Let's actually talk about: Body Dysmorphia
- Laura Bird
- Aug 15, 2020
- 32 min read
Updated: Aug 18, 2020
I recently realised that there is a strong likelihood that what I have been living with psychologically throughout the last 22 or so years has in fact been undiagnosed Body Dysmorphic Disorder, or ‘BDD’.
'Grown' - Taynee Tinsley
As someone who has suffered most of their adult life with Anxious and Depressive disordered moods and behaviour, I now believe this to be the root cause.
A post-it-note definition of BDD, for those that are unfamiliar, is as follows: 'a mental health condition where a person spends a lot of time worrying about flaws in their appearance' which 'are often unnoticeable to others' and 'can be very upsetting and have a big impact on daily life'. People of any age can have BDD, but it's most common in teenagers and young adults. It of course affects both men and women.
According to the International OCD Foundation, BDD will affect between 1-3% of the global population at some point in their lifetime. I suspect the true impact is much higher, given how difficult this is to measure.
Now. Science and stats aside, I need to level with you. I have NO idea what to do with this new-found discovery; one that simultaneously feels like big news and something I’ve always known deep down. My inner monologue has always been consistently negative and self-loathing (I wish there were a less dramatic way to say it but it's true), but when this is labelled with a nifty acronym and you figure out what you've been going through is a widely recognised medical disorder, it very much... takes on a new colour.
"BDD will affect between 1-3% of the global population at some point in their lifetime"
I hope I can begin to describe what it has felt like to experience BDD, how this disorder manifests itself in daily life, and moments that have been particularly triggering; firstly as sharing is a form of therapy (along with writing, cries the ex-English scholar in me) but also to try and put something out into the world of social media that isn’t filtered, Facetuned and carefree, but actually a bit terrifying to share. I hope that if anyone else feeling the pressure of this deranged hidden-camera-series excuse for 2020 recognises any similarity of experience or thought, this might be a prod to begin a journey of research and recognition of what is quite frankly an awful thing to live with.
Huge caveat: this is, of course, an account of one person's thoughts and experiences. I in no way speak for anyone else. There are plenty of people going through arguably more severe struggles with both eating disorders and mental health. I am well aware how lucky I am and how much worse things could be. That said, If you are generally triggered by discussions or posts around eating, bodies, diets, or anything along those lines, maybe give this one a miss.
A little about me for context; I’m a 27-year-old female from a working class UK family. I grew on a council estate in Wolverhampton with two incredibly generous and loving parents and a shed load of older half-siblings scattered around the area. We owned our house due to a well-timed redundancy payout from my Dad’s longstanding job in a tyre factory. Primary school children being the absolute wankers that they are, and picking up on the slightest difference in accent or demeanour, I was bullied very early on at school and by the kids in my road for supposedly being 'posh' (this remains hilarious to me to this day - where I come from you're posh if you can manage a holiday outside the UK or have curtains AND blinds. I didn't know what hummus or avocado were until I was 20). I switched schools and then went on to attend a girls-only high school (read: you do a test to get in but you don’t pay- there's no way we could have afforded grammar school). I ended up coming out of school with straight A*s and an over-achievement complex to boot and went on to study English at Warwick, where I met the two loves of my life: my boyfriend Ben and theatre, which is now my career (after a 2-year stint in Advertising and a year of retraining in drama school). I now live in south London with the aforementioned Ben & our giant cat. When I'm not acting I am working for the NHS and by no means am I ungrateful or unhappy with the cards life has dealt me.
Daniel Martin - Lucas
There’s a tendency to want to blame all disordered behaviour on childhood trauma. Don't get me wrong, there things I need to unpack with a therapist that time (and lets be honest, money) has not yet facilitated. I lost my dear old Dad very unexpectedly in the Easter break of my first year at University aged just 18, and although of course traumatising as any sudden loss is, I don’t feel it’s relevant to this, so we’ll leave that and his glorious life for another time/post. Equally, yes, I was bullied intermittently but this was largely down to keenness to learn and what was probably quite different social behaviour to many of my peers. Like I said, primary school kids are dicks. They’ll find anything to pick on, and equally I didn’t help myself – I was the kid who would WITHOUT FAIL cry their face paint off by the end of any birthday party, celebration or event, who I would now roll my eyes at despairingly as they whine to their parent whilst I’m trying to jam to SIX on the northern line.
I think issues with BDD began in their truest form (beyond the usual adolescent insecurities) at school, growing up within in a sea of young, attractive & largely quite privileged girls in dangerous cocktail of intellect, hormones, competitive and sometimes brutal academic standards, non-existent pastoral care and a neighbouring mixed-gender school.
