Why Are Young Women's Bodies Falling Apart?

Hair falling out. Skin flaring up. How did the most beauty-obsessed generation wind up feeling anything but beautiful?

- Ingeborg Van Lotringen

Sarah* sits in the magnolia-walled office of a Harley Street dermatologist’s office. Angry red bumps line her chin, climbing all the way up to her cheek on the right-hand side of her face. She twirls her chestnut-brown hair anxiously. There used to be a lot more of it there. Now, there is dry flaking scalp where baby hair used to sprout.

Someone at the front desk calls her name. A woman in a white coat with a clipboard says that the psychodermatologist will see her now.

As you probably already know, there’s something strange going on with Britain’s Bright Young Things – those twenty- and thirtysomethings speed-walking alongside me through the city streets and bustling down the hallways of my glossy office building. Hair loss, breakouts, cystic acne, dermatitis or eczematic eruptions on their bodies or even faces have gone from unlucky fluke to uncomfortable norm in just a few short years. And not only can we barely keep up with the raft of new products supposedly designed to help stem the problem (that’s those grown-up spot serums, redness-soothing cleansers and follicle-stimulating scalp scrubs) – but a growing number of private and NHS clinics are adding psychodermatologists to their roster of experts. Specialising in treating the psychological causes (and effects) of skin and scalp disorders alongside the physical ones, they take a 360° approach to what are clearly mushrooming problems.

But why on earth is it that a generation credited with being the most clued-up cosmetic consumers and skin-tellectuals that ever existed has its beauty goals so blighted by breakouts, angry rashes and follicular issues? And, more importantly, what can really be done to tackle it?

Insta-dysmorphia