AndrewFowler

And would you call that beautiful which wants and does not possess beauty? 1 S ummer is in full bloom. Our screens are filled with Love Island   and the World Cup. Tanned, toned and athletic bodies are ubiquitous, and as we aspire to achieve these ideals, magazine stands are full of titles that promise to help us achieve beach body fitness (e.g. Men's Health )  and beauty, through a variety of exercise or diet plans .  Emerging from the toxicity of popular media, are movements such as ' I weigh ',   which has shunned conventional societal beauty demands and aims to move away from physical appearance as being a valuable determinant of self-worth. Many �body positive� movements, fitness plans and media sites nonetheless still have at their core a particular physical ideal to which to aspire.  Fitspo  and �Strong is the new skinny� (Holland & Tiggemann, 2016)  strongly associate a specific narrowly defined physical ideal with good health, or fit...

Almost all young adults aged 16 to 24 years in the UK (98%) access the internet on their mobile phones or smartphones (Office of National Statistics (ONS), 2018), and 91% of 16-24 year olds in the UK used social media in 2016 (ONS, 2017). When using social spaces such as Facebook and Instagram, women (and men) choose how to represent their bodies to others in the online world, and arguably the kinds of images they present tell us something about how they view their bodies.   Selfies: Problematic or empowering? Many scholars have focused on the role of selfies in how we present ourselves online (e.g. Las�n, 2015; Miguel, 2016), including the choices we make about which aspects of our bodies to reveal, and ways in which we might self-censor our bodies in selfies to protect against any potential backlash. Views of different researchers have been mixed in relation to impact of selfie posting on women�s body image; on the one hand, it has been argued that posting selfies encourages bod...

F rom the 1920�s onwards, tanning was seen as aspirational.   It spoke of foreign holidays and the lifestyle of the rich and famous. It was a matter of �looking good� and �looking well�.  The growth of the domestic tanning industry followed and tanning salons became common in the high street and in the health club.  However, over time concerns began to arise due to the health risks of sunbeds and in particular the link with skin cancer. In 2006, the World Health Organization�s (WHO) International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) published the first report by experts on sunbed use and its association with skin cancer or melanoma.   This meta-analysis of 19 studies of associations between the use of sunbeds and the risk of melanoma showed an increase of 15% in the risk of melanoma  amongst those who had used a sunbed compared to those who had not.   Subsequently the IARC added UV-emitting tanning devices to its list of group 1 carcinogens (�car...

There is a great deal of confusion that surrounds the aesthetic industry and what procedures within it are subject to regulation. As the popularity of cosmetic procedures, such as breast augmentation and rhinoplasty, continues to rise in the UK, so too do the number of complaints and the volume of incidents involving risky practices and untrained or inexperienced practitioners. If you look up �cosmetic surgery� on the internet, the results are crowded with 0% finance deals and 2-4-1 offers, encouraging individuals to commit quickly to potentially life-changing, and life-threatening, procedures. At the same time, the news is littered with tales of celebrities and everyday people who�ve undergone botched surgeries or have had painful reactions to poorly administered Botox or dermal fillers. There is a great deal of societal pressure, particularly on women - who still have the vast majority of surgeries - to achieve the perfect �look�, which can be perpetuated by the likes of social me...

The disturbing case of breast surgeon, Ian Paterson, who mutilated countless patients over a period of several years, was a shocking example of a rogue surgeon. English criminal law plays only a minor role in regulating harmful medical misconduct, traditionally limited to gross negligence manslaughter. The conviction of Ian Paterson, in 2017, however, involved multiple convictions for serious non-fatal offences: unlawful wounding and intentionally causing grievous body harm, for which Paterson is now serving a twenty-year prison sentence. This case raises important questions about the role of the criminal law as a response to harmful and unreasonable/unjustifiable surgery. Paterson�s crimes include carrying out unnecessary, mutilating surgery on people who were falsely led to believe that the surgery was necessary and therapeutic. The prosecution�s case suggested that Paterson�s crimes were motivated by the lucrative financial rewards from his private surgical practice. Reflecting on P...

Over the past six years, Prof Carolyn Mair PhD, has brought attention to a previously neglected area of Psychology: Psychology for Fashion.  Prof Mair�s new book, The Psychology of Fashion , was published last week as part of Routledge�s Psychology of Everything series . The book is designed to engage a general audience by exploring the reciprocal relationships and influences between fashion and human behaviour. Fashion is an important global economy which employs millions . Fashion touches everyone; we all wear clothes. As a result, the fashion industry affects us psychologically at individual, societal and global levels. In the book, Mair discusses the many purposes of clothing beyond functionality and shelter including conveying symbolic meaning, meeting the demands of individual taste, modesty and cultural expectations and displaying social status and gender preference. Furthermore, at a broader level, the behaviour of the fashion industry impacts the environment and influen...

Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery (BMAG) is undergoing a process of redeveloping all of the permanent storylines currently displayed in its galleries. This is a part of the museum�s new development plans to make BMAG the Museum for Birmingham. Currently our interpretation of storyline regarding Body Image will centre on the question: How are individual identities created by viewing one�s own body in the context of a wider world? The plan is to look critically at the representation of the human form in public spaces as evidenced by museum's permanent collection. The enquiry would look at: who created these depictions, for what purpose and what the legacies of these sorts of images have today. Through the museum�s collection we are able to explore these ideas through objects created for children and vulnerable people; objects used for advertisements; objects used for, and depictions of, purposeful body alterations; as well as historical and contemporary critiques and expressions of ...