And boy, did I get sucked in. I distinctly remember getting into gymnastics (despite a real lack of natural ability in both dance and flexibility that has haunted me right into my present musical theatre career) and donning a leotard for practice was humiliating and upsetting from the off. Even at 11 I found myself unable to enter a room without examining every other person/face/body intently; wondering how it is that they look like that and how I look like this. 'This' being horrid, disgusting, plain, ugly, insert-negative-adjective-here. Despite an abundance of love from my parents, I must have somehow come to the irrevocable conclusion that I was an absolute monster. How exactly, I don't know. Every mirror I passed, every reflective surface, a gaze over, initiated a pause, a scan: do I still look awful? What about from this angle? Maybe if I tug and pull? Pinching and prodding and examining with more enthusiasm than I could ever muster in science lessons, to the point where I became a blob of beige coloured nothingness staring back at myself in the mirror. Think of it as the physical embodiment of you saying a word too many times and it no longer feeling like something that could plausibly be the English language. Inhuman.
Sadly, the bullying followed me to high school in the early years, with two girls even making a website with photos of me called something ridiculous like 'wehatelaurabird.com' complete with chat boxes under my photos where friends of theirs were encouraged to write horrible things about me (low key impressive given terms of how many hours it must have taken to make back in the 00s with dial-up internet). I realised I had an issue even then, because it really didn't bother me the way it should have. They weren't saying anything I didn't already think. I just felt embarrassed that other people I didn't know agreed. I WAS disgusting wasn't I? In later years I made friends with a group of the more popular girls and distinctly recall sitting applying makeup for entire lunch breaks in an effort to masquerade as one of them, as someone who belonged at the table.
It is an awful thing to be betrayed by your body. And it's lonely, because you feel you can't talk about it. You feel it's something between you and the body. You feel it's a battle you will never win... yet you fight it day after day, and it wears you down. Even if you try to ignore it, the energy it takes to ignore it will exhaust you.”
- David Levithan, Every Day
I have been consistently shocked and repelled by photos of myself from this age onward. You come to terms with what you see in a mirror in real time, which, even if you dislike it, you get used to. You think 'OK, this is the situation. This is what I have to work with and this is what it looks like clothed, naked, made up, bare faced, tanned', etc etc. You can observe this constantly. Check it every 10 minutes in the mirror. Your brain, the evil corporate boss to the rest of your body demands: ‘Are we still ugly!? What’s the latest?’ The eyes respond, panicked and flitting from shoulder to arm to face - ‘Yes, yes, I’m sorry sir I’m afraid so - but we’re monitoring the situation on the hour, every hour’. ‘Fine. Now go and get me another coffee, we’re going to need it to keep her awake thinking about this all night’. There sits a ‘spectrum’ of self-identity, if you will, of the various ways you know you can and do look, from full glam at prom to your ill, flu-ridden self on the sofa in trackies. The problem arises when all of a sudden you see a holiday snap your mum has taken, your school photo, a photo booth image of you and a friend, and BAM! You begin to feel sick, the heat rises, your heart beats out of your chest, that sinking feeling lands in your stomach, and a total confusion and panic grips you. Who is that!? Is that me?! It’s obviously me, certain features give that away. You look through multiple images to see if it was just the one odd photo. It’s not, they’re all horrible, unrecognisable. Your eyes frantically scan around the image, from hair to jaw to leg to eye, back to hair, to your friend who looks exactly like… well, your friend because the fun thing about BDD is it only affects how you view yourself. The feeling of recognition one is supposed to feel when they see their own image is instead one of detachment and disgust.
I’ve often heard the phrase ‘Oh god, do I really look like that?’ uttered by girls after being tagged in what they perceive to be an unflattering picture – mid laugh, or caught off guard not sucking everything in wearing their bikini on holiday. It's so much more than that. It's incredibly upsetting and confusing to see images of yourself because a part of you just can't accept or understand that it's you, or begin to come to terms with what that actually looks like. It’s funny, I did so well in Art at school & my favourite style to work and paint in was always photo-realism - yet no matter how many painstaking graphite drawings of household objects or characterful acrylic canvasses of my Granddad I managed to produce, I never could nail a self-portrait. They always ended up distorted, technically good but dreadfully warped. Even when working from a photo I couldn’t seem to produce anything that anyone could agree came close to me.
A general disgust and confusion at your own image becomes something you carry around with you, a heavy weight, heavier than your many textbooks. You learn to avoid eye contact as a standard, god forbid someone looks and sees whatever it is you saw in the mirror earlier, that weird human-shaped person that you don’t really recognise, identify with or like. God forbid someone has the time to actually, properly examine you and your features, look at you in great detail. I enjoyed wearing glasses because it meant more of my face was hidden. Even teachers making eye contact was incredibly uncomfortable. I felt sorry for them, having to even waste their time looking my way. You find yourself dreading major life events like holidays, birthdays, and yes even eventually getting engaged and married because of the inevitable photos to mark the occasion that you will have to live with that pop up to remind you how horrid you look. There’s nothing worse than having an incredible time at a wedding, night out, anything really and having a rare night of being totally in the moment and not thinking about how you look, only for someone to tag you in a photo the following day and the memory of the event being completely ruined by you being physically repulsed by your own body, features, everything. You can’t bear to look at any images from that time, so what should be happy memories sat in frames around your room become buried in the bowels of a friend’s Facebook album with the hope that they never resurface on Timehop years later.
