Life Uncut - Walk down memory lane - Talking Body Dysmorphia

Episode Date: July 5, 2021

It's midyear break time! It's been a wild 6 months and ya girls are taking a short 3 week hiatus, but we have some cracking little bonus episodes for you and each week we will be taking a walk down memory lane.Norway has recently announced that it will be illegal to post photoshopped or doctored images on social media without declaring that the images have been manipulated and we are stoked to hear it! In light of these recent changes we are taking a walk down memory lane and revisiting episode 44 from June last year : TALKING BODY DYSMORPHIA!Join us tomorrow for the funnies bonus episode to date.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

hey guys it is producer keisha here and if you listened to last week's episode you would have heard laura and brit say that they were on their mid-year break which is where they are right now which is why you're stuck with me and some of you are probably like who the heck is this extra chick I am the behind the scenes girl that is a part of Life Uncut and I've got some really exciting things coming up for you this week somehow I actually don't know how we've managed to do this but we've ended up with more episodes than normal tomorrow you are going to be having an extra bonus episode of dating accidentally unfiltered stories if I'm being completely honest, this was probably the funniest episode of Life Uncut I've ever edited or listened to. I had

to pause midway through editing it and send the girls a video because I was crying of laughter. I'm in the dating world with you guys and it's an absolute shit show. And these stories prove to me that I am not alone. They are possibly the most cooked dating stories I've ever heard in my life. And for a lot of us at the moment, we need a laugh. And this episode is going to be a laugh and a half. On Thursday, something very exciting is happening. Laura will actually be catching up with India Oxenberg. And some of you might recognize that name because we did an interview with India in January. She was the victim of a sex cult called NXIVM. And there's actually been some developments in that case. Alison Mack, who was an actress on Smallville and a part of the

NXIVM sex cult, was charged for her crimes. And so we're just going to be catching up with India and finding out how she's been since we spoke to her last. That will be dropping in your feeds on Thursday and today, this is what I mean, the girls go on holidays and somehow you guys end up with more content. Don't worry, I'm working behind the scenes. Today we're actually going to be taking a trip down memory lane to episode 44 that was released last June. Now the girls have spoken a whole bunch about comparison culture and about the effects of social media and how much it can kind of have a play on our mentality and the reason we thought this episode was quite timely at the moment is because there have been some really, really interesting laws passed over in

norway throughout the week they actually require any photos posted on social media by influencers or by models and celebrities that include edited faces and bodies to have a disclaimer on them and they say that this is in a bold attempt to curb unrealistic beauty standards online people all over the world are just going absolutely crazy for this saying that this is amazing and that they wish that it was brought in in places like australia so basically it makes it illegal to publish any images of models or influences that have been retouched without having this government established symbol on them the new laws apply to any photos or videos that include people with altered bodies and they say that it includes

things like enlarged lips edited muscles and waistlines so it's pretty massive like this is a really bold thing and it's going to be coming into the laws in norway after the king approves it which is pretty incredible so let's jump into this chat about body dysmorphia and social media and we'll join you tomorrow for your bonus episode of Accidentally Unfiltered Dating Stories. Today's culture is so obsessed with looking and acting young and we want to talk about a topic that we think is really important to women and men, but especially our youth,

and that is body dysmorphia. Boo. Have you heard of it, Laura? Yes. That's why we're talking about it. It'd be a real problem if I hadn't. Wow, so it was a rhetorical question. but bring the goods britney give us the intro body dysmorphia syndrome or bds is also known as

um and it's something that affects a lot of people and that's why we wanted to delve into it and i think it's because we sort of are bombarded daily with images via magazines and billboards and the tv and the internet and it's all about what the person looks like it's all about they seem beautiful and they seem perfect and i think that really creates some issues in young people thinking that they think to be successful they need to be beautiful they think to be successful they need to be perfect and they need to look a certain way they need to look like the model and they need to look like the tv presenter and i think that really plants this deep-seated issue in a lot of people so for those of you who don't know what body dysmorphia is it is basically this

