Beauty Demands

Next week (25 th February - 3 rd March) is Eating Disorder Awareness Week in the UK and this year’s theme is Breaking Down Barriers […to treatment], of which there are many. Research indicates that only 20-30% of people with eating disorders receive professional help [1-2], despite the fact that eating disorders are frequently chronic and intractable illnesses associated with numerous medical complications, psychosocial impairment, and the highest mortality rates of all psychiatric illnesses [3]. As well as the stigma linked to mental illness, eating disorders are often also subject to an additional layer of stigma whereby eating disorders are widely trivialised, even among healthcare professionals [4]. Depending on the exact presentation, eating disorders can be viewed as the result of either an over-investment in societal standards to be thin – ‘a diet gone too far’ OR the absence of care and respect for one’s body and self. This is reflected in the research and I have person

Men’s appearance concerns have historically had less attention than women’s beauty. So, it’s a strange thing when representations of attractive men become a source of public outrage. In this blog we consider three recent examples, where the representation of ‘hottie’, ‘handsome’ or simply ‘good’’ masculinity has provoked responses of shock, anger or indignation that appear to underpin a desire to annihilate them. These are, TubeCrush, a website where users send in unsolicited photographs of attractive men on the London Underground; a Lumen dating adver t for the over-50s company whose ‘Pull a cracker…’ campaign was banned on the London Underground, and; the notorious Gillette advert , ‘The best a man can be’, which received a raft of media attention   for its clean-shaven, non-toxic image of masculinity (e.g reactions here , here and here ). Below we discuss each of these examples and why we think this outrage is misplaced. Photo: kevin-bhagat-804491-unsplash So, starting wit