"God forbid someone look and see whatever it is you saw in that image, that weird human-shaped person that you don’t really recognise, identify with or like."
Flash forward to a particular turning point in drama school, and we're in rehearsals for our final year show, in which our director led a great intimacy exercise with our show-partners. We begin with us sat knee to knee facing each other, into 4 minutes of silent eye contact, before tracing each other’s outlines with an index finger under various instructions and allowing ourselves to really take in that person and study them. The BDD within me was horrified that my partner had to sit there and properly take me in for what felt like hours (I felt so unbearably sorry he couldn't work with another girl and had to endure me), yet I got through it by being absolutely thrilled to be able to focus my attention solely on another person… that’s what I’ve always loved about acting. Listening, watching, really taking in another performer and responding to what they give you, and therefore losing yourself. I struggle with the big ‘Here she is boys!’ razzle dazzle look-at-me moments (which I can switch on as necessary and enjoy in character but truly in my soul make me want to run for cover with a tub of hummus and a blanket). Because isn’t that the true conflict of a self-conscious actor? Look at me!!! Doing the thing!! But please don’t. I’m painfully awkward and uncomfortable.
It really hurts me that this condition affects my ability to be successful in my job as much as it does. As one of my favourite teachers often said, if you’re insecure you’re not fully in character. It's selfish to be insecure because you're not listening to others. The problem is when that becomes a coping mechanism for life and you end up ‘in character’ day-to-day to avoid these crippling feelings of self-hatred. You walk through life as a sort of phantom of the opera, living in fear of what happens when the mask inevitably drops in front of someone you care about and they see you for the insecure, mess that you truly are in your soul.
A word on eating disorders. A separate beast to BDD, although intrinsically linked, I have experienced mild forms of these and a definite awful relationship with food for most of my life. My mum has been on diets or at least restricting calories as long as I can remember- no judgement, everyone’s mum went to the bizarre church-hall cult we know more commonly as ‘slimming’ every week, coming back either elated ‘2lb off!’ or completely deflated followed by an evening of self-flagellation ‘no change, but I’ve been so good this week!’. The many books totting up how many ‘points’ are in a sausage roll vs. a chicken kiev litter the kitchen table, advising that a spoonful of mayonnaise is the devil BUT in fact you can eat 2lb of Ryvita crispbreads and still have enough ‘points’ for a cornetto before bed, reducing all culinary pleasure into a neat rationing system imbued with guilt and one-upmanship.
I happily bought into the narrative of always aiming to be a lighter, smaller, a better version of yourself sold to us by the mass media and those awful music channels of the 90s and 00s (TMF anyone?). Any weight gain or shape shift was bad, evil, frowned upon, a failure. Add to the mix (as is often the case in these situations) a Dad whose primary way of showing love is by cooking and watching us eat his (frankly incredible and often butter-laden) food, and off we go on a difficult psychological journey with food, eating and what it means to nourish oneself.
I have always longed so desperately for a small waist. This manifested itself at school with me going through a phase of throwing away my sandwiches and forgoing lunch; I recall a group of girls in sixth form even colloquially dubbing themselves the ‘fasting’ club: ‘how long have you not eaten in?’ ‘oh I’m doing really well, 2 days!’ ‘wow, I wish I had your commitment, I had an apple yesterday because I felt like I was going to pass out’ ‘babe, you look great in your skirt though look it’s dropping off you!’. Fast forward through a few years of every meal occasion instilling feelings of guilt and all of a sudden, the feeling of being full suddenly becomes linked to those horrid mirror demons from earlier. Perhaps if I hadn’t eaten until I was full, I wouldn’t have such a weird jawline, a puffy arm, a squidgy waist. I’d look like one of THEM. The beautiful people. That girl I can facetune/cleverly pose myself into. The ‘oh if I just lost a stone and got some fillers and maybe some hair extensions and and and…..’ her. The one that doesn’t exist. Everything about food becomes a success or failure. Cue the inner monologue: chicken and veg? A*. Good girl. Biscuits and coffee? What a failure. Why do you even try? What’s the point in having aspirations and goals if you don’t even have the willpower to avoid a biscuit? You’ll never achieve anything great. It’s your fault you look like this and you’re only going to get worse, uglier, more deformed. And so on.
