Author: taithannah

“The thing I find very hard within the Intersex/DSD community is that there is no acceptance of their own bodies … The reason for that is pressure from medicine, society and people.”

One thing I have noticed as an Intersex/DSD person and a nudist, is that when you accept your body for what it is, you come to terms with all the flaws and imperfections that come with being born with an Intersex/DSD condition and being a nudist. I have learned that no amount of surgery in the world would ever make me happy for who I am and what I am. Which is why as an Intersex/DSD person and a nudist, I am happy with the body I am born with. I’m comfortable in my own skin and even not ashamed of all the flaws and imperfections that I am born with.

The thing I find very hard within the Intersex/DSD community is that there is no acceptance of their own bodies. Intersex/DSD people are not accepting themselves for who they are. They’re not comfortable in their own skin and their own genitals. The reason for that is pressure from medicine, society and people. It’s pressure from the medical community to hide and deny Intersex and DSD people their bodies and existence. There’s pressure from society into pigeon holing Intersex and DSD people into the biological Male and Female gender. Even the Trans community has even put pressure and tried to push Intersex and DSD people into gender/genital surgery. Which is why Intersex people have such a hard time in accepting their Intersex bodies. There is no one out there to tell Intersex/DSD people that it’s okay to be born with an Intersex/DSD body and to be happy with what you have.

Which is why for me for me, as an Intersex/DSD person and a nudist, I’m very comfortable in my own skin. I’m happy with what I have including all the flaws such as micropenis, ambiguous genitals, and small breast growth. I’m comfortable with the fact I look years younger than my age. Why I am comfortable in my own skin, is that nudism’s philosophy is all about body acceptance. It’s learning to accept your body for what it is and learning to deal with what you have. Nudism has shown that no body is perfect and it’s okay to have flaws and imperfections. Even being born with an Intersex/DSD body is perfectly okay and natural. Nudism is a way to say, I am happy with my body as it is. I’m comfortable with who I am and all the flaws and imperfections that I am born with.

It’s why, if Intersex/DSD people give nudism a chance, they can see that there is nothing wrong with their bodies and everyone is born with imperfections and flaws. Nudism even shows that you don’t need surgery to be happy with who you are. You just have to be comfortable with your own skin and learn to deal with what you’re naturally born with. For me, I’m not ashamed of my Intersex/DSD body. I’m comfortable with my Intersex/DSD body and no surgery in the world would make me happy – nudism has made me happy with my body and accepting of my intersex/DSD body for what it is.

It’s why I advocate that Intersex/DSD people learn about body acceptance and learn to accept their Intersex body for what it is. You don’t need those artificial acceptance, that medicine, society and people pressure Intersex/DSD people. They just need to learn to accept themselves and accept their body that they’re born with. Even learn to be comfortable with the skin they’re born with. Which is why I am one of the few Intersex/DSD people who are also a nudist and have been a nudist for a long time.

reposted with permission from Nicky’s World

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Project Naked video

Hello all! We’re trying to put together a wee “inspirational” video (I kind of hate that word but I can’t think of a better one!) featuring pictures of women holding up signs saying what they love about their body. It can be anything you like as long as the message is positive in some way 🙂 Nothing is too silly or too serious, and the more the merrier – if you’d like to send us more than one picture, feel free! Here are a couple of examples to start us off:

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You can send us stuff to the usual address at projectnaked@gmail.com – if you want to send us a wee video clip instead/as well (something without spoken words, because we’re going to put it to music) that would also be great 🙂 We want to try and get it put together by the end of the month, so if you could send us stuff in the next couple of weeks so we can get down to editing it together then that would be awesome. If you’d prefer to stay anonymous then just hold something in front of your face – we want to hear from as many of you as possible! As always, we are hugely grateful for all your love and support for the project, keep sharing it and help us reach even more people.

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Project Naked t-shirts

Project Naked now has t-shirts available! They can be purchased here and all proceeds are going to Rape Crisis Scotland and Womankind Worldwide.

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“I never realised the extent to which men claim ownership over women’s bodies in everyday life until I worked in a nightclub.”