obsession with the way that you look um which may not actually relate to what's happening in real life so for example people who have this illness constantly worry about the way they look they believe an inconspicuous or relatively non-existent physical attribute is a serious defect I think a lot of people often have it about their skin for example they can become very obsessive about something that they deem as a flaw that other people might look at and go oh gosh there's literally nothing there it's this obsessive nature that really is what creates this illness and basically i think you know when people are looking at themselves in the mirror all the time constantly checking something constantly comparing the way they look to other people

these are all symptoms and signs of a type of body dysmorphia and body dysmorphia itself has many many levels there are there are people who have very extreme cases and it's debilitating and then there are people who have very mild cases where they may deem a certain thing a flaw about themselves and they have obsessive tendencies over it but doesn't completely overrun their day or their ability to live a normal life. Yeah, absolutely. The severity can differ from people that know that what they're seeing and what they're thinking and what they're feeling isn't rational and isn't justified. So they're looking at themselves and they might, for example, they might say, oh my God, I'm so fat, but they know that they're putting their

size 10 jeans on. They know they're not. So there's those people, but then there are the people that it really really causes emotional distress and it can really affect their entire life because they completely believe that what they're seeing is real and what they're seeing is actually has no connection to reality it's not them in any means and that sometimes sometimes they see things on their face that aren't there they see things on their body that aren't there and it's really concerning because it's led to quite a high level of depression and suicide in teenagers and that's why I think it's so important to highlight now. So one of the reasons why we wanted to talk about this on today's episode was because there was a post that went up

Kim Kardashian had posted a video of herself wearing a corset and there was a really interesting conversation that happened on Jamila Jamil's Instagram page. She's a British actress, a radio presenter, a model, a writer, an activist and a feminist and what she has written on her Instagram is so interesting because she kind of encapsulates and really shows how the changing times in social media how there has been a bit of a revolt basically the photo that kim kardashian has posted it's a video and it's her wearing her corset from the met gala where her waist is incredibly almost like unbelievably tiny if you didn't see the video that she posted if like so i saw the photo and i thought it's got to be photoshopped but then she's obviously realized

that too and Kim Kardashian's posted a video so that she can prove it's not photoshopped and it's it's ridiculous you guys need to go and have a google look it up it's insane it's it's it doesn't it looks so unbelievably not a real person that's how tiny her waist is she looks like a Barbie doll in this we actually received messages to our own Instagram saying like this is such a good topic for conversation which is why we wanted to kind of delve into it deeper I really feel like Jameela Jamil really encapsulated the most perfect response about this post. So what she said in her Instagram, and I would love for you to go and read it because it's just, it's literally the most perfectly worded response to what is happening on social media. And what she said there is that there's

no point in screaming at Kim herself. The smart thing to do is to protect yourself from the images that you see on social media. But also if you look at something like that and you recognize that that's wrong and that that is going to do harm to other people and that that isn't like the image we should be putting out there for a realistic and attainable body then the work's already done you're already woke to what's happening in society well you can already recognize that it's damage and it's unnatural and it's not right and it's causing havoc I guess what Jamila Jamila is saying is that if you recognize that that this is that this is toxic and you recognize that it's damaging, you're able to kind of disengage with Instagram pages or with people or celebrities who

don't make you feel good about yourself. But I think that that's the first step in recognizing and unpacking this idea of body dysmorphia. But it's funny, isn't it? Because so many people recognize how ridiculous it is and how unattainable it is and how damaging it is, but they still follow pages. It's like a train wreck. They can't unfollow it. They know it makes them feel bad, but they can't unfollow it. It's like almost this obsession with the unnatural and the unattainable. I think that it's almost a little bit easy to say, Oh, just tune out and unsubscribe and unfollow the things that, you know, make you feel bad because it's everywhere. It's not just on the Instagram pages that you elect to follow on Instagram. It's in marketing.

