My Insta feed is filled with women selling their own versions of self love. Body positive women who scream from every inch of my tiny, tiny screen that every single body is worthy, able to be loved and ‘enough’.
I’ve filled my feed with those women on purpose. Littered between whistful, bearded, shirtless men staring endlessly across the wilderness on the side of a mountain with a dog and a few Vikings here and there. I want my feed to be filled with women I recognise, I see and am proud to share with my turdler one day.
But there are days that I just can not buy the message they’re selling. I want to believe all bodies are worthy of love. I want to believe that people love a human based on the value they bring to each other’s lives. But that simply isn’t what it feels everyday.
The challenge is 1) how do I stop myself in those days from feeling like a stranded walrus with a facial deformity and 2) how do I teach my tiny human that those feelings are normal and there are ways to overcome them. I know what I’m feeling isn’t true. I am not a walrus. I don’t have facial deformities that make Shrek shun. But some days that’s not how it feels.
As she grows I want her to know how pretty she is comes much lower in the desirable qualities list than she wants it to. It shouldn’t ever matter if other people think she’s beautiful or not. I want it to matter that she is kind, brave, strong, smart and empathetic. But I never want her to feel like the body she’s in makes all of those things irrelevant.
So I fill my feed with body positive women of all shapes and sizes who work hard to share their strong hearts, their strong bodies and their brave ideas. (And I’ll explain the Vikings and the shirtless hikers with puppies when she’s a bit older.) But what about the other days? The days where the body positive vibes feel like lies and all you can see in the mirror and the reflection of windows is a walrus?
My strategies to combat the uglies have never been great. The first one I ever tried was a giant fuck you to the world. I thought I could silence the haters by eating anyway. Make myself fat and ugly and live happily to spite them. Not great in theory or practice. Number two – dress yourself in festive, happy colourful clothes that detract from your face and make yourself the funny girl with the interesting dresses. It seems I still do this and while I don’t regret the strategy – my wallet does and it doesn’t do anything to make me more palatable to a future husband or myself. The third is to shop. Buy pretty things that make me feel prettier by association. Still a practicing strategy that isn’t really doing anything but making me broke. And a strategy that I seem to be passing on to my turdler. The final strategy is the one I detest the most in myself. Number four is the seeking of approval from others.
It’s the one I hate, the one I work non stop to avoid and the one I don’t ever want her to adopt. It’s horrid. It’s self indulgent, egotistical and often leaves me feeling worse than I did before I did it. When you feel like a walrus, think you look like Shrek and it’s all exacerbated by hormones and an Instagram feed of women who love themselves sick, the uglies are strong and no response from those you love is ever enough.
This week I managed to convince myself that the compliment I received was backhanded and actually an insult. That the nice things that were said were just a way of saying ‘yes, that outfit works, it distracts from your face and hides your body and that’s about as good as you are going to get. You are not the words you always wanted to be. Pretty, hot, beautiful or even just nice. You are none of those things.’
Obviously those thoughts are destructive. They bring tears and disapproval but they aren’t unfamiliar to many of us. They are only moments. They are not real and for most of us – there is a way to slap yourself in the face, eat a chocolate bar and tell yourself you’re being a fucking monkey and the words are just that. Words. Words intended as a compliment not anything else.
It takes me a bit longer than I’d like to get there but at some point I do and the damage lingers deep down with fat Anna who will be sure to mention it the next time the jeans don’t fit or I’ve got side vagina when trying on bikinis.
The voice exists in most women I know. They’re all different and sing different tunes but all are meant to bring doubt and fear and hurt. The challenge now I’m raising who I hope to be a strong woman, is not how to stop the uglies, but how to not let them grow, get loud and to give her ways to quieten them when they start to whisper at her.
Her life will be full of things I can’t fix and things that will hurt her. How do I teach her to quieten her uglies and not believe their shite? I have no fucking idea yet. It seems an impossible task.
All I can do while I’m working it out is wear the bikini, wear the bright print, make myself visible, voice the ways I’m proud of the body I inhabit and work hard to make it live as long as I can for her while still eating chicken nuggets. I will tell her about the uglies when it’s time. She needs to know it’s normal. But that conversation won’t end until she believes she’s as beautiful as I know she is. And I could probably give myself that lecture a few times while I’m at it.
life in big frilly knickers 