Could Your Obsession with Beauty Lead to Angelina Jolie Syndrome?

Angelina Jolie needs no introduction. Besides being in the news for her award winning movies and roles, her relationship with Brad Pitt, her contribution to underprivileged children across the globe, etc., the Hollywood actor also made headlines when she opted for preventive double mastectomy for breast cancer. This led to various debates on the topic, which was further highlighted with her preventive oophorectomy, which is the surgical removal of the ovaries.The politicisation and commercialisation of health issues in today's Western culture have led to growing healthism - a peremptory idea of self-preserving behaviour. This approach criticises everything that fails to fit into the glamorous standards of a beautiful, young and slim body. So you go out of your way, spending pot loads of money to prevent the onset of any possible disease.A study done by National Research University Higher School of Economics, Russia, warns that if you pay extra attention to the probability of dangerous diseases you may suffer in the future, you are probably suffering from what is being termed as 'Angelina Jolie syndrome'."But even simple concerns about the 'standards' of physical condition may provoke hypercorrection, such as surgery on a healthy body," said study author Evgenia Golman.More widespread displays of healthism include the boom in diets, fitness, plastic surgery and organic food, as well as the popularity of mobile apps for health monitoring. It is evident in so many people today who go under the knife to live up to the image of ‘young and beautiful’."Popular healthcare policy today often shifts the responsibility for health from healthcare institutions to individuals themselves, and shifts the focus from treatment to prevention, including prevention of even purely hypothetical pathologies," Golman wrote in her paper.Preventive medicine undoubtedly helps prevent many diseases and can save a lot of resources for families and the state. But if 'calculation' of sicknesses and idealisation of beauty and healthy body standards are understood improperly, in a purely commercial way, they can lead to mass neurosis and a social obsession with complying to healthist fashion."The most dangerous thing is that such an approach stigmatises everything that doesn't fit in with the model of a 'healthy lifestyle'," the researcher warned.A young, beautiful and slim body is becoming not just a 'glossy' cult, but a measure for an individual's socio-economic position and even their 'value' for society. A person not only obsessively monitors every bodily manifestation, but starts detecting signs of imaginary sicknesses.Everything that doesn't fit into healthist standards (from excessive weight to face features) can become an object for discrimination. Golman emphasised such sources of healthism as "the politicisation of health" and economic feasibility of lower health care costs, social transformations such as the cult of individualism, as well as "medicalisation of everyday life".The study was published in the Journal of Social Policy Studies.Inputs from IANS.