Author: taithannah

“You could be a model!”

Thanks to kirstyskears for this post.

My Nan came round this morning. She was reminiscing about last weekend’s family party and suggested that I wear make-up more often as I ‘look quite pretty with make-up’. I sarcastically replied, ‘thanks Nan’ to which she suggested that my mum ‘could do with some lipstick too’. She then went on to tell me that I could be a model if I wore make-up more often. I generally only wear make-up when I am going somewhere nice, like to a party. Whereas, I rarely even brush my hair before leaving the house for everyday adventures. I told my Nan that even if I was pretty enough I am far too shy to model. In which she argued that ‘to make it with my photos I have to get over all of that silly nonsense anyway’. To be fair, I realise that there is truth in this matter, I am going to find selling my work very difficult while I find talking to strangers excruciating. But what intrigued me was that my Nan was hinting that it would be better to get over my shyness to be a model, rather than getting over my shyness to be an artist/photographer. Does anyone know a Model who is a positive female role model? What’s so great about being a model? Why does she think it’s a better idea than my chosen career? Why, oh why does she want me to be a model? Does she think that the stereotypical narcissistic, anorexic models that she has seen in the media are really something for a young woman to aspire to? Does she think that I could make better use out of my ‘looks’ than my brains? I am really not sure where she was going with this! The comment about my mum intrigued me too. Why does my mum NEED to wear some lipstick? Why will this benefit her? Will it get her promoted? Are there health benefits that I didn’t know about? Is she secretly planning on meeting someone new and ‘needs’ to attract them with shiny colourful lips? No, I don’t think that any of these Ideas apply. My Nan’s opinions of her family’s appearance come from the expectations that our current culture enforces. Women must be beautiful at all times. Beauty is all we have. It is our only power. The only way to become rich is to look perfect at all times. Using our brains to gain power and wealth is out of the question, the best thing we can do is stay pretty and passive so that a ‘Prince’ can whisk us away off into the sunset.

HAHAHA how ridiculous! Get lost celebrity culture. I couldn’t care less if my hair is not perfect every minute of every single bloody day. I am happy. Not because my Nan thinks I’m ‘pretty’, but because I am alive, and know what it feels like to be alive, and it’s so damn good! Be a model? Pull grumpy faces and be rude all of the time? I’d rather be covered in mud, growing vegetables in my allotment or playing tag with my little sister, thanks all the same. A smile is all I need to have on my face.

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“I have concerns that I will be left feeling un-womanly but the far greater chance is that I will just be left with smaller breasts, still wearing a padded bra and (hopefully) much more confidence.”

Like anybody, I have my insecurities. Neurotically speaking, out of the top ten things that I worry about or that annoy me, about 7 or 8 out of ten are related to my body. (The exceptions are failing my degree or family problems). From sweating too much, to the point where I am the only person who I know with clammy fingertips, or having a little too much hair everywhere (emphasis on ev-er-y-where) and worrying about the fact if I were to go get my first professional wax, I’d be laughed out of the room. Include into this my anxiety that I’m not skinny enough and the general angst-y rubbish which clouds my thinking as I head out of my teens and into my twenties. But mainly, I have enough good humour to accept them as just an unfortunate combination and that most people have much worse.

I’m still a virgin. Partly through choice and partly through utter fear. Since being at university, I’ve had two relationships. Both of which were short-lived and riddled with doubt about the best way to act or what new sexual experience I’m about to have, and, partly, a lack of confidence in my body. The reason is as follows:

I have to make a decision in the coming months about my body and it will be with me for the rest of my life, as the ‘problem’ has been since I started puberty. As much as I can cope with bleaching my top lip and occasionally using stronger deodorant (even on my fingertips) and home waxes – until I become eventually brave enough to finally take a visit – the size and asymmetry of my breasts is number one on my angst list. (Sometimes replaced by the shade of my slight lady-lip moustache that I’m currently rocking and whether it’s noticeable to people who aren’t as aware of it as myself).

Since the age of 13, I have been seeing a specialist about the asymmetry of my breasts in their development. The memory of medical photographs at the age of 14, one of which carefully captures a bead of nervous sweat running from my armpit down and around the curve of my non-existent breasts, still stings. Although my breasts have developed seven years on from this, my breasts themselves haven’t grown much. As a size 12 to 14, I wear a 36A-B bra, where one of the cups is amply filled and the other is more of an AA-cup and disguised by my choice of slightly padded bra.

