Have you criticized your body today?
If you answered "yes," you are not alone. A new poll by Glamour has found that a whopping 97 percent of women experience "I hate my body" thoughts daily.
Glamour has seen firsthand how great the demand is for healthy body image to be represented in the media, yet women are still struggling to silence their inner critics.
Cindi Leive, Glamour's editor in chief, spoke with Meredith Vieira on this morning's "Today" show to talk about the troubling statistics.
The magazine found that "on average, women have 13 negative body thoughts daily." Leive points out that that is almost "one for every waking hour." The level of criticism women hurl at themselves is "brutal." She worries, "If a man talked this way to a woman, it would be considered relationship abuse. But it's somehow become acceptable for us to talk this way, with this kind of venom to ourselves."
Why is this? Ann Kearney-Cooke, Ph.D., a psychologist who contributed to the study, offers one possible reason: women often use their body as "a screen" onto which they "project negative feelings."
Problems at work or in a relationship have a way of showing up as negative thoughts about the body. This is why Kearney-Cooke and Leive suggest that when women notice that they are obsessing or thinking hateful thoughts about their body, they ask themselves, "Is this really about my body?"
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