It's in retail. It's this total lack and under-representation of diversity in what people look like which is what creates this feeling of not being good enough so I mean I know like us growing up when I was like what in the 90s the the idea of what was beautiful in the 90s was like heroin chic like think Kate Moss young so fucking underweight like super super skinny if you looked like you had a drug a drug addiction like that's what was deemed beautiful and it was literally called heroin chic and it's so ridiculous when you think about it isn't it outrageous right didn't think of what the name meant when you were young you were like oh heroin chic but you didn't think that oh that we're saying she actually looks like a junkie she looks like a heroin addict

unwell and that's and that's chic but that was the that was the goal post that we grew up with and I I remember girls in school aspiring to want to look like that and I remember girls that were young adults in my university wanting to aspire to look like that it changes throughout the years but there's always been this one constant which is this lack of diversity in what represents beauty and we have seen just recently which I think is another amazing point to bring into this chat so for anybody who missed it Calvin Klein has recently released a new billboard in New York City which features a black plus size model an LGBT icon Jari Jones and I think that this in itself it's a it's a really amazing image go and have a look at that as well but this turn around

oh wow can you see yeah that's great so basically on one side they've got a photo of what Calvin had as their model in the 90s and now what they have in the 20s and you know in 2020 and that the roaring 20s in the wild and outrageous 20s but it shows how far we have come in in now representing different types of beauty but there is still a very long way to go I remember so like you said when we were growing up and heroin chic was a thing I definitely suffered from body dysmorphia. I, until not that long ago, I still sort of do suffer from it to the point where it really, really affected my life. I looked at myself like I was the biggest, ugliest thing. And I'm not just saying I was like having a down day. There were times

where I couldn't look at myself in a mirror. I would not look at myself in a mirror for days on end because I was, I was actually disgusted at what I saw. I would not take photos. I would not let people take photos of me. I would be beside myself and my family used to, I stopped eating, like developed an eating disorder. And my family were like, you're being like, we didn't know what it was then. Like you're being ridiculous. But I genuinely believed that what I saw something different looking back at me in the mirror. And over the years, it got a lot, lot better where I finally got to the point where I had changed from being severe to less severe where I realized that I wasn't making sense and I real I started to tell myself you're being ridiculous because

you're putting on size eight pants you're not overweight you're wearing size eight and I really had to start to talk myself out of it and put myself back into reality and and say if you had a weight problem you wouldn't be putting size eight pants on I still wasn't liking what I saw but it took me a long time to get there and it was a real really really hard time and I still up until a couple years ago was still battling that to an extent and my sister always has to pull me in line she always had to say to me tell me what size you're wearing tell me like you're beautiful Brittany look at this photo like because I would be like I can't even look at myself and it's really worrying because I don't want anyone to have to go through that. I think it's interesting

what you say that you used to feel like that because I don't I don't know if it ever fully leaves you. Like when you have these feelings of, I think when you have these insecurities and you don't feel like you're good enough, I don't think it completely, completely goes away. I think that you just get better at managing it and you, and you grow to accept things about yourself. But I still think that there's always this level of underlying insecurity that stays there and maybe it can flare up depending on triggers. Cause obviously you can be triggered by things that people say, can be triggered by things that you read. I myself, like we've spoken about this on a past episode, but really briefly. So I think it's nice to kind of delve into a little bit deeper

after the show and being on The Bachelor, I became really, really self-conscious about the way that I look. And that's not something that I've ever really worried about so much, not from a vanity perspective, but just because it never, I never really thought about it. It wasn't until after doing the show where I would see pat photos of myself and I was being scrutinized by people on social media saying whether I was pretty enough or not, that I really, really, really started to get insecure about the way that I look. And particularly for me, it was about my skin because I suffer from pigmentation. I've spoken about a lot in my social media now, but I get pigmentation. I get really bad melasma and, you know, I have done loads of things to my skin to

get rid of it. I have had a crazy hectic couple thousand dollar peels that left me unable to leave the house for 10 days because I literally burnt my face off. Like I burnt my face off because I really wanted to get rid of it. And I became obsessed by it to the point where every day I was taking photos of my skin to see how bad it was. And every day I was checking it in the mirror and that has changed now. I definitely don't have the same insecurities about it. It's still there. It's actually worse than ever after pregnancy. But for me, what kind of shifted my mentality towards it was having Marley. Like I think since becoming a mom, I have become less self-focused and less worried about the way that I look. And there was like a very clear line in the sand when

