[Applause]
the this scrip for eating disorders used
to be reliable young woman would walk
through my door and she would confess to
me that she didn’t like her body that
she hated her body that she was worried
all the time about becoming fat and she
was in the gym running on the treadmill
maybe she was thinking of taking
laxatives or diuretics to try and lose
weight but increasingly in the eating
disorders field we’re seeing something
new it’s a young man who walks through
the door and he’s not in the gym on the
treadmill he’s lifting weights and he’s
not worried about becoming fat he’s
worried about becoming skinny and he
doesn’t take laxatives or diuretics to
try and lose weight he uses steroids to
try and build muscle and we call this
muscle dysmorphia and it was the subject
of the TED talk that I gave in Sydney
last year and the point of that talk was
to demonstrate that concerns about
physical appearance are not confined to
women and girls as a stereotype might
suggest but more importantly that the
very nature of eating disorders is
changing as the cultural and social
forces that shape how we feel about
ourselves change also and this talk
whilst related is not about that it’s
about something different
it’s about morality and in particular
the morality of appearance enhancement
so to start with we all value our
appearance we know this implicitly we
have attractions and we have
insecurities and desires about others
bodies and about our own but research
also demonstrates so that most of us are
at least modestly dissatisfied with some
aspect of our physical appearance that’s
men and women alike in this country and
for a minority tragically that
overvaluation of appearance manifests as
a psychological disorder eating
disorders or muscle dysmorphia but it’s
not just that we care deeply about our
appearance our appearance is also
moralized my parents is moralized your
appearance is moralized the appearance
of everyone in this room is moralized by
the world around you and it can be
succinctly articulated that beautiful is
good and ugly is bad and this
moralization manifests in childhood
cartoons for example like The Little
Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast in
which the protagonists are always
beautiful and the villains most
certainly are not
and this moralization has persisted
across cultures and across different
periods in time and it is clear that our
appearance is a prism through which
others ascribe details and features of
our moral character and this
moralization of physical appearance is
particularly acute for women to be a
physically unattractive woman in
Australian society is basically
sacrilegious and we don’t just moralize
physical appearance and then we do but
it’s not the whole story I’ll give you
an example perhaps the most prominent
example of the tension between
moralization and physical appearance is
body weight so in Australia most adults
now live in larger bodies and by larger
bodies I mean bodies that have a body
mass index above 25 and if we run
studies of actual hiring managers and we
give them Seavey’s identical except with
respect to the BMI of the individual in
the photo attached to those CVS then the
hiring rate for individuals would be
mais above 25 those larger people
they’re hired half as often ostensibly
same qualifications same merit so it’s
clear that our appearance somehow plays
into our merit into processes that are
ostensibly meritocratic and which ought
not to have anything to do with our
appearance but as I said we don’t just
moralize our appearance we also moralize
attempts to alter
our appearance now some of these
evidently are more benign than others no
one takes umbrage with putting product
in your hair few people take umbrage
with women using makeup but what about
other things how do you feel for example
about men who put inserts in their shoes
to make themselves appear taller what’s
your gut feeling on that
what about leg lengthening surgeries to
make men and women actually taller where
do you sit on that it’s clear that once
you move to cosmetic surgeries and to
appearance enhancing drugs like anabolic
steroids people become deeply morally
conflicted let’s consider labiaplasty
labiaplasty is one of the fastest
growing cosmetic surgeries in australia
for those of you who don’t know a
labiaplasty is when a women a woman’s
labia minora and majora are altered to
produce what I can best describe as a
minimalist genital appearance that’s a
very morally complex surgery I mean how
does it make you feel to learn that
fully one in three people who go to have
this surgery if you show them one small
a4 page and all it says is that you know
labia very naturally quite a lot 1 & 3
don’t have the surgery how would you
feel to learn that over 95% of GPS in
this country have been approached by a
woman under the age of 18 inquiring
about this surgery it’s morally fraud
