Dove Campaign Brings Discussion of Self Esteem,Body Image to French Schools

By Khari Johnson

Michele Lacoste-Dupont is a Parisian psychoanalyst who has workedher whole career on the self esteem of the obese and very skinny alike as aspecialist in eating disorders. Both she says are missing a form of mental, not physical, nutrition elsewhere in their life and are suffering from a mental diseasewith physical ramifications.“Both the very fat and very thin with eating disorders suffer from issuesof self esteem,” Lacoste-Dupont said.Until now Lacoste-Dupont has sought to help people with eatingdisorders in her day job but in late May Lacoste-Dupont joined the DoveCampaign for Real Beauty, signing a 4000 euro contract with their Self EsteemFund to help strengthen the body image of French girls.If you looked up at billboards off Market or followed the ads on the sideof Muni buses last spring you may have seen the diverse group of six not so-average average women. The models, all in white swimsuits, were part of theDove Campaign for Real Beauty, a series of advertisements by the beauty product company to champion natural beauty.The same advertising campaign, together with a Self Esteem Fund likethe one Lacoste-Dupont is involved in, took place in countries all over the world

where Dove is active including Canada, Australia, the Philippines and Francewith models from the corresponding country.As part of the campaign Dove conducted a study in ten developednations worldwide and found three quarters of women comfortable with callingthemselves average or natural and only 2 percent felt good calling themselves beautiful. In this category only the British and Japanese responded in lower numbers than the French.French women especially feel external pressures to stay thin. More thanAmerican women and other surveyed countries of Europe barring Portugal,French women of today feel they are expected to be more physically attractivethan their mother’s generation. When asked if physically attractive women aremore valued by men the French agreed more than any other country in thesurvey.As part of her work Lacoste-Dupont will “travel to French schools totalk with young girls about low self esteem and eating disorders”, two thingsLacoste-Dupont believes could be on the rise.The climb of obesity rates could influence the self esteem and bodyimage of French young people who are, according to national statistics, gainingweight at a speed that has doubled in the past ten years from 9 to 18 percent.She is, as many experts are, hesitant to say if rising obesity rates willaffect the amount of people who suffer from eating disorders but it will make people more conscious of their body image and intensify pressures to be thin.

“Self esteem issues are always there in eating disorders,” said Lacoste-Dupont “because most people who have eating disorders don’t like their image.”Another reason for concern is a growing diet market. According to the publication

Datamonitor

France has the fastest growing diet product market inWestern Europe.The reason why someone develops an eating disorder, she says, isdifferent from person to person but they start the same way.“Eating disorders always begin with someone trying a diet,” she says,comparing the addiction of eating disorders to that of an alcoholic. “Someonewho drinks wine is not an alcoholic but they start with a glass of wine.”She knows the effects of low self esteem well not just because of her work as a psychoanalyst but from personal experience.When Lacoste-Dupont was 15 she felt a distance between herself andher mother.“I always felt very alone and though I wasn’t sure, I thought my momliked my two brothers more than me. So perhaps to be more important for mymother I lost a lot of weight.”How much weight she isn’t sure of but she would not stop trying to loseweight for another fifteen years. Lacoste-Dupont was anorexic and deprivedherself of food to achieve the image of what she found beautiful.She studied psychology for her bachelors degree in hopes that it wouldhelp her find answers to her own problem but had no luck. Then she chose to become a psychoanalyst for the same reason.