Body image – as we like it?
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Body image – as we like it?
We hear the term ‘body image’ and know immediately what it means – the image of our physical body in our own eyes and by association that image as we think and insist, and at times against all evidence to the contrary, it is perceived in the eyes of others.
When consumed by this preoccupation we pick on a flaw or several and it can easily become an obsession, translated nowadays into a mental ill health disorder that has been named dysmorphia or body dysmorphic disorder.
How we perceive ourselves physically and think we are being perceived by others becomes an obsession and, in some instances, leads to cosmetic surgery – to either a correction and an attempt to get back to ‘normal’ (whatever that is?) and to the mind acceptable, and in other instances to shape a body part into something that resembles the mind-fully perceived image. A mission statement of sorts with a big impact that the body is then subjected to, chiselled out of and shaped if not pretzeled into.
And now we have a whole industry catering for every perceived need, performing procedures and providing services as demanded by a mental illness, a distortion of physical reality.
But what good is it going to do to reshape a part of the body when the problem is in the thinking mind, in someone’s perception?
And can it be said, as did Einstein, that this problem that came from a way of thinking to begin with cannot be solved by a way of thinking[1] that runs in the same vein? Can it be said that the image of a body part as held in one’s mind cannot possibly be rectified by then reshaping that body part because chances are there will be another body part obsessively becoming the target of one’s pre-occupation?
Can it also be said that we seem to be easily satisfied with a label, a diagnosis, an identification and then seek to superficially remedy it by paying somebody to take a scalpel to our physicality rather than tackling the problem at its roots which could just be the way we think, where our thinking happens, how we think and what or whom our thinking is influenced if not directed by?
And isn’t it interesting that once one person has had an idea, several if not many jump on the same bandwagon and all of a sudden we have a wave, a trend, a following and a fashion?
Is it then possible that we only think we think and that our thinking is more of an alignment to a source than it originating from that space between and just above our ears?
If you can entertain the fact as a possibility at least – who or what does the thinking then? Where do the thoughts come from that tell us that our bottom is grossly and unbearably too massive? Or where does then, a mere few decades later, a fashion trend come from that is trying to tell us that the larger the bottom, the better and more fashionable it is and offers implants for those who are wanting in the big bottom department? Who or what determines fashion and what is desirable and coveted in terms of our physical body? And whoever and whatever came up with the notion that this body we cannot ever be without while alive is but a commodity, to do with as we like?
What then is thinking? And is it possible that we only think we think and that our thoughts originate elsewhere? Is thinking but an alignment to a source and not this precious and highly coveted singular undertaking and accomplishment?
References
Filed under
Body image, Intelligence, Mental health