consider appearance enhancing substances
like synthetic growth hormone
pediatricians an endocrinologist in this
country and elsewhere are being
inundated with parents who are worried
about their sons and daughters but
mostly their sons being too short no
medical cause just too short it’s to the
extent that they have they’ve had to put
our position statements to a swage
parents concerns about this and parents
are concerned and their concerns are
morally complex as well because when you
ask them why they almost all say the
same thing it’s that I just want my son
and daughter or daughter to have the
best possible chance in life and have
the best possible chance of success and
they view
any stigma attached to physical
appearance as an impediment to that
consider public policy as well because
you see this moralization here in 2004
New Jersey in the United States was the
the first state to put a tax on cosmetic
surgeries and they called it the vanity
tax and taxes of this kind have
proliferated since then and I’ve always
taken umbrage with that I mean the
moralization is self-evident but
consider what the word vanity actually
means like vanity means excessive self
admiration right of physical appearance
is it fair to compel people to care so
deeply about their physical appearance
such that they feel inclined to do
something about it then to tax them for
doing something about it and then to
give it the label of vanity do we really
think that the individual is going for
labiaplasty or parents who are having
their sons given growth hormone are
doing it because they admire themselves
too much I just don’t think it’s the
case and it also strikes me as unjust
that this tax disproportionately affects
women since women for the moment are the
disproportionate recipients of cosmetic
surgeries so what drives it like what
drives this moralization it might
surprise you to learn that if you ask
the public do you think cosmetic surgery
is morally acceptable or morally
unacceptable
the results are 50/50 50/50 so why does
Beauty have to be natural to be moral is
appearance enhancement tilted toward
immorality or is it only if you go too
far if you open the pages of any of the
magazine any Beauty magazine or
celebrity magazine there are pages and
pages dedicated to outing potential
celebrities who have had cosmetic
surgery in a speculation about whose
newfound beauty is the result of a
surgeon’s scalpel
rather than hard-won effort like efforts
somehow is what more Eliza’s appearance
enhancement and if you try hard enough
then it’s
okay but you know who I’ve met who tries
hard to change their appearance people
with eating disorders people who have
muscle dysmorphia so this is clearly
very very morally challenging and more
now than ever I think we need to
articulate the morality of appearance
enhancement because now more than ever
people are worried about their
appearance we have the highest rates of
eating disorders that we’ve ever had the
very nature of eating disorders is
changing because segments of the
population who otherwise non susceptible
to these pressures are now susceptible
and we now are confronted with those
challenges people are availing
themselves of cosmetic procedures
in greater numbers than ever before and
the types of procedures are becoming
more complex and more permanent gene
editing technologies which are a horizon
technology today will be a reality we
will be able to alter the physical
appearance of fetuses of babies before
they are born and the ethical and moral
dilemmas that will bring for us will be
incredibly hard to navigate unless we
can articulate the morality of
appearance enhancement and I’m not here
today to dictate to you what that
morality should be actually think that’s
largely a personal journey or at least a
societal level undertaking but I do want
to compel an introspection from you know
your relationship with your physical
appearance which in research we call
your body image is complex and it’s
multifaceted
and it’s yours it’s unique to you and
you arrived at it through a myriad of
forces many of which were outside of
your control and to achieve being
subject maybe your whole life and if you
struggle to articulate feelings about
your body or about changing it or
enhancing it then that’s fine because
it’s not articulated often we don’t get
the chance to because it’s so
emotionally difficult and painful to
think about but it’s a question worth
asking because maybe one day you’ll
think about
hansung your appearance in some more
profound way than just hair product or
or makeup maybe it’ll be a loved one who
asks you about it and you’ll need to
think about the set of morals and
principles that inform your answer and
for as long as an answer is wanting than
in the physical research our physical
appearance research team it’s a question
we are committed to asking it’s been a
privilege to enjoy your day [Applause]
the this scrip for eating disorders used
