However hard I try, I just can’t love my body
‘I’m so envious of young people,’’ the quietly glamorous lady in her mid-50s said. ‘‘You all seem so happy in your bodies. I feel like my generation missed the body positive movement . . .’’ I just made vaguely affirmative noises in the way you do when you want someone to feel like you’re listening while simultaneously conveying you absolutely don’t want to talk about it further.
See, I hate these conversations. Because I’m a failed body positive revolutionary.
I’m exactly the right age, stage and genetic percentage of basic bitch to be a fully signed up movement of the body positive revolution. One of those young women who embrace all shapes, repeat nonsensical mantras like, ‘‘You are worthy, you are enough!’’ to friends who’re asking diet advice, and reposting things like ‘‘all bodies are bikini bodies!’’
And here’s the thing. I do all of that. I believe all of that. I know in my bones that it’s true. I genuinely think Lizzo is a sex bomb inspiration and Nigella Lawson has always been my ideal woman. And yet I still hate my body.
It’s boring how tiresomely, predictably, irritatingly insecure my inner voice is. Because let’s face it, it’s not exactly revolutionary for women to hate the way we look.
It’s no different in this era of supposedly enlightened body positivism. It’s still a crushing reality that I don’t know any young woman (or any woman really) who’s ever said to me that they like their body.
It’s great how far we’ve come in tearing down the traditional stick-thin beauty norms that are shown and glorified in society. It’s great that women will turn to other women and compliment them on having thick thighs or booty. But this only applies to everybody else’s body. Not our own fleshy pockets.
We can’t extend the logic to ourselves. Not for love or money or double-tapping a thousand memes telling us we’re a goddess.
Now that contradiction may look as though, deep down, we don’t believe in the body positive
movement. But actually that’s not what it is. What it comes down to is that Instagram-based movements cannot fix us. They’re not capable. Because they cannot make us confident.
The reason we buy into the body positive movement is that it’s ultimately selling confidence; it’s a stream of photos of women of all shapes and sizes being confident in themselves. And confidence is the unequivocal key to sex appeal.
Performing burlesque taught me that. It doesn’t matter what size or shape you are. All that matters is confidence.
If you’ve got it, then the audience will find you hotter than Sophia Loren on a stick, dipped in honey and sprinkles. If we see a confident girl of any size and age, our brain is going to whistle with more enthusiasm than a construction worker in a 1960s rom com.
But Instagram is just unable to teach us to be confident in ourselves. (How can it, when it makes its money off fostering insecurity?)
Largely because understanding what builds our confidence on a personal level is unique, difficult and knotty. And we all know how good Instagram is for honest, nuanced discussion. Its first grade, aggressive, one-dimensional demand for us to be confident ignores all the gritty, complex and nuanced examining of what actually achieves this.
It’s still a crushing reality that I don’t know any young woman (or any woman really) who’s ever said to me that they like their body.
Which, by the way, is always inherently full of contradictions. Like how shaving my legs, wearing heels, intricate make-up and punishing gym workouts all make me feel confident. Yet you could easily interpret all of those things as patriarchal, sexist beauty norms. Instagram doesn’t have the depth to unpack why we love them . . . and it often shames us for loving more problematic things.
So what happens is that it makes it all worse. It just batters us with a thousand screaming demands for us to love ourselves blindly. It feels like I’m stuck in a room with an angry therapist who just howls at me to just be better without addressing why I’m not. Be more positive, compassionate and confident, you stupid bitch!
And it seriously impedes our ability to step back and analyse our innermost workings. Social media is as conducive to quiet self-reflection as it is to modesty and discretion. It’s incredibly hard to get the space to unpick your own self-loathing when every second you get notified as to its existence.
So right now it feels that a large part of the Gram’s body confidence movement only serves to highlight my glaring inability to fulfil it. It offers absolutely no practical steps for actually achieving said confidence.
Its only response is, ‘‘just, like, be confident babes!’’ And if that doesn’t work, try a laxative tea.