I never realised the extent to which men claim ownership over women’s bodies in everyday life until I worked in a nightclub. The club I work in is young and trendy clientele for the most part – not so much the rowdy rugby and stag do side of things, more students and young people of similar ages – and generally overtly sexual touching isn’t a problem. I’ve probably only been actually “groped” once or twice in the six months I’ve worked there. But I’ve been flashed (once), called a “dyke” for intervening when a customer wouldn’t stop harassing a staff member for her phone number, and lost count of the number of times men have stopped me by grabbing my arm or standing in my way, or “guided” me through basically empty spaces with hands that are just, almost, not quite on my bum.

For me, the “compliments” are often the most uncomfortable part. Don’t get me wrong, I can take a compliment. When a young guy comes up to the cloakroom, pupils big with ecstasy, and says, “You’re beautiful”, or, “You look nice tonight”, or even, sometimes, “I love you”, I don’t mind. It can even be quite lovely. They just wanted to say a nice thing, and they expressed it respectfully, or at least through a joyful haze of drugs that I can understand. But the guy who grabs you by the arm, stopping you from passing him, to tell you that you have “a cracking body”, or “a great arse”, or “really nice tits” – I hate that guy. I don’t know how to answer that guy. Usually I say thank you, the words dripping with anything but their usual meaning. The way I feel about my body isn’t contingent on how a random man in a nightclub feels about it. I don’t feel any more or less beautiful when someone talks to me that way. What I do feel is uncomfortable, dirty, and guilty. I probably shouldn’t be wearing that top, or such tight trousers. On some level I can’t help but feel like I’ve done something to make them think it’s ok, “led them on” by smiling or by just being there in front of them. It doesn’t make me dislike the way my body looks, but it can make me feel ashamed of the reaction it’s elicited.

There are numerous respectful ways to pay someone a compliment. If you want to try and flirt with a bartender while she’s at work, the chances are she’s not interested – trust me. She’s busy, she’s sober, and there’s a good chance she’s trying to figure out how to politely end the conversation because she has shit to do. But complimenting her tits isn’t going to help your case. You’re creeping her out. Tell her you like her outfit, or her hair; strike up a conversation about the band on her t-shirt; ask her if she likes her job, and listen. Basically anything except drawing attention to the fact you’re staring at her body and wondering what she looks like naked. This doesn’t just apply to flirting with bartenders, obviously.

The club I work at is underground (as in physically so, not culturally) and on a busy night it’s fucking boiling. Usually I’m wearing a cropped top or something slashed down the sides, because it’s so warm, and my stomach and ribs will be out. Some men take that as an invitation to touch me there. They’ll touch my bellybutton jewellery, or the tattoo on my side, or sometimes – weirdly – tickle my stomach like you would a baby’s (although thankfully no one has yet blown a raspberry on my tummy). Don’t do that. That isn’t ok. Some men, when they see the look on your face – in that moment when you say nothing because you still can’t quite believe, even after all these years, that a stranger thought it was ok to put their hands on your bare stomach – immediately apologise. I don’t blame those men. They’re just drunk and got carried away and they’re products of a society that taught them it was ok. They know they did something wrong and they’re sorry. Maybe they won’t do it next time, maybe they will, but in that moment they know they shouldn’t have touched you, and they apologise. But a lot of them don’t. A lot of them think you should be flattered.

But I’m not flattered. You’re a knob. Not only am I at work, where my need to be at least moderately polite to you prevents me from telling you to get to fuck as I might on a night out, but in general it is just not ok to touch strangers in anything even approaching an intimate manner. I can’t imagine a scenario in which I would stop someone walking past me to stroke his biceps and tell him he’s sexy. It’s just absurd and incomprehensible to me.

I’m lucky to work somewhere that takes a strong stance on mistreating the bar staff. Our door staff will chuck guys out for groping or intimidating you, no questions asked, and our management will back us up. I’m also lucky that, in general, overtly sexually threatening behaviour is rare in our venue to begin with. But I shouldn’t have to consider myself lucky that I only occasionally get groped at work. I shouldn’t have to field “compliments” from men who’re looking at me with such a leer in their eye that I feel dirty and want to cover myself completely. Men need to stop thinking that they have the right to touch me, or to stare at me like I’m meat. Nobody has that right, and your desire to touch someone or stare at her tits doesn’t override her right not to feel uncomfortable and objectified just for being outside her house and being a woman.