to be reliable young woman would walk
through my door and she would confess to
me that she didn’t like her body that
she hated her body that she was worried
all the time about becoming fat and she
was in the gym running on the treadmill
maybe she was thinking of taking
laxatives or diuretics to try and lose
weight but increasingly in the eating
disorders field we’re seeing something
new it’s a young man who walks through
the door and he’s not in the gym on the
treadmill he’s lifting weights and he’s
not worried about becoming fat he’s
worried about becoming skinny and he
doesn’t take laxatives or diuretics to
try and lose weight he uses steroids to
try and build muscle and we call this
muscle dysmorphia and it was the subject
of the TED talk that I gave in Sydney
last year and the point of that talk was
to demonstrate that concerns about
physical appearance are not confined to
women and girls as a stereotype might
suggest but more importantly that the
very nature of eating disorders is
changing as the cultural and social
forces that shape how we feel about
ourselves change also and this talk
whilst related is not about that it’s
about something different
it’s about morality and in particular
the morality of appearance enhancement
so to start with we all value our
appearance we know this implicitly we
have attractions and we have
insecurities and desires about others
bodies and about our own but research
also demonstrates so that most of us are
at least modestly dissatisfied with some
aspect of our physical appearance that’s
men and women alike in this country and
for a minority tragically that
overvaluation of appearance manifests as
a psychological disorder eating
disorders or muscle dysmorphia but it’s
not just that we care deeply about our
appearance our appearance is also
moralized my parents is moralized your
appearance is moralized the appearance
of everyone in this room is moralized by
the world around you and it can be
succinctly articulated that beautiful is
good and ugly is bad and this
moralization manifests in childhood
cartoons for example like The Little
Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast in
which the protagonists are always
beautiful and the villains most
certainly are not
and this moralization has persisted
across cultures and across different
periods in time and it is clear that our
appearance is a prism through which
others ascribe details and features of
our moral character and this
moralization of physical appearance is
particularly acute for women to be a
physically unattractive woman in
Australian society is basically
sacrilegious and we don’t just moralize
physical appearance and then we do but
it’s not the whole story I’ll give you
an example perhaps the most prominent
example of the tension between
moralization and physical appearance is
body weight so in Australia most adults
now live in larger bodies and by larger
bodies I mean bodies that have a body
mass index above 25 and if we run
studies of actual hiring managers and we
give them Seavey’s identical except with
respect to the BMI of the individual in
the photo attached to those CVS then the
hiring rate for individuals would be
mais above 25 those larger people
they’re hired half as often ostensibly
same qualifications same merit so it’s
clear that our appearance somehow plays
into our merit into processes that are
ostensibly meritocratic and which ought
not to have anything to do with our
appearance but as I said we don’t just
moralize our appearance we also moralize
attempts to alter
our appearance now some of these
evidently are more benign than others no
one takes umbrage with putting product
in your hair few people take umbrage
with women using makeup but what about
other things how do you feel for example
about men who put inserts in their shoes
to make themselves appear taller what’s
your gut feeling on that
what about leg lengthening surgeries to
make men and women actually taller where
do you sit on that it’s clear that once
you move to cosmetic surgeries and to
appearance enhancing drugs like anabolic
steroids people become deeply morally
conflicted let’s consider labiaplasty
labiaplasty is one of the fastest
growing cosmetic surgeries in australia
for those of you who don’t know a
labiaplasty is when a women a woman’s
labia minora and majora are altered to
produce what I can best describe as a
minimalist genital appearance that’s a
very morally complex surgery I mean how
does it make you feel to learn that
fully one in three people who go to have
this surgery if you show them one small
a4 page and all it says is that you know
labia very naturally quite a lot 1 & 3
don’t have the surgery how would you
feel to learn that over 95% of GPS in
this country have been approached by a
woman under the age of 18 inquiring
about this surgery it’s morally fraud
consider appearance enhancing substances