that changed for me. And that was Marley. It's funny when you say that we never really shake it because if I'm going to be completely honest and I will be, I'm going to be really raw here. When I was in the finale of The Bachelor, when Nick told me he wasn't going to be with me, i remember saying to myself of course he wasn't going to be with you look at you why why would anyone pick you this is why this is my internal monologue i was like of course like if anyone in the whole world britney is going to be the first person to not be good enough to win it's you like and i i was really bad to myself i was like you should have known better i can't believe you did this to yourself and i convinced myself that he it wasn't his problem the reason he didn't pick

anyone was me it was he was he couldn't he could not fathom to wake up to me every day and to look at me every day and it was a really really low point so you definitely don't always shake it you're not going to grow out of it and um I haven't said that before so there you go that was me being really raw guys but different triggers different things that happen in your life can trigger that feeling of not being good enough and that feeling of insecurity it doesn't ever completely go away and like I know that you know that that's not the case with with like your finale like I know that now you can rationalize it and look back and go well there was 24 other girls in that season and nobody got picked like it wasn't a reflection on

you as a person it's a reflection on him but it doesn't mean that that doesn't make you question or look at yourself and try and pick apart why are you not the one that's good enough yeah it's hard it's tough the thing with with this idea of body dysmorphia is that it is a lot more common than what people realize. It only really comes into the limelight when someone has such a severe issue with it that they're having to seek treatment. I think that so many women have different varying levels of body dysmorphia that never really get talked about or spoken about because it doesn't affect their every day. But they do have this internal monologue where they're thinking, okay, my skin's not good enough. My eyebrows are not this, my lips are not this.

And that's their internal thought patterns. That's what they're telling themselves all the time. And I think that that's going to be really relatable to a lot of women who are listening to this because, I mean, I know that I've done it so many times in my life. I just don't tell people that that's what I'm thinking. Breaking it down and kind of getting into what constitutes body dysmorphia, what are some symptoms where you would be able to identify, okay, oh my God, this is what I'm doing to myself. This is what I'm struggling with at the moment.

Yeah. So look, in terms of common areas that people struggle with and symptoms, according to the Victorian Government Health Channel, common areas are facial skin. so it's funny you said that Laura because that's the number one thing that the Victorian health government says people with body dysmorphia um suffer from is it's looking at their skin oh my god I was so I cannot explain to you how fixated I was on it for a while yeah and now like I still don't don't get me wrong guys like I'm not over it I still worry about it it's still something that I feel very insecure about from time to time it was like it was something I thought about all

day every day like that was where my head was at in regards to I thought about what my skin looked like I would be having conversations with people and they might look at me in a funny way and I would think oh that they're looking at my melasma that's what they're thinking that my melasma is really bad it's so funny because I don't even notice it on you I'm not even saying that but that just goes to show you how it's this huge thing for you and I look at you every day and I I'm not even tooting your horn I always walk into Laura and I'm like you look really great today It happened this one time. So I went to Mamma Mia to record a podcast with Tully Smythe. I was recording a podcast with Tully and I remember her coming up. It was the first time I'd ever

seen her in real life. And she came up and spoke to me and I looked at her and I was like, oh my God, like your skin's so perfect. And then she was talking to me and I thought, oh, you're looking at my skin. You think my skin's bad. And that was what was going through my head before we recorded the podcast. And I know that she was probably in retrospect, there's no way she was thinking that. like she's a lovely girl why on earth would she be thinking that about me but that's all i was thinking and then the whole time we were recording the podcast i was like i'm so self-conscious about my skin and then the first thing i did is i went and looked in the mirror to see if my concealer was still concealing it like that's how how silly yeah and it's not even that bad guys it's just

