The body 'beautiful'

Summer is peeking round the corner, waving a little hand; ‘I’m on my way’ it’s saying’, ‘dust off your Summer clothes’. A gloriously hot day is predicted for tomorrow.  My first thought is; oh blast - what am I going to wear? With my soft, doughy upper arms, bulgy belly and cellulitely thighs, I’m not ready to expose my flesh!

We all know there’s a value judgement attached to weight, don’t we?  That people say ‘well done!’ or ‘congratulations’ to you, when you lose weight. As if you’ve just made some amazing scientific discovery or run a marathon. We all know it’s a criminal offence to venture out in the sun, wearing temperature-appropriate clothes if you are carrying any extra kilos. As a woman, your BMI is meant to be as low† as the age you aspire to resemble (†under 24), no matter what your biological age; frozen in amber with no disfiguring lumps or creases. (And your crease is meant to be as smooth and hairless as a boiled egg.)

Unlike many of my contemporaries, who refer to 'middle age spread' or 'baby weight', I’ve always had a fluctuating body size. I didn’t wait around until I’d had kids or reached a certain age to get fat. My mother used to say that I was fine until I broke my arm, aged seven, and then, because I was relatively inactive for a while, I started to pile on the pounds. The way I interpreted this was that I was a ‘normal’ sized child until a freak, playground accident turned me into a human space hopper*. I went on my first ‘diet’ aged ten, when I stopped eating crisps and chocolate biscuits.  I eschewed anything that I’d been told was fattening and it worked. The approval of other people - the grown-ups, when I first lost weight, was utterly intoxicating.  

*No matter what size I am; however ‘big’ or ‘small’ I become, there is a part of me that will always feel like that space hopper

I watched a program about dieting once where it said that some people put on weight on purpose, just so they can get the buzz of praise when they do reduce. This really says something about us, as a society, doesn’t it? That we become so enamoured of the approval of others that we create a situation of gain and loss just to earn it. It’s a false high and the fluctuation can’t be particularly good for our bodies.

Whilst reading an article about the difficulty a ‘plus-sized’ woman had finding clothes in her size, I stumbled upon this blog about body positivity:

http://www.bodyposipanda.com/

It’s creator is a woman called Megan Jayne Crabbe and she has an Instagram account where she shares pictures of herself. This is her mission statement:

"I'm a recovered anorexic, recovered self-loather, trying my best to shatter the 'not good enough' mentality we've all been taught about our bodies. As you'll know if you follow my Instagram, I'm a big fan of belly roll love, exposing diet industry lies, and wearing pastels."

I really love this woman; from her rainbow coloured hair, which makes you feel cheery, just looking at it, to her body positive, frank pictures, to the fact that she genuinely seems to want spread a positive message; spread the self-love. One of the big messages of the body positive movement is that we don’t exist for other people’s delectation and have no obligation to look a certain way. (I realise that, as a feminist, I should be totally on board with this concept, but there's a difference between knowing something, intellectually, and feeling it!)

So, friends, I’ve got a good mind to embrace this body positive thingy; who’s with me? I’m not asking you to take two giant pizzas, sandwich them together with double cream and eat them for lunch - but please feel free to do that, if you’d like. But shall we all stop bashing ourselves, drown out the inner Greek chorus of doubt and just go out and enjoy ourselves? (And let's stop disparaging other women, while we're about it. I know that you wouldn't do that, reader; you're too kind, but call out your friends if they do it. We don't need to slate someone to make ourselves feel better.)

P.S I'm wearing a dress tomorrow.

American vs British sitcoms

When I was a kid, it seemed like the smartest, funniest sitcoms were American. They were the ones with the sardonic, wisecracking kids and the risky story-lines. Unlike British sitcoms of the time, the action was not confined to the living room; in America we were taken to news rooms, bars and police stations.

In our house, we were allowed to stay up a bit later on a Friday night to watch Cheers and I have a vague memory of my Mum shrieking with laughter at the subversive comedy series, Soap. We grew up alongside the kids in Roseanne and the droll DARLENE, was a hero of mine (despite the fact that my brother said that she looked like the lead singer from The Wonderstuff). Here was a thing; a teenage girl had the best lines in a sitcom crammed full of great lines.

Britain, on the other hand, seemed to be producing a plethora of cosy, middle class, family-centred comedy: Fresh Fields, Terry and June, No Place like Home. (The Young Ones had passed me by, I was too young for it and Vivian terrified me!) Plus there were the endless repeats of The Good Life and Butterflies. All pleasant but not particularly ground-breaking stuff*. The American comedies seemed younger, edgier, zingier.  

*Only Fools and Horses was a slow grower for me, it was a while before I appreciated it. It’s hard to evaluate it these days, because it has been repeated so much that saturation has diluted its true value. John Sullivan was the king of the working class comedy and he excelled himself with Only Fools, (he also penned the brilliant Just Good Friends). Only Fools was funny but it didn’t really ‘speak to me’ in the same way that Roseanne did. In fact, no British sitcom quite did until Spaced walked into my life, with a colossal blast of fresh air!

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/spaced

Spaced resonated with every brilliant line. I felt that slackers DAISY and TIM were my boyfriend and I.
Tim was a talented artist who worked in a comic book shop. He spent nights playing zombie-bashing games on his games console. He was a sci-fi geek who made geekery look cool.  

Daisy wanted to be a writer, described herself as a writer but hadn’t made any money from it and had to settle for a series of dispiritingly menial agency jobs instead (once they’d cut off her dole money). (At the risk of sounding like a narcissist) Daisy was me!** I wanted to be a writer! I’d done those menial jobs! As portrayed by the brilliant Jessica Hynes (Stevenson, as was) who co-wrote the series, Daisy exemplified the ‘90s, underachieving, smart, jokey, pot-smoking woman that I identified with. She wasn’t glossy and polished like the women in Friends, she looked like a real person. And she wasn’t humourless and disapproving like the women in Men Behaving Badly either. She was funny and quirky and flawed and I loved the fact that she got as many funny lines as Tim. (I love ‘I’m Alan Partridge’ and it will always be one of my all-time favourite comedy programs but it was a bit blokey, ditto Father Ted, Spaced showed life from a realistic female perspective.)   

**I’m not saying that you have to be able to relate to a situation to find it funny but I reserve a certain fondness for the shows which have the strongest resonance.

Daisy and Tim pretended to be a couple to get a flat but the will-they-won’t they question was only a tiny aspect of the programme; more important were the portrayal of friendships and the surreal tangents the plot took. The Spaced D.V.D had a function where you could switch on an ‘homage guide’ in case you’d missed any of the pastiches or film quotes.
I have to stop myself from watching it too often and ruining it’s freshness, ‘cause, even after all these years - it debuted in 1999, it still feels fresh.

They tried to make an American version of Spaced but it bombed. It seems that it wasn’t that easy to replicate its charm and move the action elsewhere.

There seems to be a stable of great comedy now; much of it written by and starring women:

Broad City (rude, crude, brilliant!)

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4094300/

30 Rock http://www.nbc.com/30-rock

Parks and Recreation

And in the U.K:

Fleabag

Chewing Gum http://www.channel4.com/programmes/chewing-gum

This Country http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04qv4jc/episodes/player

Are we seeing a parity in quality now, on both sides of the pond?

P.S Feel free to tell me about any brilliant, groundbreaking British comedy from the ‘80s, if you like. I do realise that I didn’t include Blackadder, which I do consider to be genius and in a class of its own.