Hey, guys, it is producer Keisha here, and if you listened to last week's episode, you would have heard Laura and Britt say that they were on their midyear 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 on Cut, 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 on Cut I've ever edited or listened to. I had to pause midway through it 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 Oxenburg, 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 Nexium,
and there's actually been some developments in that case. Alison Mack, who was an actress on Small vilm and a part of the Nexium 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 forty four that was released last June. Now, the Girls has 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 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 wastelines.
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 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. Have you heard of it, Laura, Yes, that's why we're talking about it. The real problem if I hadn't, Wow, So it was a rhetorical question. Bring the goods, Brittany, give us an intro. Body dysmorphia syndrome or BDS is also known as 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 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, 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 plans 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, 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 and 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 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 compare 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 is 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 ten genes on.
They know they're not. So there's those people, But then.
There are the people that it really really cause 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 Jimil'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 Kardashin 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.
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 Kanashi's posted a video so that she can prove us not photoshopped. And it's ridiculous. You guys need to go and have a Google look it up.
It's insane.
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 Jamila jimil
really encapsulated the most perfect response about this post. So what she's 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's 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 hard 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 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 what 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 it, unfollow the things that you know make you feel bad, because it's everywhere. It's not just on the Instagram pages that you were elect to follow on Instagram. It's in marketing, it's in retail. It's this total lack and underrepresentation 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 nineties, the idea of what was beautiful in the nineties was like heroin chic, like think Kate Moss, young sos, sucking, underweight, like super super skinny, if you look like you had a drug at a drug addiction like, that's what was deemed beautiful. And it was literally called heroin chic and so ridiculous when you think about it, isn't it outrageous? You didn't think of what the name meant when you were young.
You were like, oh, heroin chic, but you didn't think them, oh that we're saying, she actually looks like a junkie. She looks like a heroin.
At it, and that shit's chic.
But that was the that was the goalpost that we grew up with. And 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 aspider 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 black plus sized model and LGBT icon Jari Jones, and I think that this in itself, it's a really amazing image. Go and have a look at that as well. But turn around, yes, so basically on one side, they've got a photo of what Calvin Klein had as their model in the nineties and now what they have in the twenties, and you know in twenty twenty and that in.
The wild and outrageous twenties.
But it shows how far we have come 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 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 like, you've been 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 really I started to tell myself, you've been ridiculous because 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 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 of 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 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 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, because 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 malasma, 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 peals that left me unable to leave house for ten days because I literally burnt my hair 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 Maley. Like I think since becoming a mum, 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 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 and I'm gonna 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 member saying to myself, of course, he wasn't gonna be with you. Look at you? Why why would anyone pick you? This is what this is my internal monologue. I was like, of course, like if anyone in the whole world, Brittany is gonna be the first person to not be good enough to win. It's you, like, and I was really bad to myself. I was like, you should have known better. You 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, and you're not going to grow out of it. And I haven't said that before, So there you go.
That was me being really wrong.
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 like your finale, Like I know that now you can rationalize it and look back and go forill. There was twenty four 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 tough.
The thing 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 there 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 bodydysmorphia, what are some symptoms where you would be able to identify Okay, oh my god, this is what.
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 skins.
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 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. 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 malasma.
That's what they're thinking. That my plasma is really bad.
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'm not even tooted in 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 Mama Mirr to record a podcast and with Tully smythe I was recording podcasts with Tully and I remember her coming up. 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 by a.
Concealer was still concealing it. Like, that's how silly, And it's not even that bad, guys. It's just something that's like been my biggest instant security, your insecurity. Y. That's why what's funny because that's the 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 ease or your lip, so that's the other thing that people are really worried about. 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.
Genitals is a big one.
People get really worried about if they've got any or audy labia. What other people's looks like is there's two bigs, there's too small, So that's a really big one and they go to the extent of having surgery on it.
But that's a whole other topic.
I think this idea of like talking about genitals is really interesting because it's something that we 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 if vaginal's like no, Ada'm definitely not going to 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 we've been raised with Barbie as like your toy. They don't have any generitalia. Yeah she's smooth, Yeah she's smooth, she's bold.
But like this idea of it being an innie is like 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, like, oh.
Yeah, no, that's before work.
We do it all day, Like I do things where we used to you know women are having trouble falling pregnant, we flash their Filippine tubes. Most of our patients are in gowns with their underwear, ultrasounds, everything, So I see them all day, every day. I don't even register it. It's second nature. Yeah, it would be. Looking at someone's genitals for me is like looking at their hand. It's 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 some level of reassurance there as well. You're like, ah, oh, I know where I sit in the spectrum of life. Well, most people don't have that. They don't have a point
of comparison with that sort of stuff. 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 doged 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 had 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 a skin. But let's talk about some other symptoms of BDD body dysmorphic disorder.
One of them was 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 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.
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, putting concealer on the same part of your melasma all day, and it's all you think about. 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 a habit of constantly trying to fix something.
Yeah, and that's like especially if it's the same body partly being improved. So like you get your boobs done, but then you get them again because you still like they're they're not right, they're not right.
You're gonna be get and again.
So it's like proscedures, because make prosceigures is one thing, but then like over and over and over again, Like there is this obsessive nature, in this repetitive nature, which is what starts to really signify if you've got body dysmorphia. Yeah, then there's like obviously the whole comparison. You spend a lot of time comparing yourself. You wait 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.
Waiste like that?
I need my waist to be like that, or I'm not gonna beautiful, no one's.
Gonna love me.
So that's a really big one. 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 somewhere and it's really hot and you're like, I'm just
gonna 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 falling 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 and one that I happened to me and I experienced when I was young to 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 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 behavior 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 it's part of the therapies. They'll put a timeline on it. They'll saying three months, will get there. In three months, this will be over, for example. And basically it 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 Mali. 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 a solution.
No everyone, Okay, going and having a baby is not on the treatment plan, Guys, Laura, it works for Laura, it's not gonna work for everyone else. But it's just another way to deal with stress. It can you can use it for other things too, relationship breakdowns, grief loss. It's really really powerful tool and it's something that everybody should learn and taking to 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 come 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 con 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 color where I was looking at people and I'm like, that actually does make me feel shit. I went through I called a couple of hundred people from my I didn't know them personally. They 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, don't gain anything from them except I look at them and I'm like, oh my god, there's so like why can't I be like.
That and this and this totally like then, oh oh my god, I love the symbiosis of this. How this just feeds full circle 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 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 way, 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 the 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. You unfollow people brands that don't make you feel powerful and happy and grateful for what you have. Block mute, delete repeats.
B boom mic drop. I think what a way to finish law. Thank you, thank you very much.
Please come again.