something that's like been my biggest insecurity your insecurity yeah that's why well it's funny because that's their number one facial skin then they talk about the face in general including the size and the shape of your eyes or your nose or your ears or your lip so that's the other thing that people are really worried about um then of course it's thighs stomach boobs legs breasts and genitals so these are all the things that women worry about and that's the size and the shape um genitals is a big one people get really worried about if they've got any or outy labia um what other people's looks like is there's too big is there's too small so that's a really big one and they they go to the extent of having surgery on it but that's a whole nother topic I think this

idea of like talking about genitals is really interesting because it's something that we like never speak about even with like our closest friends I don't think I've ever spoken to my closest friends about what my vagina looks like I don't know what your vagina looks like no and I'm definitely not gonna tell y'all on this podcast but I do think that like there becomes this insecurity around it when there is no conversation because you have no point of comparison so I guess like what in an ideal world if you were going to hold up a Barbie doll we've been we've been raised with Barbie as like your toy they don't have any genitalia yeah she's smooth yeah she's smooth she's bold but like this idea of it being an innie is like a perfect little

vagina but like women don't have innies like that's like some do sure great majority of women don't have innies yeah good for you fantastic take a photo I guess for me it's different I work in an industry where there's a big part of my job that i look at vaginas and penises all day it's like what we do and you don't even that's just when she's on lunch break oh yeah no that's before work um we do it all day like i do things where we used to you know women are having trouble falling pregnant we flush their fallopian tubes um most of our patients are in gowns with no underwear ultrasounds everything so i see them all day every day i don't even register it it's second nature it would be looking at someone's genitals for me it's like looking at their hand it's just

it's just part of the job but the point of this is there are so many different kinds and and they're all normal every single one is normal because there is no normal and that's what I think people need to understand but for you because you get to see it all the time surely there's like some level of reassurance there as well you're like ah oh I know where I sit in the spectrum of life but most people don't have that they don't have a point of comparison with that sort of stuff yeah whereas unlike your face or another part of your body you can actually see and compare that to somebody else whereas like your genitals yeah I ain't got the same sort of well we really really delved into the genital part but let's talk about okay so they're like the main areas that people struggle

with and I totally get that for me it was my weight I never had a problem with my skin or anything else it was just like I thought I looked like the size of a house when I didn't that was my thing your thing was the skin but let's talk about some other symptoms of BDD body dysmorphic disorder one of them was what I touched on earlier a little bit which is this constantness of looking at yourself in the mirror or taking photos or sometimes it's almost the the opposite of that if you find yourself having to completely avoid mirrors because you don't like what you see in there these are all also symptoms of someone who might be suffering from some level of body dysmorphia yeah so we have like constant dieting and over exercising which i feel like majority of

people are going to say well i've done that before um the grooming to excess so for example a big thing is like brushing the same bit of your hair over and over and over shaving the same patch of your skin over and over and over um putting concealer on the same part of your melasma all day and it's all you think about um excessive consumption of your thoughts of this one area of your face repeat cosmetic surgery or procedures so I think like if you get yourself into into a habit of constantly trying to fix something yeah and that's like especially if it's the same body part over and over constantly being improved so like you get your boobs done but then you get them again because you're still like they're not they're not right they're not right you get them

again and again so it's like procedures because make procedures is one thing but then like over and over and over again like there is this obsessive nature and this repetitive nature which is what starts to really uh signify if you've got body dysmorphia yeah then there's like obviously the whole comparison you spend a lot of time comparing yourself your weight and your looks to your friends or to models or to people that you know are unattainable like okay well why is kim kardashian's waist like that i need my waist to be like that or i'm not going to be beautiful no one's going to love me so that's a really big one um depression anxiety feeling really down and feeling really low not wanting to go to social events not wanting your friends to see you

excessively trying to cover up your body. So it might be summer and it's really hot and you're like, I'm just going to wear my jumper. I think as well, like when you get into like those sorts of strategies for coping, like when you are displaying avoidance behavior or you're trying to cover up, like that's when you're really kind of fallen deeply down the rabbit hole of like this actually being a significant issue that affects your life. And I think that that's when you really need to have a look at yourself and go, okay, what can I do to better develop the coping mechanisms and the skills to be okay with the way that I look because you know what like every single person is unique we've all been given vastly different personalities and aesthetics and

