Despite tremendous strides in reaching equality with men, we all know there’s still a way to go. We grew up seeing our mothers and grandmothers doing the majority of the child-rearing, cooking and cleaning. We were raised to be caregivers and nurturers, and given dolls and Sylvanian Families to play with (although we may have been given Lego, too).
Society has different expectations for little girls and little boys. I’m generalizing here, but we’re more likely to be mollycoddled and warned to stay safe. By the way, I by no means want to take away from the struggles that men experience, but the female experience has particular qualities. Many of us have been conditioned into believing the importance of keeping others happy and appearing ‘perfect’; a 2016 study by Girl Guiding found that a quarter of girls said they felt under pressure to be perfect. A third said people made them feel as though the way they look is the most important thing about them.1 Women are twice as likely to suffer from anxiety as men, according to The Mental Health Foundation.2
We’re taught not to brag, to be modest at all times. How many of us heard ‘don’t be a show-off’ when we were younger? Who still finds it hard to accept a compliment, for fear you’ll appear big-headed?
Our conditioning goes back generations; parents pass on their fears, doubts and limiting beliefs to their children. And it was only a hundred years – three generations – ago that women got the vote. When my great-grandmother was born, women were still expected to forgo an education or a career. Even if they worked, the focus was on the domestic sphere and raising children.
In the majority of households it’s still women who take time off work to raise children (and later, to look after elderly parents) – although more men are doing so. And while times are changing, beliefs in society still hang around in our collective subconscious, however equally your parents tried to raise you, or you are trying to raise your children. They include doubts and expectations such as:
You’ve probably never considered that your confidence might be higher if you were male. But it seems likely. For example, men tend to overestimate their IQ, but women are more likely to underestimate theirs.4 And a man will apply for a job if he feels he meets 60 per cent of the requirements, while a woman will only do so when she’s sure she meets 100 per cent, according to a study by Hewlett Packard.5
What I’ve experienced, both in myself and in my clients, is we don’t trust our own opinions and we fear failure or criticism, so we play safe or we don’t try at all. We’re scared to speak up in case we say the ‘wrong’ thing or hurt people’s feelings. We’re less likely to take risks, we’re more prone to taking criticism to heart. Across our lives women have, on average, consistently lower self-esteem than men.6 All of this can mean our confidence – along with our career prospects – takes a knock.
After babies, it’s more often the woman who returns part-time or to a smaller job, often meaning her career ambitions need to be scaled down, too. Sadly, good girls finish last. At work, not being confident of your value could mean you don’t negotiate, charge or value your worth. And women who don’t go back to work after children risk losing our identity, building up resentment or ending up burning out because our own needs don’t get met.
There’s no denying cultural norms, and the structure of society can be crushing to a woman’s confidence. But on an individual level, you can decide to break free. And as each of us starts to change, we will be changing things at a collective level, too.
As a small girl, I dreamed of having a Disney princess dress. At the age of eleven, I saved for weeks to buy an overpriced hair serum to solve my frizzy hair ‘problem’ (it didn’t) after reading about it in a magazine. I was moisturizing from the age of nine and skipping meals in order to try to achieve a flat stomach at fourteen. All I wanted was a skinny frame like Marissa from The O.C. In my early twenties I was certain the only way a boy would ever look at me was if I had the swishy, tumbling curls and killer abs of a Victoria’s Secret model.
Have you ever wanted to look different from the way you look in the mirror – maybe straighter hair, smaller thighs, smaller nose? I did, constantly. Looking back, it’s as if I swallowed whole every ideal of female attractiveness that I came across. At first glance, this focus on looks may seem superficial but the truth is, how we feel about our bodies and appearance has enormous consequences for our ability to be assertive and confident in all areas of our life. Body-image concerns impact mental health in the all-important teen years. According to the Dove Global Beauty and Confidence Report, only 20 per cent of UK women like their appearance, the lowest body confidence level in the world. Having poor body confidence impacts whether girls will be assertive in their opinions and stick to their decisions.7
As a woman, thinking that you are ‘fat’ has a pronounced impact on depressive symptoms (regardless of your actual weight).8 Women worry about looks more than men (that’s not to say men don’t have their own body issues too). Men tend to think they’re thinner than their actual weight, whereas women tend to think they’re heavier.9
Body image feeds into self-esteem, which in turn affects academic achievement and earning power. Eating and body-image issues have been found to have a negative impact on academic achievement.10 Lower body-esteem can impact how attractive you feel, and so affect both the quality of your sex life and your long-term relationships.11
The truth is, at every age and stage, we have been confronted with a perfect ideal that is impossible to reach. In my training as a hypnotherapist, I learned that as we zone out in front of the TV, we enter a trance state where we’re more open to the suggestions and messages we see and hear on the screen. It’s a form of hypnosis; advertisers capitalize on this to convince you their products are the answer to all your problems. Suddenly, eating crappy breakfast cereal for every meal in order to starve yourself into smaller jeans, and believing your ‘frizz’ desperately needs to be eased by overpriced goop, seems totally reasonable!
We are what we eat – and much of the media feed we consume is junk. We’ve grown up on a diet of Gossip Girl, Britain’s Next Top Model and Beach Body SOS and it has poisoned our confidence. Your thighs are not the problem, the culture is. The Dove report also found that over half of girls in the UK have avoided doing an activity such as going for dinner, joining a debate or playing sports because of concerns about how they look.
How much more amazing and powerful would we be as women if body-image issues didn’t handicap us?
Living in this society, with its unrealistic expectations and pressures, it’s up to you to act courageously and recapture your confidence.
Your life is shaped by your beliefs. A belief is simply a thought you have accepted to be true. We have all taken on board beliefs through different experiences, among them the cultural norms we’ve just been discussing. But the most toxic beliefs that hold us back have their roots in life events we often don’t talk about enough: trauma.
Dig down from anxiety, depression and self-confidence issues and you’ll often find trauma at the root. Please don’t be put off by the ‘t’ word. You don’t have to have experienced huge negative events to suffer the effects of trauma. In fact, there are two types of trauma, big ‘T’ trauma and little ‘t’ trauma. Big ‘T’ includes what you’d normally call trauma: serious events such as being caught up in natural disasters, wars, terrorist incidents, accidents and being a victim of sexual assault or any crime.
One big ‘T’ trauma that’s sadly very common and can have a big impact on confidence in later life is sexual assault. Childhood sexual abuse is a real problem; 11 per cent of women have suffered this, according to the Office for National Statistics, and it can have far-reaching consequences later in life.12 The Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) revealed that a shocking 1 in 5 women and 1 in 25 men have experienced some type of sexual assault as adults.13 And it’s estimated 3.1 per cent of women have experienced a sexual assault in the last year alone.14
Then there are little ‘t’s. These are experiences that many, in fact probably most, of us will go through. Yours might include being bullied at school or your parents splitting up, being overly criticized on your exam results by your dad or experiencing rejection by your friendship group.
The thing about trauma is, it can stay with you. Multiple little ‘t’s add up to create negative beliefs about ourself and the world. And those beliefs impact how we think, feel and behave. If you’ve been feeling stuck, helpless or unworthy, trauma could be why. The good news is, it doesn’t have to stay that way.
Throughout this book, and particularly in the next chapters, you’ll find tools and strategies for healing the past and regaining your lost confidence.
★ There are specific pressures and challenges that we as women have to overcome – about our appearance and the traditional roles expected of a woman – but it is possible!
★ Trauma can be healed, even if it relates to something that happened long ago.