which cartoon-style characters can be modified with procedures such as liposuction.
"This is not a problem related to girls and women, and it's very, very profitable if you can destabilize people's bodies," she said.
"There are all kinds of industries both creating and feeding off these insecurities."
Orbach, 72, said the inevitable outcome was the creation of a society where they would be interested in their energy and focus inward, rather than trying to change the world.
"We're so self-focused now, we produce our bodies, rather than live from your body is your product."
She added: "If you just dropped in on conversation, the amount of mental space that 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."
'REBELLION'
Orbach has spoken about the liberation of women felt from the late 1960s when they began to challenge beauty pageant objectivity and rebel against body expectations.
But the pressures back then, not in childhood, she told AFP.
"It happened at 18, it did not happen at 6. You did not have girls and boys saying 'Have I got a six pack?' or 'I'm too fat' at six and seven, you did not have girls throwing up the toilet bowl at nine. "
Reality television shows such as "Love Island", where both men and women compete to win cash, are both a symptom and a cause of pushing body image on impressively young minds.
"Can you imagine that human energy used for something else?" Orbach questioned.
And even while body insecurity had grown, waistlines had expanded, she said.
Orbach ugly to a portion of the blame at the door of the food industry, noting that the United Kingdom in 2018 compared to 1978 was the proliferation of fast-food outlets.
But she said the obesity crisis had also been driven by the relentless demands of living up to an impossible ideal.
"As long as you've had a dominant image – of skinniness, of slimness, of beauty – that is everywhere, you're going to have a rebellion against that," she said.
"Sometimes this rebellion is going to show in fatness."
BRAND CULTURE
One of Orbach's chief concerns is how the modern "gig economy" has created a world in which they are encouraged to market themselves.
"I think the rapacity of late capitalism is really a problem," she said.
"We are seeing ourselves as just as consuming as we do brands."
The dangers are even greater than in the decade after the publication of "Fat is a Feminist Issue", when Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan's new macho political and economic prompted a backlash against feminism, Orbach argued.
"It was a terrible period, but this is a much worse period, because they are allowed in their jobs, but they still have to look like dolls when they are going to their jobs. work.
"It's a very weird moment, I never expected this."
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