Essential conversations with LGBTQIA+ youth about their body image

Yvie: [00:00:00] This podcast is recorded and produced on the land of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation. We pay our respects to their elders past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who may be listening.

Welcome to another episode of Let’s Talk a Podcast from Butterfly Foundation. I’m your host, Evie Jones, and in this episode we are delving into the complex and vital topic of body image in young people, particularly within the LGBTQIA plus community. We’ll be hearing from a diverse group of amazing guests.

Including Finn Sterling, a trans young person, Jeanette Chan, a queer lived experience researcher, and Francesca Bahar, a clinical psychologist who works with LGBTQIA plus clients. We’ll discuss the numerous factors that can influence a [00:01:00] young LGBT person’s experience of body image, including societal messages and biases, school experiences, media and social media.

And LGBTQIA plus community itself. We’ll also explore what inclusive affirming support really looks like and how we can work towards a future where every person feels seen, accepted, and empowered in their bodies. I am going to start with you, Finn, please introduce yourself and share a bit about your journey with body image and how it’s evolved over time.
Okay. I’m gonna start with you, Finn. Please introduce yourself and, uh, share a bit about your journey with body image and how it’s evolved over time.

Finn: Sure. So, I’m Finn. I use he, him pronouns. I work at the Youth Affairs Council of Victoria, or Yak Vic, as I’ll probably refer to it. I’m with the Peak body for youth work across the state of [00:02:00] Victoria.

I am 25, so I’m only just a young person and I’m an author and a poet, a mental health advocate, and also an advocate for trans rights and issues. And I share my lived experience, but being trans and my transition at the moment on Instagram, which is. Super fun and exciting. Uh, body images has been always been a really weird thing for me.

I’ve been pretty dissociated from my body since I started puberty, and that’s part of my transness and my trans identity. And when I talk about being dissociated, it’s like I’m, my brain is very separate from my body and it becomes very detached, so I can’t really feel into it. So I’ve never really felt bad about my body in that really, like, harmful way that we think about, you know, a bad body image.

But it meant I didn’t really feel anything at all. I didn’t feel good either. And not until I came out as trans and I started to really see myself in the mirror and, and tap into my body and my feelings. Long journey and transitioning and, um, testosterone and things like that are helping, but it’s not, you know, it’s not linear.

It doesn’t just isn’t solved over [00:03:00] overnight.

Yvie: That’s right. Not linear. How did school shape your early experiences of identity belonging and how you felt in your body?

Finn: Yeah, so. I’m gonna tell a little bit of a story before I like come back to my answer. But I was in like, I think a year 11 and like one day I just woke up in the morning and I was like, didn’t know the language for binding or anything like that.
So binding’s wearing like a compression top to push down the breasts or something like that. Something that compresses them. And I, yeah, woke up one morning and thought I needed. To bind. I didn’t think about it in that logical way. I just like grabbed some bandages and put them on my chest and then when inevitably that didn’t work ’cause they’re just like material bandages.

I went to school and I had to wear a bra and I was not only super uncomfortable, but like so hyper aware of everybody else’s chest. I think for the first time ever, just like everyone has different bodies and chests and minds different and just, oh, lots of weird, yucky feelings. Right. I think being around lots of other young [00:04:00] people going through puberty at the same time made me feel like what I was experiencing was the same as them because everyone feels weird and yuck in their body when they’re going through puberty.

It’s so intense. I’m doing it again, so I’m I’m I’m in it. Yeah.

Yvie: You’re doing it again.

Finn: Yeah.

Yvie: I didn’t think of that. It it like that. Look, we go through it once, don’t we? And trans people go through it twice.
Finn: Yeah. Go through it twice and have to have a job and have adult responsibilities while my body’s like, ah.
Yeah, it’s great. Loving that. Yeah, so I think it felt like the other young people around me were all going through the same thing that I was, but because we talk about, you know, how puberty sucks and everyone hates their body as a teenager, and everything is gross and uncomfortable and it’s normal, especially for women to feel funny and their bodies orr like this indescribable weird feeling in their bodies when they’re young, but there’s no words and language for the kind of weird and uncomfortable that I was feeling. And so it took me a long time to kind of like put the pieces together. And I think yes, school was, I. Really tricky [00:05:00] in that way.

