The Hindu Business Line : Thin-skinned!

Britain's young women have never appeared so confident. Many are outperforming men, grabbing the best jobs and planning to balance their fulfilling careers with motherhood.

But they are also more obsessed than ever with physical appearance and would go to painful lengths to change it. BBC Radio commissioned the latest of many surveys into how young Britons feel about their bodies — and found that far more women than men are unhappy about the way they look.

More than 50 per cent of the women questioned — compared with less than 25 per cent of men — said they would consider plastic surgery, according to a survey of around 25,000 people aged between 17 and 35 carried out by BBC Radio 1's Newsbeat programme and 1xtra TXU, a music programme aimed at young people.

In the other findings 31 per cent of size-12 women described their body as overweight or fat, while 50 per cent of the women surveyed said there were many things they would change about their body; more than one in 10 said they hated their body.

By contrast, 49 per cent men said they were "okay" with their appearance and one in 10 were "very happy" with it — according to the survey carried out between January 26 and February 9 this year.

Sense of `need'

Terri Apter, a senior tutor at Newnham College, Cambridge, with expertise in development of young adults within society and the changing balance of work and family in women's lives, said she was not surprised by the survey's results.

"It's consistent with other research," she said, especially those carried out in affluent, Western societies, where women are prime targets for big brands. "The aim is to create a sense of need. You need to do something about your wrinkles, you need to do something about your hair, you need to have a certain look," Terri said.

Men are targets too, but women, she said, were "more susceptible". "At the time women were gaining power in the workplace, there was no similar concern for liberation about their looks," she added.

"I don't think it has to be that no one cares about how they look, but there should be a range of what's acceptable, rather than reference to some kind of model and in particular younger or thinner. There should be a much closer link between what functions well and what's attractive."

The problem has gotten worse, as the sophistication of modern media, which constantly expose us to impossibly thin, computer-adjusted images, creates ever more elusive physical targets, especially for women. For men, the ideal of a strong physique portrayed by male models on the catwalk and in the media is relatively achievable.

Attempts to promote more natural-sized women models have had mixed success. Madrid fashion shows banned "size zero" (British size-four) models with too low a body mass index — a measure based on weight and height — but London did not follow suit for this year's fashion week in February.

'Real women' ads

Some advertisers have also sought to present more realistic women. For instance, the Unilever brand of skin- and hair-care products, Dove, has created an advertising campaign for "real beauty", using women with real rather than ideal body shapes.

"The existing narrow definition of beauty is not only unrealistic and unattainable, but clearly it also creates hang-ups that can lead girls to question their own beauty," said Philippe Harousseau, US Marketing Director for Dove, in a press statement. "It's time to free the next generation from these stereotypes and give girls the tools they need to discover their own definition of beauty."

But, for every advertisement using a woman with a voluptuous figure, there are many more that use the perfectly thin to sell products. "How do you get around capitalist enterprise," asked US academic Joan Jacobs Brumberg, professor of history, human development and gender studies at Cornell University. "It's very hard."

Providing historical evidence that the problem has evolved, Joan analysed more than 100 diaries written by girls and young women from the 1820s until the 1990s. Her results form the basis of a book, The Body Project, which has sold widely in the US. "In the 19th century, most adolescent girls and young adults were very concerned about good works... it was really about character," she said. "In the 20th-century, they were more and more concerned about good looks."

Apart from the media and big businesses, Joan said women were also guilty of perpetuating the problem through their obsession with their own bodies and drawing implicit or explicit comparisons with others. "Women need to stop reading each others' bodies," she said. "We have internalised appearance as the best indicator of how we are doing." The most powerful antidote could be humour. "I think individuals try to counter it," said Terri, of the obsession with a narrow ideal of physical perfection. "Stand-up comics can do it."

One of Britain's most famous female stand-up comics is Jo Brand, who shot to fame wearing Doc Marten boots, a short haircut and clothes that made no apology for her definitely-not-size-zero figure.

Aware that female personalities were judged on their appearance, she told BBC Radio 4, "I tried to look as neutral as possible," although she admits that could have been interpreted as scruffiness. In any case, her reaction, once again, was very much a minority phenomenon.

Women's Feature Service

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