Our body is our home

There was an article in the Sunday Times Magazine this week chronicling the fluctuating ‘ideals’ for women’s bodies through time. The writer, Sarah Ditum, explored how for centuries women’s bodies have been manipulated into fashionable shapes and trends – using everything from farthingales and bustles to corsets and girdles; and from full body sleeves to implants inserted to make our breasts and bottoms appear curvier, and fat cells sucked out to make our waists and thighs look smaller. Sometimes it is ‘on trend’ to be very slim, the next it is supposedly desirable to be the shape of an hour-glass.   

Ditum argues that women’s bodies – especially our bottoms – are a political battleground, and that trends for what is the most attractive shape of the era is influenced by what is going on politically, in terms of women’s subjugation or liberation. There have been times when our bodies and breath have been restricted by whale bones and wood inside our clothes; times when our curves have been celebrated and heavily sexualised; times when the sight of our hip bones protruding above our trouser line has been a fashion statement.

Apparently, our bodies have signified power, control, sex, money, independence and fertility, amongst many other things. Towards the end of the article Ditum writes: “Whether the bum is supposed to represent childbearing potential (Morris), bloblike sexual availability (Kael), or financial independence (Minaj), the perfect version will always be just out of reach for most of us.” The conclusion being that whatever we do we will never have the perfect bottom – or body.  

I read all this with a heavy heart. For me it is so saddening – and maddening – that our bodies represent anything other than just who we are.  

It should be quite simple. Our body is the vessel in which we move through our life. It is incredible, awe-inspiring and intelligent. But at a very basic level, it is our home. It is the only consistent home we will ever have. The place we will reside throughout this life.

How sad then that women have not been allowed to live happily, peacefully and comfortably within it. That so many of us have been given the message that it shouldn’t be as it is, that it is somehow wrong or bad, and must be changed, sculpted, worked on and worked out.

And I wonder, how would it be, if we began to ask not what we can change about how our bodies look, but what makes our bodies feel good?

And I wonder what would happen if we showed the next generation of girls how to treat their bodies as a friend, a companion, a loved one. If we encouraged them to move not as a punishment, but as a gift. To rest not as laziness, but as a glorious path to ease. To unselfconsciously eat the foods that give them energy and comfort and joy. To choose clothes not just because of how they look, but because of how the fabrics and cut make their bodies feel. To try running, sport, dancing and swimming not because it will tone their bodies and not because they need to try to be the best at it, but to find out if it sparked happiness or a feeling of being alive and present. To enquire, what makes me feel good – before, during and after I do it?

It is my intention to do these things for the children in my life and work. I’ll do it for the boys too – because we all deserve this, no matter what expectations society has placed on our gender. And I’ll keep doing these things for me. Because our bodies have been a political battleground for too long. Now is our time to be free.