Yvie: Wow.

Oh, did you go to co-ed? Yeah. Have you heard much differences with co-ed and same-sex schools as far as experiences go with body image?

Finn: Yeah, a little bit. I think sometimes it’s way more stark. It’s like I’m the one different person around lots of other, of a different gender or the same gender, and that can be really.

I guess like more alienating, but also more, it’s more stark. It’s clearer. Whereas I didn’t have that, that clarity in the same way.
Yvie: Jeanette, I’m gonna come over to you now. Can you introduce yourself and explain when did you start experiencing concerns about your body and can you take us back to that time and what you remember feeling or noticing?

Jeanette: Um, my name is Jeanette. I use they, she pronouns. And I am 26. I am a, uh, lived experience peer [00:06:00] researcher, um, mental health advocate, and by day I work in public policy.

I think my earliest memory of my body was my first day of junior school, so like six maybe. I just remember being called a twig and being like, oh. That’s clearly a problem. I don’t know what that means, but I think growing up I was in ballet, so you are very focused on how people’s bodies look like, and you are constantly being pulled up on how your body appears.
You know, pull yourself up, look a certain way. You’re scanning the room, looking at other people’s bodies and seeing like, oh. That person, there’s an issue that there’s a problem. Oh, let me like self-censor and like change the way my body shows up in this world so that like, it is favorable. I don’t get called out.

But I think like making sense of all that stuff probably only happened when I was around like 12, [00:07:00] 13 and I had looked back at a photo of myself recently in the pool and uh, my mom was very. I cared a lot about water safety, so I was wearing like goggles, like a swimming cap, and I remember looking at that photo and I think for anybody else, they would look at that photo and think, oh my God, happy person swimming.

Remember looking at that photo and thinking, oh my God, there’s so many things wrong here about the way that my body looks. The first thing I thought of at 12 was like, my head looks like a basketball, which is awful and terrible to think about. By the time I’m like, oh. I need to fix it. I need to do something about this.

And so that’s when, for me, there were a lot of conscious behaviors around changing the way that my body appeared.
Yvie: Yeah. Gosh. I think we’ve all looked at that photo of us. Isn’t that awful? When you go back and remember that, that one photo that did it.
Jeanette: yeah.

Yvie: Growing up, what kind of messages or language did you hear about bodies and worth, [00:08:00] whether from your family culture or the systems around you, and how did those messages impact you as a young person?

Jeanette: Yeah, I think I went to single sex schools from junior school all the way to year 12, and so you are very conscious about the way your body appears. I think you don’t realize that that’s the case in the moment, but. You get lots of comments from other people that tell you like, oh, you are sitting wrong.

Like, sit this way, or Close your legs. Or sit up straight, and like all these different things and feedback from friends, teachers, like parents, family, just society. Kind of shapes the way that you’re like, oh, to embody different traits about, I’m a good girl, I’m like a good person. I need to appear a certain way.

And so, okay, let me be really careful about the way that my body shows up in the world, whether that’s my [00:09:00] actions or how it appears so that other people can perceive me in the way that I wanna be perceived. It was very much shaped by how other people saw me rather than how I felt in my own body.

Yvie: How do you personally navigate social media and what do you think needs to shift to make these spaces safer and more affirming for marginalized youths?

Jeanette: When I was younger, I used it a lot. I don’t think there was like a real, like intention behind the way that I engaged social media. You know, I grew up around the time where it very much image centric, you know, Instagram. The early days of that happening, lots of people spending time learning how to edit their photos so that they appeared in a certain way, so they were considered more desirable.

That was kind of my upbringing, and when I became more conscious about the way that social media really shaped the way that I viewed myself, I’ve kind of pulled back from it because I found that. Even now when I look at images, it takes a huge [00:10:00] amount of concerted effort to think about more about how I feel in my body than the body feeling, rather than how other people perceive me.

Even if I’m taking the time and effort to curate a feed that’s focused on, you know, the way that my body feels, the function, the appreciation, body positivity. Even then if I get too in my head, I focus more on like. What I’m not doing or what I should be appearing like to other people rather than how my life is really great.

And that’s sort of where I’ve landed.

