Asking For A Friend returns for episode 2, and our host, New York Times best-selling author, relationship columnist, and “self-love strategist” Elisabeth Ovesen, dove straight into the topic of body positivity.
Ovesen begins by reflecting on the dire lengths that some women resort to in order to achieve an unrealistic body standard that’s often depicted in the media around them. And even provides viewers with a proper term for its diagnosis: body dysmorphic disorder. She goes on to explain that body dysmorphic disorder is categorized by an “obsessive focus on a perceived minor or imagined flaw” held by a person who “fixates on fixing it.”
Ovesen explores the various symptoms of body dysmorphia, which include constantly comparing oneself to others, requiring validation from others, and obsessing over unattainable or unrealistic body images. She explores how these symptoms can lead to detrimental effects in all areas of one’s health – from developing dangerous eating disorders, a habit for excessive exercise or dieting, plaguing depression, and debilitating self-talk.
Tune in as Elisabeth shares advice for callers and social media followers who are currently struggling with accepting their body transformations as they age, how Black women can maintain their own sense of body positivity in a society that is often critical of their body, and why you should never equate one’s physical appearance with the moral values, or worth, that they hold. Elisabeth also shares her own experience battling body dysmorphia in the realms of an abusive relationship, as well as red flags that one can look for to avoid the same experience. And ultimately, Elisabeth shares how one can address and push past the reigns of body dysmorphia to begin their journey of healing.
Check out the full episode below and be sure to subscribe!