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Bloglovin

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

In the interests of branching out in the social media world, this is apparently a thing…

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Happy birthday

So, as well as being Valentine’s Day and the One Billion Rising day of action, today is Project Naked’s first birthday. A year ago, we decided to start this project as a way to hear the real stories of women’s relationships with their bodies, and that Project Naked is still going today is thanks to the dozens of women who’ve been generous enough to share their personal stories with us and with the world.

We wanted to give voice to how women really feel about their bodies without it being filtered through a media which – whatever “love yourself” rhetoric it uses – degrades and demeans women and tries to create a negative narrative surrounding body image. The responses we’ve had have been overwhelming and humbling, and we feel extremely privileged to have shared women’s stories of joy and of struggle. Every woman who contacts us has a different story to tell about how their life, their experiences, and the society they live in has shaped the way they feel. It still feels like an absolute honour every time a woman gets in touch with us to share her story, and we hope that reading them has inspired you; angered you; comforted you about the lives we live as women.

This past year has been amazing and we hope it will only get bigger and better in the future. Every woman and every body has a story to tell; you might think yours doesn’t matter but they all do, and we want to hear them. If you like this project, please share it with your friends, tweet about it, and consider submitting your story. Project Naked exists and is built through the words of the women who contribute, and we publish every story we receive. Check out Where do I start?! for some ideas and get in touch at projectnaked@gmail.com.

And once again the most enormous thank you to everyone who has contributed or shared the blog in the past year. We’ll leave you with this awesome map of all the countries where people have viewed Project Naked since it began.

World map

Posted on by taithannah 1

“I now refuse to diet. I am a fat woman. I weigh 315lb and am 5ft 7in. Ask me my weight, I’ll tell you. I love myself the way I am and have no desire to lose weight. There is no thin woman trapped inside of me; I am chunky to the core.”

I remember the first time I realised that something was “wrong” with me. I was three and at preschool and one of the boys called me fatty fatty boomsticks. I was plump but not huge.

By the time I started school, I was viewing myself as a second class citizen because of my weight and school did not help this. I was teased unmercifully and my weight just kept increasing. I started to see my body weight as the key problem in my life. If I could just fix it, everything would be better. At 9 I stopped eating anything but tomato and cucumber for six weeks. I didn’t lose much and it didn’t stop the teasing.

By high school, I was miserable in my own skin and suicidal. I weighed about 82kg (180lb) and 5ft 2in. The doctor put me on a diet but because I had been starving myself, I actually gained 5kg (11lb). He accused me of cheating. People were horrible to me. The bullying got so bad that, years later, a number of people told me that when we were in high school they used to be glad they simply weren’t me.

At 15, my blood pressure became dangerously elevated and I was told to diet or die. I lost 40kg (88lb) through sheer persistence and hard work. For the first time I actually liked myself but I realised that how you feel about yourself is in your head not a function of fat on your behind. They weight came back, as it always did and forever will but my confidence stayed higher than it was before.

The next problem was that my weight was affecting my fertility. I weighed about 300lb at the time. I tried for eight years to get pregnant but no dice. I knew I needed to lose more weight than I could on my own so I had a lap-banding. It was a devil’s bargain. I was miserable, in pain and vomiting but with extreme exercise, the weight just fell off. I lost 70kg (154lb) in seven months. My ego got huge and I did not like the person I had become. I later realised the ego was a covering the fact I was deep down unhappy. I could not relax or enjoy being thin because if I did the weight might come back. Fortunately I got pregnant but regained nearly half the weight during the pregnancy.

As my son grew, so did my weight. The lap-band only slowed the regain and there was so much pressure to lose weight that I kept trying, losing and regaining, developing increasingly disordered eating habits and severe arthritis in my knees from pushing myself to exercise so hard. I was starting to see that this was destructive for me and truthfully, I felt like I was a traitor to myself each time I celebrated a loss.

In my thirties, I decided to embrace my weight. I started to use the word fat for myself and be really upfront about my size. I decided to be kinder to myself and stop believing the things society tells me I should think about myself. I was still dieting though.