Yvie: Yeah. Uh, back over to you, Finn. You work with the youth and in your work with young people, what are some of the common body image pressures or struggles that you see in the LGBTQI A plus youth that they’re facing?

Finn: I did a little bit of research and had a chat to my friend who’s in the disorder space as well to kind of like get this all together and we were talking about.

[00:11:00] Uh, common issues around body image, especially for trans young people, come from the pressures that exist outside of body image. So if you feel like completely dysphoric and uncomfortable and really stressed about your body, not being able to access healthcare becomes part of your. The reason that your body image suffers along with like, I know there’s lots of young people who I’ve worked with who are under 18, and you need parental consent to start any kind of medical, gender affirmation process.

And so you’re sitting in this space of stress and dysphoria and uncomfort for years before you can get the care that you need and that you want. And so that really impacts body image and we can. Other that are done on women about eating disorders and disordered eating, that that kind of trickles over because you can’t control that.

You can’t get any medical care, but. Like control the shape that your body takes through disordered eating behaviors, things like that.

Yvie: Now the body kind Youth survey [00:12:00] highlighted disproportionate body image concerns among LGBTQIA plus youth, especially trans and gender diverse young people. Fran. Can you introduce yourself and tell us what do you think could be the key factors that were or are contributing to that?

Fran: Thanks so much, Evie. My name is Fran. I am a clinical psychologist based at Mind Body Well, which is a private practice in Melbourne where we provide interdisciplinary and intersectional treatment, focusing on eating disorder care and body image concerns. I am also really proud to be part of the queer community myself, and I’m very fortunate to have some of the most important people in my life be transgender.

So trans justice is really important to me, both professionally and personally. Yes, it definitely doesn’t surprise me, saddens me, but not surprises. I think, as Finn was saying earlier, like the big part of it is. Like differentiating gender dysphoria from body image concerns and Absolutely. If people don’t have [00:13:00] access to gender affirming care, it makes sense that they wanna reduce the distress of being in their body.

And so often that can come through as. You know, doing acts or behaviors or trying to change one’s body to feel closer to, you know, what their aligned gender is so that that can be one for queer people. I think you touched on this, Jeanette, too. So yeah, there can be lots of really stereotypical body ideals within the queer community.

So for queer men, high muscularity is a really common one, but they can also be subgroups. So if we think about like. Twink or bear or, or butch, you know, there’s quite a strong image that comes to mind that captures these ideals and so it can yeah, be a way to feel accepted within the community. But we also spoke, I guess, more generally about experiences of marginalization and all of these affect someone’s relationship with their body [00:14:00] and so trying to change one’s body or yeah, feel uncomfortable, I guess, can be a really understandable response to not being included. And, you know, experiencing that powerlessness or lack of body autonomy. And because we’re, you know, in the state of the world that we are at the moment where it is really unsafe, I think that makes sense that these rates are so high.

Finn: There is a lot of pressure for trans people who fit within a binary. So there might be a trans man or a trans woman to be hyper-masculine or hyper-feminine. And so now we put ourselves back in the binary and it limits the glorious vibrancy of gender that we have and the box that we’re trying to move out. But it also means that we’re trying really hard to be things that don’t exist anyway.

Yvie: Fran, the question I have for you is how do we need to rethink or expand the language we [00:15:00] use when we talk about body image, particularly in inclusive and affirmative way to your question
Fran: around inclusive language around. Bodies. Yeah, I think it’s been an outcome of some of the body positivity movements that we’ve seen.

There is this real sense of love your body all of the time, and you know, even some of the things around, it’s not your body that’s the problem, it’s society. That’s the problem. I think that’s often really well intentioned and make sense of trying to put it back onto diet culture and at the same time, it’s also missing.

A lot of people’s experiences and how they actually relate to their bodies. So gender dysphoria is extremely uncomfortable. And of course people are either gonna dissociate from that, as Finn was saying, or yeah, have that real preoccupation around it. And we see similar things for other marginalized groups, like people who are disabled or have chronic illness.
It’s a real privilege to be in a body where you can be comfortable, and I don’t think that’s really acknowledged in [00:16:00] a lot of the language that we use. So any way we can try and acknowledge and understand that privilege so that we can really zoom out and have a much broader perspective, I think is gonna be useful here.

