Body Image

Body image involves our perception, imagination, emotions, and physical sensations about our bodies. It's not based on fact. It's psychological in nature, and more influenced by self-esteem than by actual physical attractiveness as judged by others. It is not inborn, but learned. This learning occurs in families and among peers, but these only reinforce what is learned and expected culturally.
In this culture, women are starving themselves, alternating between starving and gorging, obsessing, pounding and wanting to remove what makes us female: our bodies, our curves, our pear-shaped bodies.
Our psychological boundaries develop early in life, based on how we are held and touched or not held and touched. Someone who is deprived of touch as a young child, for example, may not have the proper information she or he needs to differentiate between what is inside and what is outside herself or himself. As a result, boundaries may be unclear or unformed. …