like synthetic growth hormone
pediatricians an endocrinologist in this
country and elsewhere are being
inundated with parents who are worried
about their sons and daughters but
mostly their sons being too short no
medical cause just too short it’s to the
extent that they have they’ve had to put
our position statements to a swage
parents concerns about this and parents
are concerned and their concerns are
morally complex as well because when you
ask them why they almost all say the
same thing it’s that I just want my son
and daughter or daughter to have the
best possible chance in life and have
the best possible chance of success and
they view
any stigma attached to physical
appearance as an impediment to that
consider public policy as well because
you see this moralization here in 2004
New Jersey in the United States was the
the first state to put a tax on cosmetic
surgeries and they called it the vanity
tax and taxes of this kind have
proliferated since then and I’ve always
taken umbrage with that I mean the
moralization is self-evident but
consider what the word vanity actually
means like vanity means excessive self
admiration right of physical appearance
is it fair to compel people to care so
deeply about their physical appearance
such that they feel inclined to do
something about it then to tax them for
doing something about it and then to
give it the label of vanity do we really
think that the individual is going for
labiaplasty or parents who are having
their sons given growth hormone are
doing it because they admire themselves
too much I just don’t think it’s the
case and it also strikes me as unjust
that this tax disproportionately affects
women since women for the moment are the
disproportionate recipients of cosmetic
surgeries so what drives it like what
drives this moralization it might
surprise you to learn that if you ask
the public do you think cosmetic surgery
is morally acceptable or morally
unacceptable
the results are 50/50 50/50 so why does
Beauty have to be natural to be moral is
appearance enhancement tilted toward
immorality or is it only if you go too
far if you open the pages of any of the
magazine any Beauty magazine or
celebrity magazine there are pages and
pages dedicated to outing potential
celebrities who have had cosmetic
surgery in a speculation about whose
newfound beauty is the result of a
surgeon’s scalpel
rather than hard-won effort like efforts
somehow is what more Eliza’s appearance
enhancement and if you try hard enough
then it’s
okay but you know who I’ve met who tries
hard to change their appearance people
with eating disorders people who have
muscle dysmorphia so this is clearly
very very morally challenging and more
now than ever I think we need to
articulate the morality of appearance
enhancement because now more than ever
people are worried about their
appearance we have the highest rates of
eating disorders that we’ve ever had the
very nature of eating disorders is
changing because segments of the
population who otherwise non susceptible
to these pressures are now susceptible
and we now are confronted with those
challenges people are availing
themselves of cosmetic procedures
in greater numbers than ever before and
the types of procedures are becoming
more complex and more permanent gene
editing technologies which are a horizon
technology today will be a reality we
will be able to alter the physical
appearance of fetuses of babies before
they are born and the ethical and moral
dilemmas that will bring for us will be
incredibly hard to navigate unless we
can articulate the morality of
appearance enhancement and I’m not here
today to dictate to you what that
morality should be actually think that’s
largely a personal journey or at least a
societal level undertaking but I do want
to compel an introspection from you know
your relationship with your physical
appearance which in research we call
your body image is complex and it’s
multifaceted
and it’s yours it’s unique to you and
you arrived at it through a myriad of
forces many of which were outside of
your control and to achieve being
subject maybe your whole life and if you
struggle to articulate feelings about
your body or about changing it or
enhancing it then that’s fine because
it’s not articulated often we don’t get
the chance to because it’s so
emotionally difficult and painful to
think about but it’s a question worth
asking because maybe one day you’ll
think about
hansung your appearance in some more
profound way than just hair product or
or makeup maybe it’ll be a loved one who
asks you about it and you’ll need to
think about the set of morals and
principles that inform your answer and
for as long as an answer is wanting than
in the physical research our physical
appearance research team it’s a question
we are committed to asking it’s been a
privilege to enjoy your day [Applause]
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