The final straw came when I was about 37. It is very hard to find a doctor that supports my position of self-governance regarding my weight. My GP at the time blackmailed me into having my lap-band tightened (against the surgeon’s better judgement), so tight that I could only take liquids. My liver function started to decline as a result. This is where I called a halt. I realised this pressure was no longer about making me healthier but about making me try to conform to societal ideas of beauty. Over my life time I have lost about 510lb and regained it. If dieting was going to work long term, after 25 years, it would have done so.

I now refuse to diet. I am a fat woman. I weigh 315lb and am 5ft 7in. Ask me my weight, I’ll tell you. I love myself the way I am and have no desire to lose weight. There is no thin woman trapped inside of me; I am chunky to the core. I do not diet but instead treat my body with dignity by giving it healthy food and as much exercise as my disabilities allow. I dress boldly, shave my head and am covered in tattoos. People stare; I stare right back. It is a struggle to get doctors to respect my wish regarding my own body but I believe it is a basic human right to control what happens to my own body and because I love myself, I persist in the fight.

The thing I learnt through all this, is that your self-esteem is not about your body but your mind and your thinking. Constantly worrying about your weight is a pretty depressing way to live and allowing others to influence how you think about yourself is effectively turning over your power to them. Change your mind.

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“Just because I often look at my reflection though doesn’t mean I like what I see.”

Feels quite strange to sit down and type up how I feel about my body. I think it is on the whole it being seen as narcissistic or vain to talk about one’s appearance.

I can’t really remember how I felt about myself as a child so any issues I do have is clearly something that came later in life. I do remember however being told off for looking at myself in the mirror, something (even as a 23-year-old women) my mum still calls me on. She has often commented that I have an ‘obsession with my appearance’. I always seemed to think it was natural to know what you looked like at any point of the day.

Just because I often look at my reflection though doesn’t mean I like what I see. I often change my hair colour as it’s the only thing about myself I can change instantly. I wear make-up nearly every day to cover up what I don’t like. I think I have more body hair than what’s normal for a woman but it can be removed instantly or covered up. What I can’t change instantly or cover up is my weight or my in-step.

I’ve always been a bit heavier than the other women around me. But when you have near enough bow-legs exercising causes me a fair bit of pain and it’s getting worse the more weight I pile on.

Losing weight though scares me. I’m scared that if I lost weight and had a lot of men suddenly interested in me that the only thing they wanted was my body and not that I’m a good person to be around.

I start physio soon for my legs; hopefully the pain becomes less and I can exercise more and maybe get the body I want.

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“I can finally proclaim: I am entirely happy with my body”

*Trigger warning for disordered eating*

It was at 17 that I finally realised I had been abusing my body. I was in my Geography class in sixth form, when suddenly I became very dizzy, grew very pale and felt incredibly nauseous. But there was nothing in my stomach for me to actually throw up.

Like any normal teenage girl, I was unhappy with my appearance and had been most of high school. I liked very little about myself. Despite being reasonably skinny, I never had washboard abs – a fact that I hated. At 5”10 I was freakishly tall, towering over most of my classmates, including the boys. I had massive feet, and despised my toes so I could never wear sandals. My skin would break out in spots that I couldn’t cover up with makeup. My boobs were about the size of ping-pong balls. My teeth were constantly in one brace or another. In fact, the only part of myself that I liked was my ginger hair, despite this being the thing I was most tormented about by my peers. I felt weirdly protective of my ginger hair; it was something I was never ashamed of.

However, it wasn’t until sixth form that I really started to criticise myself. One day I stepped onto my scales and the figure hit 9st 3lbs. I was mortified. I had spent most of my high school life floating about the 8st 7lbs mark, and yet somehow I had eaten enough food to put me over 9st. I tried to convince myself that was ok, that for my height 9st 3lbs was actually pretty good. I continued with my day-to-day life. But I started weighing myself more and more. Every week I would recalculate my BMI, to make sure I didn’t fall any nearer to the ‘normal weight’ section of the scale. I fooled myself into thinking I was naturally really skinny, so having a BMI of 18 (technically underweight) was healthy.

For me, it wasn’t a conscious decision to stop eating. I never stopped eating altogether; I had at least one meal a day. But I would often miss out breakfast, convincing myself I didn’t have enough time to eat on a morning, nor to prepare myself lunch. I’d manage, I’d be late for class otherwise. I would grab an apple and that would be my lunch. My evening meal would be enough at the end of the day.

