When we’re more confident and satisfied with how we look, we feel better and have a greater impact on society

Author: Dr Beth Daniels, Professor and Director of the Centre for Appearance Research (CAR).

I’m proud to be the Director of the Centre for Appearance Research (CAR). We’re the world’s leading centre for excellence in Appearance Research.

We study people who have visible differences, and we look at body image too – how people feel about their appearance. Because how people feel about their bodies affects how they feel about themselves, how they function in the world. Our perceptions of our body image have lots of implications for, and a direct impact on, our overall psychological wellbeing.

Centre for Appearance Research (CAR) team.

More confident, more opportunities

Through our research, we want to help people feel more confident and satisfied with their appearance. Because, for example, if I feel poorly about myself in terms of how I look, I may be less likely to engage in society. I may make decisions that take me away from the spotlight. We need to flip that. If we can help people feel more confident with how they look, then that would transcend into how they operate in society.

Challenging prevailing attitudes

We’re also working to highlight, surface and challenge the kinds of attitudes that make people feel bad. Like weight bias. We know that people in larger bodies are treated badly in society and discriminated against. We want to draw attention to these barriers. Similarly, we know that women are often sexually objectified in society and diminished because of this over focus on their sexual attractiveness.

We want to make sure that we’re surfacing these problematic cultural attitudes because of the direct implications they have on how individuals then feel about their bodies.

Real life differences we can see and feel

There’s a lot more that we need to do in terms of looking at body image and appearance concerns in different groups. Not just to do with racial and ethnic backgrounds, but also with people who are gender diverse or gender fluid.

What we do here is genuinely real-life changing research. Because body image is relevant, personal, to everybody.