Generation Anxiety by Lauren Cook

Author:Lauren Cook [Cook, Lauren]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Abrams Image
Published: 2023-09-19T00:00:00+00:00

WE ARE GENERATION ANXIETY BECAUSE WE ARE GENERATION APPEARANCE

It’s not by happenstance that Casey was struggling with how she looked. She had been primed to feel insecure. Especially regarding how she physically looked, she had internalized at a young age, as many of us do, that her worth was connected to how others viewed her. Perhaps you can resonate with this as well. In fact, it was crucial for me to include a chapter on the intersection of our appearance with our anxiety because I am seeing such an epidemic of body insecurity and unhealthy eating patterns. Other clinicians have shared with me that they are noticing more and more clients struggle with hating how they look. The research supports this too, as we are seeing increased rates of eating disorders and body dysmorphia emerge as screen time, social media, and filtered images have taken the world by storm.80

People aren’t wrong about how much importance our society places on physical appearance. We have a real issue with body-size discrimination and we need to do something about it. There are entire books written about this and indeed, I recommend reading about the intersection between anxiety and appearance in greater detail. Our work in this domain is just getting started. We continue to need systemic change, where we notice our biases and we step in to stop them. The solution is not shape-shifting ourselves to win people over. The answer is not starving ourselves, exercising to excess, or making ourselves vomit (which actually doesn’t make you lose weight in the long term, FYI).81 Although our generation continues to be plagued by filters and an ever-increasing pressure to look like Barbie and Ken dolls, we can push back.

Our lives depend on it. When we starve ourselves or make ourselves sick to meet some unobtainable ideal, there are consequences. Eating disorders are the second-most-deadly mental health concern after the opioid crisis.82 In fact, we lose someone to an eating disorder every fifty-two minutes.83 Many folks aren’t getting the support they need, either. BIPOC folks are half as likely to be diagnosed or get treatment for an eating disorder, and they are significantly less likely to even be asked by a doctor whether they have any symptoms.84 LGBTQIA+ folks are impacted as well—in fact, gay men are seven times more likely to binge eat and twelve times more likely to purge, while transgender college students demonstrate disordered eating at four times the rate compared to their cisgender peers.85,86 And before we go assuming that people suffering from eating disorders look a certain way, it should be known that fewer than 6 percent of people with an eating disorder are medically diagnosed as “underweight.”87,88 Eating disorders and body dysmorphia can impact anyone, and it’s bound up with our anxiety. In fact, 71 percent of those struggling with an eating disorder have another diagnosis. What tops the chart with a 53 percent rate of comorbidity? Anxiety.89

Our generation has sadly learned that striving for attractiveness is a false antidote to this anxiety and a way to wield power.

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