I’ve chosen to wait until my early 20s to ensure that my breasts are properly developed and that one is not just a ‘slow grower’. Unfortunately, it seems not to be the case. And in three months’ time I have potentially my final discussion with the NHS consultant plastic surgeon. I am not normally at a loss for words to say, but when it comes to this decision I am. My breasts are small but well-formed; I have very good nipples; however, as my breasts are so small the half a size cup difference is quite noticeable. If my breasts were to be slightly larger then the difference would not bother me so much and the thought of wearing a thin non-padded bra and occasionally allowing a cheeky hint of nipple to rise underneath my top is something that I would like to do – though it wouldn’t be a regular occurrence but is something that I would currently never dream of doing. It would leave me too vulnerable.

The options available to me are the following: an implant in the smaller breast, two implants to ensure that the shaping of both breasts is similar as my body ages over time, a breast reduction on the slightly larger breast (either in the traditional form or potentially by using a liposuction technique) or to not have surgery at all. I do not want miniscule breasts but more than that, I do not want something alien inside my body. I feel as though I want the next sentence to begin with “Unfortunately, both of my breasts will be smaller as I have a reduction on the slightly larger one…” but the honest truth is that, after feeling so uncomfortable, I’m not too sure whether it will be unfortunate. I have concerns that I will be left feeling un-womanly but the far greater chance is that I will just be left with smaller breasts, still wearing a padded bra and (hopefully) much more confidence. And always the potential to finally let my permanent nip-on be welcomed to the world via a non-padded bra.

The chances are that as I’ve been in the NHS system for so long and have considered my decision for so long that there would be follow-up care and any ‘damaging’ psychological effects could potentially be solved by another breast operation; an enlargement. Though I really think it won’t be necessary. Strangely, writing this has shown me that the confidence I lack can be solved by a bit of effort to keep in shape, do my hair and a wee bit of make-up. The fear of taking my bra off and having sex (I considered writing “intimate relations” then, apologies) is not from my breasts alone, but they remain a contributory factor. I was not brought up in a prudish family and was taught to respect myself and my body. The idea is that so long as I am comfortable with my decisions and how I act (and I don’t cause harm to others), then it’s fine. Partly, the longer I wait, the more that I want it to be with someone that I trust and feel comfortable with. It isn’t a decision which is rooted in romantic ideals of being in love but it still means something to me. Frankly, the ‘issue’ with my breasts has been something that I hide behind and occasionally excuse laziness or gluttony by. The “well, it won’t change things anyway” attitude which really has not helped me so far. With a summer ahead of me (and after just emailing my consultant as I am finishing this piece), it’s made me realise that the time is now. I’ll still wait a year until I’ve finished university until I have the operation by which time I will be 22. But the decision has been finally made and the plans can finally be set in motion. Just the fact that I have made my decision makes me more confident and really, that’s all that matters when anyone has to very personally think about their insecurities and their bodies.

– by an anonymous woman in her early twenties

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“As I get older I find more to appreciate and less to dislike. I can now look at my eating disorder as a blot on the periphery of how I feel about my body rather than a significant feature.”

*Trigger warning for bulimia*

The story of my body is a turbulent one. Like most it’s a constant stream of ups and downs. And to me when you say ‘body’ it translates as ‘weight’. I know for many people it will be the same and it’s quite sad that’s where our minds jump to. So let’s start at the beginning: for most of my childhood I was big, tall and clumsy. Being taller than boys in your class is off-putting and very noticeable; this is where I think my ideas of being bigger began, because I was. I just felt like a big lumbering presence. Then I stopped growing but still held this idea of being ‘big’, of taking up too much space. My weight fluctuated in my teens culminating with an intense and aggressive eating disorder until my early 20s. Sure, the latter – Bulimia – has had the most obvious effect on my relationship with my body but it doesn’t define it. I was lucky though; I got out pretty unscathed – I have been in recovery for 3 and half years and am a mostly happy and healthy size 12. Although there has been lasting damage to my teeth, stomach and heart. That in itself is like a medal of how close I came to the edge and managed to pull myself back. Being ill to that extent makes you glad of what you have, of energy, and having an actual appetite for life. Post-recovery your body becomes a vessel for living rather than harming yourself and you can’t help but view it with slight awe. You have pushed it to the edge and it has weathered the storm. Ok, you may have been battered and bruised along the way but it keeps going on and fighting to keep you here. Even with all this it’s sad to say there will always be a tiny whisper in my head telling me nothing tastes as good as thin feels. It is a shame but I can deal with it. I’ve been through worse.

