Does lack of body confidence prevent British women from success?
New survey reveals that lack of body confidence has prevented a third of women in Britain from applying for a potential promotion or pay-rise!
Body confidence and women go together like peanut butter and jelly. You can’t have one without the other and the ratio is always off, no matter how hard you try. When it comes to the workplace, that ratio seems even more off balance with drastic consequences. Confidence and success often also go together as well because the more confident you are, the more successful you (usually) are. So why is it so hard for women to feel as though they’re successful at their jobs when we’re normally confident when we’re looking in the mirror before a good night out?
We second guess ourselves and question whether we’re really a good fit for that promotion or if our dreams will really come true if we apply for that one job. And it turns out that about one third of women in London, according to a study done by Dr. Foued Hamza, didn’t apply for a certain job due to a low level of self-confidence. Or there’s the troubling numbers also in the same study, noting that women would recommend cosmetic surgery with dermal fillers to a friend of relative to ‘fix’ a certain body part of theirs in order to be more confident and more appreciative of one’s image. Since when were we so critical of ourselves that we would actually consider altering it?
Maybe I’m biased because I’m finally in a place in my life where I can actually appreciate what my body can do-though it is flawed and I’m working on my health, I still wouldn’t want to drastically alter it with cosmetic surgery. Unless I was in an accident or something.
But anyway. This study hurts my heart, and not in a good way at all. The idea that women have a low enough image of themselves that they won’t go after a promotion they deserve just because they don’t look the part or they believe somewhere in their souls that there’s a better model of a person out there that looks more so like the role should. Dr. Hamza also found in the same study that 26% of those surveyed could tell their confidence levels were dramatically affecting their social lives and just about the same amount based their love lives on how attractive they felt to the gender of attraction. Though he may be a cosmetic surgeon who can rely on people wanting to alter their appearance to heighten self-confidence, Dr. Hamza still wants to ensure his clients are requesting his services for the right reasons and that they are happy with the results for the long haul.
Dr Foued Hamza, cosmetic surgeon consulting at Queen Anne Street Medical Centre, off Harley Street in London, goes on to say that; “People are particularly body conscious whether they are in the office, with their friends, or sharing intimate moments. Body shaming is a growing phenomenon because people are judgemental when they look at a person’s physique and this is clearly leading to higher stress levels in both the workplace and in people’s general every day life…I have noticed a significant increase in people coming to see me as they have been looking at cosmetic procedures as an option to retrieve their body confidence”. He also suggests to each potential client to fully research the requested procedure and dive deep into if it’s truly necessary for the person.
Because after all, cosmetic procedures still alter the way you look and while we’re all not perfect, we all can appreciate the strength of the bodies we were given and are able to maintain. Maybe it’s just me, but there’s so much more to us than what we look like. And it’s a shame we even reduce ourselves to something so trivial as a reflection to define our success in the workplace.
