Life at the intersection of health and mental health: You’re not pretty enough

I have been thinking about this issue for a long time but a few things have pulled it into sharp focus recently.

First, if you have not heard about the work being done by Jennifer Tress – who turned her cheating husband’s insult (“you’re not pretty enough”) into a positive body image movement – then you have not been trolling popular media much. Her book and website focus on stories, conversations, videos, and educational materials that help both men and women with this issue.  (Talk about resilience! And of course a sweet karmic turn as well.)

Next, I was struck by how many of the materials I received in my breast cancer journey showcased classes and services being offered to help me look and feel pretty after surgery/during treatment for breast cancer. One forum has a way for people to donate makeup that they share (with women I assume but I suppose I should not make that assumption, especially since Rue Paul’s Drag Race is my all-time favorite television show). The American Cancer Society (ACS) has classes offered across the country called Look Good Feel Better. Instinctively everyone seems to understand how looking good impacts feeling good and contributes to overall wellness for those of us dealing with breast cancer.

We do live in a society where looks are important. In fact responding to beauty appears to be hardwired into our DNA.

For example: “The classical interpretation of physical attractiveness was that physical attractiveness is just arbitrary, it's in the eye of the beholder, beauty is skin deep, that kind of stuff. And what research has shown is that that is absolutely wrong. In fact, beauty is the promise of function in terms of the health of the individual, and function in terms of the ability to deal effectively with environments that are hostile – environments of our evolutionary past.” 

-        Randy Thornhill, interview for the PBS series Evolution, 2001

It’s been shown that people’s perception of whether or not we are attractive even impacts our ability to get jobs and what we are paid in those jobs.

Do I think that being attractive should not matter? Yes, but sadly that is not the way the world works. Do I think that the most important things I am dealing with include my mental health, physical health, relationships and work, and that feeling “pretty enough” is and should be much, much, much lower on the list of my concerns? Yes.

But having said that, it is an issue we do not talk about in mental health that I think has more impact on our lives than we acknowledge. And it is an issue that the breast cancer movement has no problem dealing with.

If our sense of how we appear can affect our confidence – and to some extent our acceptance in the community – then those of us living with mental health issues face unique challenges. 

• We are often very poor with no resources (including transportation) to buy any of the clothing or makeup or grooming services that are the hallmark of attractiveness in our culture.
• We often have little or no energy to do the work of finding the clothing or applying the makeup or tending to the grooming.
• We have often disconnected from our physical selves – we can feel so stigmatized and self-loathing that ignoring our bodies and appearance is less painful than connecting and working on how we look.
• Our medication can cause us to gain 3-5 pounds a month. That is 36 to 60 pounds of weight gain per year in a culture that clearly finds obesity unacceptable and unattractive.

I always know when I am at the right hotel for a conference with my mental health peers because we all look the same. And it always makes me sad, somehow. Just like my peers in the breast cancer community, those of us in the mental health community struggle with so much.  For many of us being alive is such a victory. (More people die by suicide now than by traffic accidents, for example.) Yet we cannot make that next step to care for ourselves. And maybe I missed it, but I never ran into any free makeup giveaways or classes around the country helping me to look and feel pretty as a consumer of mental health services.