I realise now that I was essentially starving myself, but at the time I didn’t see it as that. I never once thought “I’m fat” or “I need to lose weight”, at least not directly anyway. Yet at the back of my mind I had somehow convinced myself that I should be eating less food; it was definitely a type of anorexia.

My wake-up call moment was the low-point I hit in the middle of class. I had to leave the room, get some fresh air and I forced down a sandwich. Nothing had ever tasted so good as that simple ham sandwich did for me that day. From then on I swore that I’d never go down that road again, and from then on I had grown to love my body more and more.

Now, in my third year at university, I can finally proclaim: I am entirely happy with my body. Sure, I still have down days. But I now eat properly, exercise every now and again (more to keep myself fit than for appearance) and sometimes I even leave the house without makeup on, without having done my hair, but with all my confidence intact. I’m a happy 10st 3lb (with a healthy BMI of 20.5!) and I’ve never felt better.

I was lucky. I never suffered severely and caught my eating disorder before it turned into anything serious. I got myself through it. My appearance hasn’t really changed too much since I was 17, but my attitude towards myself certainly has. I’m much more comfortable in my own skin now, finally, and that has made me into a much more confident individual today.

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“I want to leave the house in the morning with nothing on my face but a smile and still feel as confident as if I had spent that 45mins on make-up when I was 15.”

I have been trying to think of how I feel about my naked body and I can come up with nothing new or interesting. I haven’t always had body confidence but this isn’t something I struggle with. But there is one part of my body I still can’t bring myself to strip off completely – my face.

At 12 years old my friend and I were absolutely fascinated with our French teacher. She was gorgeous and had perfected the art of liquid liner with a lash like flick to accentuate her eyes. She said it just took a steady hand, and after years of practice this is something I have become expert at. I am now something of an amateur make-up artist. I know the best ways to apply mascara, tricks with illuminator, and the smokey eye look. All this knowledge I have acquired by wearing make-up every day since I first tried to copy my French teacher with the only exceptions being bed-ridden sick days. But it has only been recently that I have discovered an art it will take another few years to perfect – the art of feeling good bare-faced.

Each morning I had a routine; shower, shave, wash hair, dry hair, straighten hair, get dressed, clean skin, put on foundation, put on powder, put on blush, apply eye-shadow, mascara, pencil eye-liner, liquid eye-liner, apply more mascara. I used to envy those who could get away with minimal make-up and still look flawless (although now I suspect they were actually wearing even more make-up – I didn’t much like wearing glasses). I would try to just put on my eye make-up, trying to convince myself I looked ok without foundation. But then the light would change and I saw the massive dark circles under my eyes and caved in. I once went to a counter at Boots and asked one of the assistants what I could do about those dark circles (at the age of 20). The woman just looked at me and told me there was nothing I could do about them, I had them because the skin under your eyes is thinner than the rest of your face – it is not some flaw of your complexion, it’s how your face is meant to look!

It wasn’t until fairly recently that I started to question why I thought I couldn’t leave the house without make-up on. What was I so scared of? So I gave it a try. I spent the day trying to fend off comments about how “tired” I was looking. So, of course, I shovelled the stuff back on the next day. The sad fact is your night’s sleep isn’t all that is questioned; women who choose to go bare-faced have their sexuality questioned – she must be a prude or a lesbian. We are led to believe that our ability to form relationships with men will be hindered because they won’t find us attractive. Female MPs feel they can’t be accepted within their profession until they look more “feminine” and a woman’s mental health is even questioned when her appearance starts to slip. It isn’t just a “pressure” that we experience when we get ready in the morning, it is a lack of reasonable alternatives.

Some women claim that make-up can make them feel empowered but where does this empowerment come from? Empowerment from a successful attempt at trying to conform to a narrow and impossible beauty ideal is not empowerment. I want to leave the house in the morning with nothing on my face but a smile and still feel as confident as if I had spent that 45mins on make-up when I was 15. And, slowly but surely, bit by bit, I am. I am starting to believe I am beautiful in the nude.

by fatalfemmenism

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