Nina Ross, PhD

In a recent Body Image Group, a participant shared a collage that she had been working on.
The image was of a woman dressed in a black bra and panties, in a somewhat seductive posture. The participant
stated that she felt very uncomfortable with the image. She said, “I fear the female form.”
How difficult to live in a body that one is afraid of! Does this person fear her power, her beauty, her very life force?
Apparently so.
Beauty denied; the gift of one’s body denied; power denied; sexuality denied; sensuality denied. If the body is the seat
of knowing, knowing must be denied, too. What can be trusted then, when the body can’t be?

Denial, of course, is also the major theme in the life of the anorexic. The anorexic does not want to be seen, and so denies her food intake as a way of feeling invisible.