Young women are under a lot more pressure than ever to achieve the perfect body nowadays says psychoanalyst and bestselling author Susie Orbach.
Four decades after the publication of her book "Fat is a Feminist Issue", the British writer, who was once one of the therapists of Princess Diana, said that women were commodifying their bodies as they try hard to conform to the false images provided by online beauty influencers.
She added that girls, as young as six years old, were already being conditioned to think about cosmetic surgery with a host of industries fuelling and profiting from body insecurity.
In today's world, many women were more obsessed with diet and fitness and embracing being overweight as a sign of rebellion.
"It's much, much worse than we ever envisioned," Orbach told AFP on Hong Kong International Literary Festival, where she was speaking about her new book "In Therapy: How Conversations with Psychotherapists Really Work."
"This is not just 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."
"We're so self-focused now, we produce our bodies, rather than live from them. Your body is your product. If you just dropped in on any conversation, the amount of mental space that people take up with what they're eating, what they're not eating, their yoga routine, is expressive of the level of distress in our society," she added. "It's not about contribution, it's about how I manage this horror I'm personally living with."
Orbach was also involved in a one-year international campaign in forcing Google, Apple and Amazon to remove cosmetic surgery apps targeting primary school-aged girls, wherein cartoon-style characters can be modified with procedures like doing liposuction.