Yvie: Just on that, your body is not the problem. What other blanket statements are there like that that can be quite unhelpful or even harmful? Mm.

Fran: Yeah, I think, ’cause I said like. Love your body. Your body is perfect the way that it is. Yeah. There’s some that immediately come to mind. They miss so much else that goes into someone’s relationship with their body.
I think there’s, yeah, this assumption that it’s just that purely visual aspect as well. Like it’s just Yeah, how we’re seen by other people externally. And body image is a really broad, like the multidimensional concept that takes into. So much more of, you know, how we’re feeling, how we’re looking after our bodies, the emotional and the physical experiences, and the embodiment and connection [00:17:00] side of it. Like none of that is really captured by some of these statements of your body is not the problem.

Yvie: Yeah. Wow. What does truly inclusive, gender affirming weight inclusive care look like in your practice?
Fran: I think a lot of it comes down to therapists doing their own work in this space, so being able to unpack their own internalized biases and stereotypes.

Like, I dunno, how we expect clients to be meeting us there without us coming to the party too. So that’s probably step one. I think another really important part is seeing the client as the expert in their lived experience. Like I really struggle actually being called an expert. Expert. That doesn’t resonate with me because I don’t know what it’s like to live in someone else’s body.

And so being able to really be with them and hear them and take their experiences as that expertise is so important. And as well as, you know, therapists doing their own work around those [00:18:00] internalized biases, I think it can be really important to think about how we’re supporting clients and unpacking maybe their internalized bias too.

So whether that’s. Internalized anti-fat or anti queerness, antit transness, that can be a really major block for being able to access more of the self-compassion and acceptance. So thinking about how we’re wiping through. Yeah, a lot of the shame that can be really attached to these marginalized identities to be able to move towards a more accepting relationship with their body.

Yvie: Jeanette, back to you from a policy and systems perspective, what do you wish educators, health professionals, and decision makers better understood about body image, particularly when it comes to identity, culture, and mental health?
Jeanette: I think some of that goes back to what Fran was saying, that the stuff is incredibly complex.

A body image isn’t just about your appearance, it’s I think, for me about the way that you [00:19:00] feel, think, and see your own body. And a lot of that is influenced by the way that we interact with the world. And I think there’s kind of like the bottom up and the top down approaches to. Improving people’s body image.

Think top down. You know some, that stuff that Fran was talking about around structural discrimination. I think we have a responsibility to play in terms of like our role in the system and equipping young people with those tools, but also as an individual. Doing that work for yourself I think is a huge part of us. Being a part of the change.

Yvie: Couldn’t agree more. Finn, back to you. How do you navigate social media? You were saying that your transition, you are pretty much showing us all As is happening, which. Thank you so much for doing, how do you navigate that?
Finn: The, there’s two sides of it, right? There’s the, me as a user and then me as someone sharing the content, I’m being really mindful about the things that I share.

And, and while I am letting everyone in on my medical [00:20:00] transition, I’m still very mindful about the things that I share. And, you know, I might be filming a lot of stuff, but I’m not necessarily, um, sharing it right at in the moment. ’cause I think. I need to give myself time to prepare for things, and especially if they’re really emotional or really tricky or have been triggering, like I’m not gonna post that straight away.

I need some time to process that. And then I might change my mind and not post it. But I think being able to have the choice and to navigate my own boundaries as I go is really important. So that’s what. I’ve been doing, and then as a user, it’s been a beautiful place of community. I follow some amazing trans and gender diverse people on Instagram that are super diverse because I think it’s important that the social media that we consume breaks the mold of what the rest of society deems beautiful and desirable and normal, and I want to see my community reflected back at me, so I make a really intentional choice to do that

Yvie:  What do you wish that educators, parents, or professionals better understood about how to support young people around body image in gender affirming ways?

Finn: Oh my gosh, there’s so many [00:21:00] things, right? And I could talk about all the basics that educators and parents and professionals need to educate themselves, but we hear this discourse a lot, right?