Moving through the years, shortly after my move to London I went through a phase where I thought it would be a wonderful idea to make myself sick after meals, particularly meals out which were inevitably more difficult to make healthy. What made things worse is that I felt, although inherently wrong, this was solving all my issues. I got to enjoy the food, maintain social cues and throw everyone off the scent, whilst purging myself of all the guilt (quite literally). I’d watch people on my way to the loos in Wagamama for a purge, wondering if they knew what I was about to go and do. Did any of them do this too? Maybe. All I knew was that something was working for me, and people were giving me positive feedback. This behaviour was driven of course by those pesky mirror demons hating my every inch, but exacerbated by joining a trendy ad agency where the chat was largely centred around the tiny kale salads everyone was having for lunch, who ran 10 miles into to work that day- and to top it off everyone was intimidatingly attractive. The corridors were filled with producers that looked like indie band frontmen and skeletal-yet-somehow-busty receptionists with names like Tallulah that stalk around the office in stilettos and leather trousers who eat cigarettes and men for breakfast. And whether it was in my head or not, the beautiful people earned the respect of the other beautiful people, did better in the office, had more people wanting to grab a Sauvignon Blanc with them on a Friday afternoon, were happier and just well... had better lives. Enter a very normal, slightly wobbly size-12 Laura who already feels uncomfortable in Knightsbridge fannying around on powerpoint. She immediately gets a gym membership and begins furiously calorie counting, 1200 a day no more (sometimes less, even when paired with a 2hr gym session) unable to bear client meetings and any extended socialising with the other graduate scheme 20-somethings for fear of someone realising what a monster she is. A grad photoshoot is a particular unwelcome surprise one day at work and she recoils in horror at how huge and ugly she is in comparison to her gorgeous counterparts. A few months in and 2 stone down, suddenly it feels like people are noticing her. She’s more comfortable at work, she no longer hides from people in her own team around lunch time. Yes, she would love to grab a wine after work! She gets a burst of confidence and decides to audition for a musical in central London with a big amateur society of largely office workers who have gone the city route but still love performing (mainly to get some friends) and ends up getting cast in the lead role. Suddenly she feels part of something, seen, more confident in meetings, colleagues comment on how she’s looking better, how she’s clearly lost weight. Skinny = good. Even if she can’t quite believe what she’s seeing in the mirror is good or anything that she should like, other people’s praise is enough to encourage her to get out of bed in a morning and keep plugging on. Which is all well and good, if you’re going to remain the same size or shape forever.
The issue with you having a ‘golden period’ (teen years, for most girls I know) of a short period you believe you were happy with your body, or were simply at your smallest and didn’t ‘appreciate’ it at the time (a common rhetoric) is that this, like worshipping any older images or versions of yourself, sets you up for huge and inevitable disappointment. The strictest of 27-year-olds with a personal trainer and all the willpower in the will most likely fail to alter his or her appearance enough to achieve something close to their 17-year old self. They'll probably look banging for all the effort, but it's unlikely they'll be able to shimmy on into that shiny, probably incredibly flammable burgundy monstrosity of a junior prom dress or polyester Moss Bros ensemble (nor frankly should they want to). Our bodies change irrevocably, chemically, biologically - year on year we're changing even beyond puberty. Once girls are through those rough years, there is an unspoken understanding that you are 'done' with growth in your early 20s. You have ARRIVED and any deviation from this is a failure. I certainly believed this until recently - lets face it, it's hard to see yourself ageing and accept it as something positive, especially if you weren't overly happy with your younger, tighter self.
"Even at my most ill, there was the voice: ‘Your waist is the smallest it’s been. This is it. You might feel so awful you can barely speak to people ... but look how skinny you are."
I was DELIGHTED to drop weight again a couple of years on from my binge-purge-crazy gym period just before drama school as the result of a literal, raging, medically diagnosed stomach ulcer. We’re talking, I can’t eat a bite of solid food without having to get a cab home from work and remain curled in the fetal position with debilitating stomach pain. I was still working full time and doing shows on evenings and weekends during this time, and at its worst, I distinctly remember being covered with spare woolly coats from costume by my very concerned friend as I shivered in a ball under our dressing table during a production of 9 to 5 which took place during the hottest week of the year in a building with no air conditioning, whilst the rest of my cast members tried not to pass out from trying to dance in 30 degree heat wearing wigs, boots and 4 layers of neoprene and nylon. Even at my most ill, there was the voice: ‘Your waist is the smallest it’s been. This is it. You might feel so awful you can barely speak to people backstage, but look how skinny you are.’ I wish I was alone in this totally fucked up line of thought but I can’t even count the times I’ve heard banter from friends (male and female) along the lines of ‘God I’d love a short illness right now, take the easy way out – if someone could mail me a tapeworm that would be amazing, ha ha ha’. I frequently look at photos from that time and fantasize about that waist, the holy grail of measurements that I never thought I’d get to. I was medicated up to my eyeballs and recovery took several months, meant countless days spent in bed writhing in pain, and lots of missed work and social events in what were my final few months before drama school. The sad fact is, that the pain that it put me through seems like nothing in comparison to the slow, dull ache that I’ve been living with as a constant reminder of how much I loathe myself and my appearance – it’s chronic rather than acute. It is always there, you might have a blissful hour when you wake up before you have to consider your appearance and who might see you (worst of all, you) that day. But the minute you remember, there it is. The weight of a kettle bell you’re dragging round with you. And as horrifically privileged, insensitive and messed up the thinking I mentioned is around ‘wishing for a small illness to lose weight’, I’d take another stomach ulcer any day if someone could magic this chronic emotional and physical pain away from me for good. I hope I’m alone in this, but I sadly suspect I’m far from it.
