We all know that body confidence is about more than how you look. It's about feeling at ease with yourself, it's about how you teach your children to negotiate their own self-image and well-being, and it's about doing these things in a society that is fiercely obsessed with personal appearance.
Many people assume that poor body image is mainly the reserve of teenage girls, but new figures from the British Social Attitudes Survey show that women aged 35-49 have the lowest satisfaction with their physical appearance of any age group. We also know that poor body image is associated with lower confidence and aspirations, depression and a range of self-destructive behaviours.
Lots of women in this age bracket have young children, and lots of them work, too. They are the classic sandwich generation; often caring for both older and younger dependents, and short of the time and money needed to really take care of themselves. What's interesting is that once women get over 50, their body image leaps. Women aged 50-64 have the highest appearance satisfaction of all, which does suggest that mothering young children has a massive impact.
Having children changes your body, and time away from the workplace can impact on your confidence. After I had my son, I worried that I wouldn't enjoy going back to work, or that I would have somehow forgotten everything. It's quite astonishing how quickly confidence can evaporate on maternity leave. Within just a few weeks, I was anxious about how I would conduct myself at a work event – would I slot back into “work mode”, now I was so used to being a mum? At the same time, your body is amazing but unrecognisable, ricocheting through a range of intense changes and coping with continually broken sleep. And while that completely frazzled ‘will-I-ever-manage-to-eat-a-hot-meal-again?’ phase doesn't last forever, I think your feelings about your body and its place in the world probably change for good.
What makes it even more difficult is that our society seems to have lost a little perspective. Physical presentation is so central to how women are judged and valued that keeping up appearances has become a whole new job for women, alongside our other roles. You don't have to go along with this, of course, but without doubt there are social penalties if you refuse to play the game. Many women talk about the ‘invisible at 40’ phenomenon, and perhaps that's what it is – an age group who have lost social visibility and status, because being a mother is not valued in the way it should be, because they're overstretched and spend a lot of time putting energy into other people, and because they're constantly compared to the botoxed, baby-body-bounce-back ideals of their celebrity counterparts.
What happened to beauty and fashion being about self-expression, creativity and fun? Sometimes it feels like they’re just another area where we can feel guilty and down on ourselves for not measuring up.
That's why the Government is supporting Body Confidence Week, which is a fantastic opportunity for everyone to celebrate positive body image and challenge the negative attitudes and actions that lead to poor self-esteem. We are marking this week by launching specially tailored guidance and activities for people who work with teenagers. It is absolutely vital that we support our children to develop resilience in the face of this pressure, to help them to avoid a lifetime of low body confidence and stop this cycle before it begins.
Jo Swinson will be on Twitter from 6.30pm on Friday evening, to discuss body confidence live. Do join her using the hashtag #bodyconfidence.