So what I wanna say today is that I want educators, parents, and professionals to be mindful and intentional that every person’s body is different, every person’s expression of gender and understanding of gender and feeling of it in their body is so different and what they want as the, I don’t know, we don’t really talk in outcomes when it comes to trans and gender diversity, but what the goal they’re imagining for themselves at the end of whatever process they’re going through is not gonna be the same as the other young person sitting at the table or anybody else. And along with what Fran was saying, I think it’s really important that adults spend some time unpacking their own biases when it comes to body image. I think about my parents and the adults in my life who went through the horrendous body image eras of the nineties and the early two thousands, and while I’m very lucky and very privileged that those people in my life have never projected that onto me. Having to watch them be really uncomfortable in their bodies means that we inherit some of that stuff as well.

Yvie: Oh, yeah. Absorption. Big time. Big time. That was my generation. Yeah. And we, oh, I don’t have children, but all my friends and family do and just watching their kids learn it.

Yvie: Yeah. Awful. It’s traumatic to watch, isn’t it? As it as the trauma is being passed down and, and taught.

It makes me think of like parents who say that their kids are the most beautiful like humans on the planet, you know? But then the way they treat themselves and the way they talk to themselves, whether like internally or out loud, like causes a lot of conflict for young people and cause conflict for me. Like how can, like the people that I love and care about say that. They don’t look beautiful. They don’t look ugly or they don’t fit into these pants, and that’s a problem. But then [00:23:00] I am beautiful and everything is fine for me. Like that’s a huge like disconnect. That’s really hard to reconcile when you don’t have language, you don’t have resources, you don’t have thought processes. I was exactly the same. I was so in love with my mother. I just thought she was everything, and for her to put herself down, or society to put her down in any way, all I wanted to do was be her. And I thought she was perfect.

It was such a, a heartbreak that I didn’t know how to navigate either. I didn’t know what I was feeling, or all you know is it’s painful and it’s quite amazing when you see that back as an adult, isn’t it? And it’s not just parenting, it’s society, it’s, you know, family. It’s all of that kind of thing. It’s must be so just similar for so many people in the same space.[00:24:00]
Fran, back to you. What are the biggest gaps that you see in the system when it comes to supporting LGBTQIA plus young people with body image or disordered eating?

Fran: The main one that came to mind for me that I think really informs a lot of the other different areas is the massive gap in our research literature. It is huge. And that has such, important flow on effects to all kinds of things, whether it’s just having the information about what’s it like for clear and trans people to experience body image, which I’m really glad the body kind Youth Survey has been trying to capture. But that relates to service provision and follow up and all these different pathways.
And you know, being within the eating disorder field, I’ll speak to that literature [00:25:00] predominantly, but it is not good. It’s really dire. A lot of our eating disorder treatment have only been really researched and evidence based on what we think of as the stereotype of eating disorders. You know, even people with comorbidities were screened out and there are so few people who have like a pure quote unquote eating disorder. So that would also include screening out of, you know, queer or gender marginalized communities, or that information was not even asked. Or captured. So we just don’t know a lot of the time, but that’s why we can’t be really relying on, you know, what we think of as evidence-based treatments because they’re not evidence-based in probably the majority of people that are seeking them.

It is. A really quite scary gap, but why we need to be really coming back to yeah. People as the expert in their lived experience and clinicians needing to work [00:26:00] with that because we can’t be relying on the research in that way.

Yvie: Yeah. Well, just the inclusivity I. Is excluding the inclusivity. It’s just bizarre. My, my next question to you was what, what change would you like to see? But I think it’s pretty obvious to create a more body kind future. I think it’s pretty obvious. Inclusivity would be really good. Have you got anything else to add to that?

Fran: Yeah, we need the information as a. Starting point, which yeah, really takes us back time-wise.
So that’s probably a, a really big one that comes to mind. The other main thing I wanted to say for that question is that it needs to be safe, you know, for kids to be themselves in any way. You know, whether that’s being trans, being queer, like we’re not. Then reduce, you know, the amounts of discrimination or the negative experiences of being in their body if it’s not safe.

And so [00:27:00] access to gender affirming care is eating disorder prevention. I was having this conversation with a client the other day that if they had had that access and support growing up, that you know, would probably take out a lot of the contributing factors for their eating disorder. And so being able to, yeah, have that safety and access. That’s a big thing that needs to change a lot across lots of different levels within our systems, but I think it’s a really primary one.