So let’s talk about performing. Professionally. This is what I do, or did, for a living before Lady Corona reared her ugly head.
There is the constant belief that feeds into my work that, despite how talented you are or believe yourself to be, you have to be easy on the eye. It is inescapable. A friend, one who inspired me to make the leap and go to drama school, got a UK tour gig as her first job out of drama school. Amazing! She, although a new grad, became the poster girl, along with the male lead. Unsurprising, as shows often do this and she’s absolutely gorgeous. She’d follow me to every train station on a billboard, on Facebook banners, even staring at me from a poster on the back of a toilet door in a pub. And as well as being incredibly proud, the horrid voices in my head started to dig their claws in to me. ‘You’ll never be a poster girl. Who the hell would put you on a poster?’ There’s ‘them’ – i.e. the beautiful poster people, and then there’s you. Show photography has always been an absolute horror to me. Since university I’ve dreaded the dress rehearsal shots coming back, splashed over Facebook, campus etc for promotion. I wanted to be able to enjoy performing without popping for a coffee on campus and being confronted with my own monstrous image. Further than that, I couldn't fathom how something I enjoy so much and brings me so much fulfilment looks like THAT on my body and face.
"Who the hell would put you on a poster?’ There’s ‘them’ – i.e. the beautiful poster people, and then there’s you."
Again, you begin to not recognise the person in the pictures- you know how amazing you FEEL when you belt that note or are having the best time mid dance-number, so why doesn’t it look how you feel? Why do you look so deformed, so unlike whatever little self-identity you’ve held on to? Who could possibly enjoy watching you in a show if that’s how all that joy translates? Disgusting.
One particular series of events I’ll never forget is attending -to my absolute horror- a photo studio to take promo shots for my first London am-dram show, which happened to be Legally Blonde. Cue me in a skintight pink dress with tiny dog and a shitload of clip in blonde extensions. Other cast members were having character shots too, but I arrive already nervous, memories of horrid school photos past floating around in my head, to quickly find out the dog and I are to be the main poster image. Fuck. There’s an inherent assumption by people who know you do theatre, either casually or as a career, that you’re automatically going to be comfortable enough with yourself to get up and, well, do what you do. Sing. Dance. Act. Be. If you’ve been brave enough to -willingly- go into an audition room full of strangers, shake your tits and belt yourself into being in a show, standing in front of a camera for some quick promo shots shouldn’t really be a stumbling block. Should it? (Actually many performers seem to hate headshots and professional shoots so maybe i'm not alone on this one)
So here we are, in a small studio space in Brixton and I suddenly find myself stood on a white backdrop, one society member moving my hair around and directing me in poses, one society member balanced on a chair precariously leaning forward dangling chicken fridge raiders just above the camera to try and force the dog (Bruce, a Chihuahua - naturally) to look up, and I’m wondering how long it is before they give up on getting a good shot from either of us and ask one of the other cast members to step in, or more likely, ‘Can we just do the dog on his own?’. I secretly pray for this and the deeper we get into the shoot, chicken smell permeating the room, the more I read into everything the (lovely) photographer is doing and saying. The brain demons fire. ‘He’s wishing it was just the dog.’ ‘They’re going to realise they cast the wrong person’. ‘They’re going to realise how fat and disgusting you are, you fooled them this long’ ‘Look, he’s frowning. It all looks terrible. You can’t take direction. You’re not doing anything right, what a surprise’. It takes every fibre of my being not to run away. I talk to cast members after, they had fun it would seem. Maybe I did too a little, the dog was a huge bonus and everyone is so lovely. I leave thinking maybe they won’t turn out awful, maybe with all this effort I’ll actually feel human and remotely like what I see.
Cut to a few weeks later and we get the proofs. The photographer has clearly got a great idea of what he wants and is very good at capturing people. Sure, it’s unedited, they’re adding background, letters, etc. I wonder what version they’ll pick to plaster everywhere, and hope that it doesn’t make me feel sick, as the sight of most images of me do. Another few weeks later, I get sent the finished poster by the lovely guy running the publicity. And my stomach drops. In the days before Facetune there existed simply Adobe Photoshop, and this man is clearly well-versed. I’ve seen the unedited shots, so I don’t know how I’m meant to react when I see the final poster and it looks like I am the after shot that you see in plastic surgery adverts for liposuction and breast implants at the back of women’s magazines or on internet popups. It’s still me, sure. But my waist has been nipped in, the likes of which I could only dream to achieve through dieting. My boobs have been lifted, extra shadow given. My teeth have been whitened. Arms are thinner. Skin is clear. I’m at dinner with friends when it comes through and I sit looking at it for a while, unable to react.
