Dear reader,
It's been a while. I haven't felt compelled to write anything lately as I’ve spent much of January and February just trying to stay sane, melodramatic as that sounds. For the last couple of months, though, all my energy has gone into simply staying afloat. But that’s a matter for another post, one that will never see the light of day, probably. For this one I’m going to revisit some old ground, so look away now if you’re bored with me going on about Body positivity.
Why does Body Positivity matter when there are things like Brexit and the rise of the Far Right on the horizon? Is focusing on it as frivolous as focusing on its counterpoint - the relentless pursuit of beauty, thinness and eternal youth?
I suppose it could be construed as frivolous if you didn’t see the pressure placed on women to look a certain way to have deeper, more political implications.
In her book Body Positive Power, Megan Crabbe argues that societal constraints on women’s bodies - particularly diet culture, are part of a patriarchal plot to keep women down. To keep them weak, hungry and preoccupied. Indeed, I feel that there is such an onus on women to be decorative that men get really angry when someone who doesn’t meet their exacting standards of beauty appears on television or social media. I’ve said it many times before, in many ways, but can you imagine if male newsreaders, historians, politicians or 'Come Dine with Me' contestants, came under the same scrutiny as women?
The historian, Mary Beard, who received vile abuse online after she appeared in a documentary gave a brilliant talk about women's voices and how men have always tried to silence them:
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v36/n06/mary-beard/the-public-voice-of-women
Just think about this simple, body positive phrase - about how earth shattering it is:
“It’s not your job to be pretty.”
And really, it’s really not, so why do so many girls grow up thinking that it is? And why do women agonise over their looks and make toxic comparisons to the images they see on Instagram? Are boys put under the same pressure?
Perhaps they are, sometimes, although not as much. My husband said to me once, ‘I don’t like it when people go on about Wayne Rooney being ugly.’ He’s right, of course, what have Rooney’s looks got to do with his playing or his behaviour off the pitch?
On a personal level I feel like this is something I need to focus on because it’s something that’s dogged me my whole life. Lately I’ve found myself googling ‘How to get rid of freckles’ and wondering whether it would really be so bad to get Botox. I was troubled by the fat streak of grey hair, snaking its way through my otherwise black and (dyed) caramel locks and then I saw Russell Brand on T.V with his bushy grey and black beard and I thought - why am I worrying about a bit of grey - I can be grey*! Why are men allowed to grow old gracefully and not women?
*As a segue, my husband is always trying to out-feminist me. I got him to help me colour my roots as he could get to the parts I missed and one of the kids asked me - “Are you dying your hair to get rid of the grey?” I affirmed this.
“But women don’t have to do this, girls.” My husband told our daughters. “Women don’t have to dye their hair when it goes grey.”
Anyway, I’m reading a new book about Intuitive Eating, called Just Eat It by Laura Thomas PhD. This book marries the threads of Intuitive Eating and Body Positivity. She encourages you to keep a journal and work through several exercises, some of them devoted to having a more positive view of yourself. One of the exercises is to list 100 you like about yourself! Can you imagine that? Not necessarily physical things but you are encouraged to include these. The trouble is I do think, certainly with my generation and the generations that came before, that modesty, self-deprecation even, were seen as positive traits. You weren’t really encouraged to big yourself up and I’m a bit stuck on this exercise and need to go back to it, but I will go back to it. In the meantime I’m going to stop describing myself as a fat, middle aged woman, even if it is part of my comedy shtick and just try and be body neutral, which is a lot easier to achieve than all out body positivity.
Homework
Do you reckon you could list 100 things you like about yourself? 50? 25? 10?
Then, once we are all fully body positive/neutral/couldn’t give a shit - we can rise up and throw off the patriarchy!
Just think about this simple, body positive phrase - about how earth shattering it is:
“It’s not your job to be pretty.”
And really, it’s really not, so why do so many girls grow up thinking that it is? And why do women agonise over their looks and make toxic comparisons to the images they see on Instagram? Are boys put under the same pressure?
Perhaps they are, sometimes, although not as much. My husband said to me once, ‘I don’t like it when people go on about Wayne Rooney being ugly.’ He’s right, of course, what have Rooney’s looks got to do with his playing or his behaviour off the pitch?
On a personal level I feel like this is something I need to focus on because it’s something that’s dogged me my whole life. Lately I’ve found myself googling ‘How to get rid of freckles’ and wondering whether it would really be so bad to get Botox. I was troubled by the fat streak of grey hair, snaking its way through my otherwise black and (dyed) caramel locks and then I saw Russell Brand on T.V with his bushy grey and black beard and I thought - why am I worrying about a bit of grey - I can be grey*! Why are men allowed to grow old gracefully and not women?
*As a segue, my husband is always trying to out-feminist me. I got him to help me colour my roots as he could get to the parts I missed and one of the kids asked me - “Are you dying your hair to get rid of the grey?” I affirmed this.
“But women don’t have to do this, girls.” My husband told our daughters. “Women don’t have to dye their hair when it goes grey.”
Anyway, I’m reading a new book about Intuitive Eating, called Just Eat It by Laura Thomas PhD. This book marries the threads of Intuitive Eating and Body Positivity. She encourages you to keep a journal and work through several exercises, some of them devoted to having a more positive view of yourself. One of the exercises is to list 100 you like about yourself! Can you imagine that? Not necessarily physical things but you are encouraged to include these. The trouble is I do think, certainly with my generation and the generations that came before, that modesty, self-deprecation even, were seen as positive traits. You weren’t really encouraged to big yourself up and I’m a bit stuck on this exercise and need to go back to it, but I will go back to it. In the meantime I’m going to stop describing myself as a fat, middle aged woman, even if it is part of my comedy shtick and just try and be body neutral, which is a lot easier to achieve than all out body positivity.
Homework
Do you reckon you could list 100 things you like about yourself? 50? 25? 10?
It doesn’t just benefit you to feel better about yourself, it benefits all those around you, it makes you want to spread the love, laud others, build them up and cheer them on. Nobody really profits if you are a tightly wound-up ball of angst. Maybe those far right activists might do well to try a bit of self care.
Then, once we are all fully body positive/neutral/couldn’t give a shit - we can rise up and throw off the patriarchy!
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