the difference in us is what makes us all beautiful and unique a really really really big one one that I happened to me and I experienced when I was young too it's it's not even feeling comfortable in front of your partner you don't want them to see you naked you don't want them to see you in swimwear because you're just mortified that they'll think you're unattractive that's a really big one and that one breaks my heart because this person's with you because they love you they love every part of you if you guys do feel like you've had any of these symptoms and you are listening to this podcast being like yep yep tick tick been there done that then you do need to go and seek help because it is a serious condition so you need to go to your gp or go and speak to

a therapist and the number one treatment for body dysmorphia is cognitive behavioral therapy and they'll do that a therapist will do that with you it's just a short-term therapy technique it does have an end an end time so it's not like something you have to go and do for years they'll often as part of the therapies they'll put a timeline on they'll say in three months we'll get there in three months this will be over for example um and basically it's just helps people find a new way to behave it changes their thought processes and this is the number one treatment that they use it's all about like retraining your brain and retraining your thought patterns and also I guess it comes into this idea of mindfulness like when you know that you're falling down the rabbit hole

of thinking these things and thinking these negative thoughts trying to stop yourself and focus on other aspects of your life that bring you joy and make you happy and like I said like I think a massive turning point for me was when I had Marley having a shift in my life having a shift in my focus really made a huge difference in my own vanity I think like I no longer am the only person in my world I'm no longer the most important person in my world and that changed my life incredibly however i don't think going and having a kid is the solution for everyone okay going and having a baby is not on the treatment plan guys laura it worked for laura it's not gonna work for everyone else but it's just another way to deal with stress um it can

you can use it for other things too relationship breakdowns grief loss um it's a really really powerful tool and something that everybody should learn and take into that life so i do really really want you to not shy away from this. If you do feel like there is any of this that is ringing true to you, please go and seek help. Often like thinking that needing to go to therapy is like the most drastic and like you can only do that when it's at the very, very like bleakest moment. I do think that there's other things that you can do before having to like seek out that sort of professional help. I think if you are struggling with some aspect of body dysmorphia, depending on how debilitating it is to your life, things like unfollowing people on social

media who make you feel bad. Things like being really, really mindful of what content you're consuming. Also being aware of what you're being marketed because like, you know, we seek out what we want to know. So I think it's very easy to continue to read blogs about how to make your skin better or to look up like, you know, different exercise programs or like just constantly consuming content that is feeding this insecurity that you have. That's where you have to try and break the cycle as well acknowledge that you're doing it don't beat yourself up for doing it but put the phone down and walk away from the laptop when you are finding yourself constantly consuming information or looking at photos that are just perpetuating this feeling of not being good enough

yeah I recently had a few months ago now I had a social media call where I was looking at people and I'm like they actually just make me feel shit and I went through I called a couple hundred people from my I didn't know them personally there were people that I had obviously just followed once upon a time because I thought they were beautiful or for whatever reason and then I was like you actually don't give me one bit of content that benefits my life well I don't gain anything from them except I look at them and I'm like oh my god they're so hot like why can't I be like that and this and this totally like then all oh my god I love this the symbiosis of this how this just feeds full circle whole new world and then this just kind of comes full circle again

to what Jamila Jamil was saying in her post and what we touched on at the very start of this of this chat and that is that you can be empowered like you are the one who dictates the content that you consume you are the one that dictates the products that you buy you are the one that dictates what you're being marketed to so take power take control use the tools that you've been given and recognize what makes you feel bad and what adds to that and make empowered choices to live a better life where one where you're not comparing yourself to other people and you're not allowing yourself to feel insecure because of shit like social media yeah and just be kind to yourself i just want to finish this with a quote from this post where jamila jamil has said

you have the power you control every market you choose what and who is trendy unfollow the people who tell you things that hurt your self-esteem don't let the debris of their damage spill onto you unfollow people brands that don't make you feel powerful and happy and grateful for what you have block mute delete repeat boom mic drop i think what a way to finish laura thank you thank very much. Please come again.