"...my stomach drops. In the days before Facetune (or certainly its wide use) there existed simply Adobe Photoshop, and this man is clearly well-versed..."
The person who edited the photo wasn’t to know how I felt, about my mirror demons, and particularly that my ‘thick’ waist has been something that has repulsed me and allowed me to devalue my own self-worth since the age of about 11. Something I’ve used to justify not being one of the popular girls, not getting attention from boys, not being invited to things, being underestimated at school, any sort of social or personal failure. Not just my waist, but the idea that I’m not one of them. The poster people. The ones people want to talk to and look at and watch and employ and be friends with. However much I’d worked on my appearance, (and I’d already lost around 20lbs by the time this shot was taken), the moment I received this (not subtly) edited shot of myself, the purpose of which was to promote a show and sell tickets, was the moment that I was sent into an irrevocable spiral of belief that everything I had been carrying round with me, every insecurity, was in fact, correct. And other people saw it too. I damn well wasn’t one of the poster people, even when literally put on the front of one. This guy absolutely meant well and probably just wanted a more aesthetically pleasing image to splash on social media and entice people. But I felt seen, and not in a good way. He knows. I’ve been found out, and he had to correct it before anyone saw. It’s classic imposter syndrome. The feeling someone is going to tap you on the shoulder and call you out for what you’re doing. And mine was now so embedded that I struggled through the rest of rehearsals and it took until opening for me to get any form of confidence back that I was in the right place and doing the right thing – along with losing another 10lb to boot so that nobody ever had to edit my waist thinner again (until aged 25 I discovered Facetune - whole new can of worms which we’ll go into later).
That’s one of the worst things. I’ve been multiple shapes, sizes and levels of fitness and even at my smallest I still found things wrong and hated being in my own body so much I cried myself to sleep. A huge documentary fan, anything regarding plastic surgery or body image absolutely fascinates me. I’ve watched countless people on TV talk about how they’ve ‘gone too far’ with surgery, they’ll never really be happy, but they keep ploughing on anyway. These people absolutely suffer from a form of Body Dysmorphia, which is characterised by focusing on individual issues which, should they be ‘fixed’ in your mind, you remain incredibly predisposed to find something new to agonise over, fix that, and so on and so on until you die. You obsessively check the mirror more than you check the fridge in lockdown – no, the contents haven’t changed since yesterday. You know this, and you know it's only going to make you feel like shit - but you check anyway. Just as you’re damn well aware you don’t have the ability to magically conjure hummus or chocolate, you’re also not going to have sprouted a few extra cup sizes or grown an inch taller since you last scrutinised yourself in a mirror. The issue is not with one specific feature, but with you always finding something wrong or abnormal with yourself that repulses you (and you believe repulses other people too). Once one thing is fixed, it becomes about another thing. I ‘fixed’ my hair a few years back, naturally thin, flat & blonde, into a swingy curtain of raven extensions and after the initial day or two of post-hairdresser confidence buzz wore off and I realised I had spent hundreds of pounds literally gluing someone else’s hair to my head and totally altering my natural appearance with black dye, I instantly became unhappy about other things, with the added weight of going through my day knowing I’m a fraud, trying to masquerade as some cool, confident, edgy dark-haired girl I don’t know how to be.
"The issue is... with you always finding something wrong or abnormal with yourself... once one thing is fixed, it becomes about another thing."
I said I was coming back to it, so here goes. What feels like the most raw of topics in terms of my levels of shame and confusion and frankly, anger. Editing.
I don't recall coming across Facetune in its full ugly form until I was on my first acting job aboard a cruise ship, sailing around the Caribbean in a musical production. I should point out, cruise contracts really give you the situational circumstances to become the so called 'best version' of yourself. A fabulous salary means probably for the first (and only, if you're a performer) time in your life you can afford clothes, haircuts, perfect nails, skincare, you name it. The gym is probably one floor above or below your room onboard and on sea days there's not much else to do, so you put in serious time, as well as already having a physical job. You are in a warm climate (route dependent) and have the option of being permanently sunkissed and in the outdoors on beaches and mountains, meaning better skin, hair and general happy endorphins. It's a LIFE. I remember booking the job and my then agent turning to me and saying 'you have NO idea how amazing your year is going to be. I'm so jealous.' - I get it now. Sure, there are problems and downsides as with any job, particularly on the mental health side, but as someone who has hated myself and my appearance my whole life, these circumstances gave me the unique opportunity to breathe a little and nudge me gently towards where I felt comfortable physically.
That is, until you account for the fact I was sailing with arguably some of the world's most attractive, toned and tanned individuals. There was me thinking the Ad Agency was bad. Musical Theatre people are almost guaranteed to be easy on the eye, but add into the mix literal athletes in the form of divers, synchronised swimmers, acrobats and ice skaters into a department of nearly 300 and you get the picture. Everyone is under 30, and these people are god-tier. Their abs have abs. And the first thing I notice is that a LOT of them are into photography. Sure, it's an amazing creative outlet and you have the money to invest in good equipment and all the exotic locations you could ever wish to shoot. But not just pro photography. These people have huge Instagram followings. I was meeting some real life #influencers for the first time. I immediately get sucked in to this bizarre world of news feeds and bikini pics discovering portrait mode and 'angles'. Suddenly every port day becomes an opportunity for a new post. I am told to go and pose in the corner of a swimming pool, near a vintage car, in a hammock, you name it. I hate every second. But I join in. Why? Because it's just... what is done.
