Ideally, it would be great if we (meaning young women, in particular) were not so preoccupied with body-image. But the fact is that we are — because our development of a healthy self-image is severely impaired in adolescence.

During the very time of life when our sense of identity should be most flexible, most adventurous, we are bombarded by over-sexualized, unrealistic and rigid images of what a female body should look like in order to be valued and loved.

While some of us are lucky enough to have friends and/or family to sufficiently “mirror” our essential selves as our personalities boil, seethe and ultimately solidify into an internally-based, healthy sense of identity, many of us do not.

Without an authentic, internal self-image, many of us are left forever searching the world around us to tell us who we are and what we should be, and forever condemning ourselves for not living up to impossible images.

This is the psychological equivalent of missing huge chunks of skin or musculature which, on the physical level, provides our viscera containment and definition; it is organ through which to relate to the world.

Without a sense of identity, we are helpless and in pain.

And denial of pain — as you suggest — does not heal the injury; it merely covers the wound to leave it fester.