Yvie: Oh, well said. I’m going to ask the last two questions first for Jeanette and then for Finn. What would you say, Jeanette, to a young queer person who’s struggling with how they feel in their body?

Jeanette: Big question. Finn was saying, you know, like every person’s journey is different, so I can don’t feel comfortable talking to any young queer person, but I’ll talk to my young self. It took me a really long time, only when I was an adult, before I started to kind of make sense of how I was feeling in my body and that [00:28:00] I was queer first understanding like. what queer issues were, what the LGBTQI Plus community was, and then like working really hard to unlearn a lot of the stereotypes and expectations I had. And I think what I would say to younger me is to focus on how you feel in your body, make decisions. Based on what makes you feel good, what brings you joy, what helps you see more of the world than like what other people think of you.

Because a lot of my life has been shaped by making decisions based on how I expect or think other people would respond to me and in, you know. I to what it means to express myself as a gender fluid person has been confusing. But at the same time, I’m still grappling with this [00:29:00] idea of like being queer enough and showing up as queer enough.

I don’t know if people ever stop feeling that way, because like in the context of body image, there’s nothing like more affirming than being clocked by a member of the community, but at the same time. I’ve also internalized more and more over the last few years that like being queer means I am queer, means I am queer enough and getting comfy with like, this is how I show up in the world.

This is what makes me feel good and I don’t have. Dress or show up in a particular way to demonstrate to other people that I’m queer. And so I’m still learning, like let’s not make decisions about the way that I express myself even now in my day to day, because I think I’ll be clocked as more queer.

Like let’s make decisions because. It makes me feel good in my body. It makes me feel more confident. It’s me expressing my joy. So I think that’s what I would say. One more thing for me, [00:30:00] one of the things that I was thinking about was an aspect of my experience that maybe I didn’t talk too much about, like I’m a migrant, so I moved to Australia when I was 15, and that’s really.

Like, when I think about, you know, understanding of queer issues and like, I’m happy and excited for young people today that they get that representation more so than I did. And I had to learn about some of this stuff when I was an adult. But I think another thing I’d say to myself is like, it’s okay that it, it takes time and like there’s no rushing the process.

We’re talking about outcomes. There’s nowhere I am running to like, this stuff takes time. Transition can look so like so many different things for lots of different people and that’s okay. You can kind of pick and choose whatever works for you, you know, and there’s no timeline that you need to work to, is what I’m telling myself right now.
Love that so much. You can say that to me as well. Such a beautiful message. Thank you so much, Finn, I’m going to end with you. If you could give one [00:31:00] message to trans queer young people who are struggling with body image or identity or your younger self as Janet did, what would it be?

Finn: Such a hard question and I don’t think there’s one right answer.

I think I just wanna be there. I think I’d wanna give them consensually a hug and just be like. I get how hard this is because it’s so isolating. You feel like you’re the only person that’s experiencing it. There’s no one around you. Often in media and things like that, that show the experiences that we’re having that are so hard that like really bog us down day to day. So I just wanna be there and I don’t wanna be like, here’s the resources, here’s how I can support you. And like, you’re not alone. It’s okay.

Yvie: Wow. I love that too. So, great. Thank you all so much for your time. Uh, your wisdom, your advice, your expertise, your all experts. Thank you for your time. A huge thank [00:32:00] you to Finn, Jeanette and Fran for sharing their personal experience and professional knowledge when it comes to the body image experiences of transgender diverse and L-G-B-T-Q-I. A plus youth. If you are concerned about an eating disorder for yourself or someone you care about, please reach out to the Butterfly National Helpline at 1 803 3 4 6 7 3.

That’s one 800 ED HOPE for a free confidential conversation with one of our specialist counselors. Alternatively, you can chat online by visiting butterfly.org au and following the prompts at the top of the page. To find out more about today’s episode, check out the helpful links in the show note. And on the Butterfly website, just head to butterfly.org au slash podcast and [00:33:00] click through to this episode.

Butterfly has many resources for the LGBTQIA plus community as well as programs, services, and resources for young people and teens. Let’s Talk is produced for The Butterfly Foundation by Evie Jones and Sam Blacker for the podcast Butler. With the support of the Warta Education Foundation, our executive producer is Camilla Becket, with support from Melissa Wilton and Kate Mulray.