We're about a month into our contract and I see my friend editing a photo for the first time using the Facetune app. I can't believe what i'm seeing. Someone literally sucking their waist in, removing rolls, smoothing skin. Once I realise what is going on, I see it everywhere. And it's the beautiful people all doing this to their own photos. I am shook. If you are that undeniably attractive, what does it matter if you have a shiny bit of skin or you have a tiny roll ? I'M the one that should be using this app, surely. Me, the girl who feels nausea at the sight of her own profile. Initially, I was reluctant to go full edit on my photos, but I quickly disappeared down a rabbit hole. There's a photo on my phone somewhere of me, in underwear in front of my full length mirror, a 'before' of sorts, and another image, a totally unrecognisable figure that I sat and edited painstakingly to try and make sense of my sadness around my image. I gave myself the twisted challenge of editing this real-time Laura into something I liked. It began with the obvious small change, suck in the waist. But I couldn't stop. Before I knew it I was left with an image that not only didn't look like me at all, it didn't look human. I knew how ridiculous this image was, and it just further cemented into my mind that I'd never be happy. But still, I kept it, as a sort of 'thinspo' image. It's still on my iCloud somewhere. My Instagram once reached a point where there wasn't a single image that wasn't Facetuned. Before, if I didn't like a photo, I just wouldn't post it - or live with the flaw. But this editing software allows people to see each photo as more of an 'opportunity' - the canvas, the plain vanilla cake to add filters and frosting to. Whatever you don't like, you can just edit out. Thankfully, this stopped a while ago for me. But it's even hard to go back to being 'yourself' (still heavily filtered) after so long.
"I couldn't stop. Before I knew it I was left with an image that not only didn't look like me at all, it didn't look human."
I still struggle to pin down where all of this came from, in the beginning. Yes, it must have been worsened by society, popular media etc, but one day I must have looked at myself in the mirror as a child, or at a school photo, or at a holiday snap, and then looked at what everyone around me looked like, which kids had friends, who was pleasing on the eye, and decided I was never going to be one of those people. With BDD you convince yourself that whatever trend or body shape comes into fashion, you’ll still never fit into any of these moulds. The more money you throw at occasions and special events in the way of beauty and fashion, the more you set yourself up for failure when you’ve made the effort and still hate the way you look. A recent Headshot session forced me to confront my own image in such a way that I ended up that evening as close to self-harm or suicide as I’ve ever felt – thankfully with the support of my close ones and with the rational brain I somehow manage to maintain throughout these episodes, it went no further than thoughts. But there does come a point where you consider if you’re going to have to live with this forever, and if so, is that something you’re prepared to drag yourself through life carrying every single day? If this is going to follow you around and ruin everything you enjoy and love, there sometimes seems to be only one solution – stop living the life you live, be that through running away, making reckless decisions or, yes, harming yourself. I count my lucky stars that I’m incredibly high functioning with regard to my depression and anxiety and you’d struggle to tell there was anything wrong with me for the most part. But for the couple of hours every now and then that I just don’t have the energy to put up any sort of fight against these feelings, it’s scary. I scare myself with how quickly things can spiral out of control. I can now totally empathise with how overwhelming individual pain can be and how, at the time, in a mental health crisis, there really can feel like there’s only one solution.
“...she was afraid of losing her shape, spreading out, not being able to contain herself any longer, beginning (that would be worst of all) to talk a lot, to tell everybody, to cry.”
- Margaret Atwood, The Edible Woman
If nothing else, the everyday realities of BDD become exhausting. It is genuinely dementor-like, draining of all energy or willpower you have, despite any shitty attempts at a patronus in the form of 'self-love' or 'self-care' you can muster. Essentially from the minute I either encounter a mirror or put on clothes, the torture begins. The feeling of clothes on my body is really upsetting and only serves as a reminder of what shape and size I am not. With every step on my way to work, I feel the waistband of my jeans, the bra strap, the lacy thong I bought to try and instill some confidence, all of it feels like it's cutting into me, gauging lines into my flesh like a gammon wrapped in red butcher's string. This makes it sound like I am squeezing myself into clothes that are two sizes too small. I'm not, but this becomes your inner narrative for what normal clothes feel like. Any tugging, pulling or just plain old friction between your limbs and your clothes becomes not only ugly, disgusting and shameful but totally your fault, and sends you into a downward spiral as you walk down the street to the point where if anyone catches your eye, you automatically assume they have already formulated an opinion on how gross you are and therefore you must walk with your head low - just get through the journey and get indoors. Big clothing becomes a necessity. Yes, it's comfy. But sometimes you can't deal with anything closely sitting on your skin, reminding you of the ugly person it has to cradle.
