The Woman in the Mirror How to Stop Confusing What You Look Like with Who You Are

by Bulik, Cynthia M., Ph.D.

• ISBN13: 9780802719997
• ISBN10: 0802719996
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-12-20
• Publisher: Walker Books

Summary

Many women--regardless of income, size, shape, ethnicity, and age--are uncomfortable in their own skin. We fixate on our body image and try endless diets, implants, Botox, hair extensions, and new shoes, but it's never enough. The problem is that girls and women have been socialized to mistakenly conflate body-esteem and self-esteem. Body-esteem refers to how you think and feel about your physical appearance: your size, shape, hair, and features. Self-esteem refers to how you think and feel about your personality, your role in relationships, your accomplishments, and values-everything that contributes to who you are as a person. We endlessly compare our physical selves with other girls and women--whether real or Photoshopped. Poor body image is dispiriting and self-defeating: whatever physical changes you make are never enough. The first step to developing good body image is to disentangle self-esteem from body-esteem and take charge of the insidious negative self-talk that started as early as when you first realized you didn't really look like a fairy princess. By reprogramming how we feel about ourselves and our bodies, we can practice healthy eating and sensible exercise, and focus on the many things we have to offer our family, community, and job. Bulik provides us the tools to reclaim our self-confidence and to respect and love who we are.

Author Biography

Cynthia M. Bulik, Ph.D., is the William R. and Jeanne H. Jordan Distinguished Professor of Eating Disorders in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, a professor of nutrition at UNC's Gillings School of Global Public Health, and director of the UNC Eating Disorders Program. She has been featured or quoted in Vogue, Newsweek, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. She is the author of Crave: Why You Binge Eat and How to Stop and the coauthor of Runaway Eating (with Nadine Taylor). Bulik lives in North Carolina.