When we’re told our looks do matter
It’s not about how you look, we tell our kids. It’s about the person you are inside.
That’s true – but it’s an ideal. The reality is, looks matter. Every day, everywhere, to almost everyone. We judge; we are judged.
For some, that becomes a debilitating illness – and of course, it’s more than just peer pressure. New research says diseases like anorexia nervosa and bulimia begin not as a media-fuelled desire to be skinny, but as a brain or gene abnormality.
Our fears about how we are perceived contribute to the problem, though. Teens and young adults are constantly exposed to ad campaigns like that for Jockey, showing buff, toned All Blacks like Aaron Smith and TV stars like Matilda Rice in their underwear.
Today, we report three very different stories about body image – the good, the bad and the absolutely, bloody inspiring.
At one grim extreme is the story of Luke Chivers, a young Tauranga man who bravely speaks out about his battle with bulimia. The illness nearly killed him. But against the odds, he found the strength to ask for help. Now, he is finally on the gritty road to recovery.
On the other side of the coin are those who are so comfortable with themselves they don’t care what others think. So here’s to Ygnacio Cervio, the extraordinarily hairy Aucklander who has won the rights to host the 2021 World Beard and Moustache Championships in the city. He and his fellow beardsmen expose themselves to raised eyebrows (and curled, waxed moustaches) and they revel in it.
Finally, though, are three New Zealand women who, we report today, have overcome extraordinary battles with breast cancer and have chosen to appear in a campaign to raise awareness. They show their scarred bodies and reconstructed breasts to get the message out to young women (and indeed, some men) that they must be alert to the early signs of cancer.
Confronting images do make us sit up and take notice. The photo of three-year-old Alan Kurdi, his body washed up on a Turkish beach, forced the world to pay attention to the Syrian refugee crisis. Graphic ads depicting car crashes have hammered home road safety messages. And images like those of Kelly McDiarmid, Shona Kelway and Anete Smith remind us the battle against cancer requires continuing vigilance.
They expose more than just flesh. They expose self-confidence that, perhaps, can only be found in the face of illness and death.
Incredibly, McDiarmid found a positive in her double mastectomy. She decided that as a runner, she was happy to turn down a breast reconstruction.
She finished her cancer treatment in April this year, and is planning to run a half marathon.
‘‘My breasts had done their job, they had fed my three children,’’ she tells us. ‘‘They did not define me.’’ What a message that is to teach her sons, to teach all our children: that they are defined by who they are at heart, by how they live, and not by the shape of their bodies.