Oh - this applies to people too. It's taken me a 7 year relationship and a lot of patience on both our parts for me to feel physically comfortable with another person, which as quite a naturally tactile person is a conflict that makes me really quite sad. I love hugs and physical contact, and get incredibly sad without this. But my BDD has trained me to flinch or pull away or break off the contact as soon as possible if even my closest friends or family try and hold my hand or have a little spoon on the sofa. I struggle to enjoy massage, haircuts or any sort of physical therapy that involves being touched for fear of what that person is having to put themselves through to be physically close to me. This is something that has massively affected my working life, as in theatre you are often required to be physically close to a partner. It's so hard to assume when you get paired with someone they don't automatically look across the room and think, 'oh for gods sake why her, she's going to be too heavy to lift, too squidgy around the waist, too large to look good next to me'. I haven't yet auditioned for my dream show, but I know from friends it involves a pas-de-deux dance audition. When that day comes, it's going to take every bit of effort I can muster just to get through that 30mins or so without having a panic attack. Feelings about yourself are easy enough to mask most of the time, but suddenly throw in a stranger grabbing you by the waist and lifting you and it becomes too difficult to shove down. It's not about performing, or dance. I love them both. They make me happier than I knew myself to be capable of. I wish more than anything that I could walk into an audition room without truly believing in my soul that the people behind the table are going to hate me unless I put on the biggest fucking show of my life, mentally and physically. It hasn’t happened yet. I know so many creative teams that go out of their way to make performers feel at ease, making sure they’re called by name, that they don’t agonise over what to wear, that they feel included and that the only thing that matters is their performance. I wish someone shaking me and telling me to 'get it together' (this literally happened at drama school) would solve it all. But BDD brain won’t let that feeling go that whilst you’re belting out Monster from Frozen they’re mentally putting you on the ‘no’ list, thinking it’s a shame you looked skinnier in your headshot and glazing over, making a note to never call you in again. Instead they’re probably making a quick note on your vocals and where you’d fit and if they’re glazing over, they’re more likely to be fantasizing about which baguette they’re getting from Pret later on because they’ve been overrunning all morning and haven’t had a break for 7 hours.
Having an artistic profession has been my saving grace, having a craft to throw yourself into is such a worthwhile use of your energy when so much of daily life is draining. I appreciate this now in lockdown more than ever, and the huge impact it can have on your life when you are forced to live for some time without a creative outlet (hence the writing). That said, anyone who is very visually driven as a person and into fashion, art, design etc. is sure to be more susceptible to dysphoric feelings . We’re all magpies and peacocks by profession. The main deception of BDD is that you risk coming off as vain or self-obsessed due to your compulsive behaviours around mirrors and images. The fear of coming across as genuinely self-absorbed and conceited is HUGE. The possibility that not only are you so horrendous to look at, but that people think you don't know it, that you have confidence and even arrogance, is horrific. So you hide as much of your behaviour as you can. You are as discreet as possible with mirrors, with photos, you develop ticks like tucking your hair behind your ear, pinching your rolls or tugging at your clothes constantly which is a form of this hidden obsession just spilling out uncontrollably into physical action. Nobody must know that you feel like this! Your default is to make self deprecating comments, but the main aim is just to deflect attention AWAY from you and on to someone else as quickly as possible (something I'm still guilty of). The concept of even writing something this long about myself and my own experiences has made me feel physically sick at points. I've had to stop and start quite a few times as it's been too much, I can feel that stomach ulcer raging, telling me to shut up and focus on other people now.
And so I shall! So for now, that's all I can manage. If anyone reading this feels like talking or reaching out would be beneficial to them, even if we've never met, I'm always on the other end of a zoom (or a socially distanced coffee table if you're London-based). There are some useful links below for anyone who would like to begin research or just read up on the issue.
I'm beginning my journey towards self acceptance starting with the honesty here. Here's hoping we can all be a little kinder to ourselves, and if nothing else, a little more self-aware.
'Nude With Crossed Legs' - Venetia Berry
Useful Links
NHS Online: Body Dysmorphic Disorder
BDD Foundation Questionnaire: https://bddfoundation.org/helping-you/questionnaires-do-i-have-bdd/
Support and information for people affected by body dysmorphic disorder, including a questionnaire to self-diagnose disordered behaviours and thoughts
MIND on Body Dysmorphia: https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/types-of-mental-health-problems/body-dysmorphic-disorder-bdd/about-bdd/
Body Dysmorphic Disorder Foundation bddfoundation.org British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies (BABCP) babcp.com Information about cognitive behavioural therapy and related treatments, including details of accredited therapists. Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) nhs.uk/service-search/find-a-psychological-therapies-service Information about local NHS therapy and counselling services, which you can often self-refer to (England only).
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