ABSTRACT
In our society, girls (and not just abuse survivors) often are taught to play a submissive role to boys and to rely on their appearance to get approval from boys and men.
[T]he crucial period for the development of women's appearance-based identity extends from the moment of birth, when it is physically based and preverbal, through adolescence, when it is taught and enforced by complex social forces including adults, peers, and society at large through books, magazines, the media, and even the responses of strangers in public. (Kaschak, 1992, p. 90)