Now though I just don’t have the stamina to really deprive and hurt myself. If I hate myself at size 8 with a constant cycle of fasts and binges why not just pack it in and still hate yourself but eat what you like and be a size 12? This strange philosophy worked for me and slowly you learn to accept and even gradually like yourself. As I get older I find more to appreciate and less to dislike. I can now look at my eating disorder as a blot on the periphery of how I feel about my body rather than a significant feature. Although, food and my body will always be intrinsically linked to me now – I can’t think of one without the other – it doesn’t inhibit my life or perception. It is perception that matters most to me now. How I perceive something may be far off from the truth. So I go by how my clothes feel rather than the scales and I don’t eat foods that make me bloated and uncomfortable. Like most relationships the one with my body is fluid and I just try and understand that my body is as turbulent as my feelings towards it. It changes from day to day, as much as my own impressions about it do. Sometimes we may go in the same direction other times there will be a clash. Either way I’m quite happy for any negativity to take a back seat most of the time and let me get on with life.

– by an anonymous woman, 24

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Naked People

We were googling ourselves today (it seems that if you google “project naked” we’re the second result – can anyone confirm that?) and came across this interesting project:

Naked People

It’s really interesting to see a collection of different bodies – male and female – but we couldn’t help but notice that hardly any of them have pubic hair! We’ve emailed the site to ask if this was a conscious choice or if that’s just the fashion these days…

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“All the things I loved in my body before him, and all the new things he made me love, were tainted now by the memory of his touch and the pain of its loss.”

I’ve written here before but I wanted to again because I’ve been thinking about my body a lot recently. My body and mind have both been in flux and it’s been confusing and made me think about a lot of things.

About three months ago, my heart was broken by a man I thought loved me. And heartbreak raised all kinds of issues. Suddenly, my body felt so alone. Alone, and still, everywhere, covered by him. I took to sleeping with my arms and legs wrapped around a pillow, to feel something against me except the emptiness left by him. He was gone, and my body ached for him. Not sexually, because my mind had retreated from sex – from the crushing reality that I wouldn’t be having sex with him any more – but emotionally. All the things I loved in my body before him, and all the new things he made me love, were tainted now by the memory of his touch and the pain of its loss. I couldn’t touch my own body, smell my own scent, without remembering how he had loved it. I still so badly wanted my body to belong to him that it didn’t feel like mine any more.

My appetite faded and I lost weight. I’m thinner now than I was before – not underweight but slimmer. People keep telling me I look really good. I feel ambivalent every time someone tells me that, because I was perfectly happy with my body before and in no way thought I was fat. I feel conflicted in myself when I look in the mirror, enjoying my flatter stomach and then asking myself why I’m buying into that ideal, why I like having a flatter stomach when I didn’t think it was fat before. I still have a big arse – I hope I’ll always have a big arse – but it’s smaller than it was before and I don’t want to lose any more weight. What I see in the mirror varies with my mood. Sometimes, when I feel lonely and unlovable, when – even though I don’t want him back now – I wish he was still here, these breasts seem too small, too saggy, these bags under my eyes jump out at me, this new, flatter stomach is still too pudgy. And then sometimes, when I’m jumping around my bedroom to this song and I’m happy and I’m in my body and I’m feeling like I fucking rock – then I look in the mirror and I know I’m fucking beautiful.

My mind has been so up and down, and my body changing. But I think my mind is on the up these days, and my body finally feels like mine again. I can think of sex now without missing him, I can masturbate and enjoy my body and my mind and a sexual world without him in it. I miss him, or I miss closeness, sometimes when I’m sad. But my body is my own. I want sex again, I want to feel my body against another, I want to enjoy discovering someone.

Another issue this has been raising a lot in my mind recently is that, now I’m single again, sometimes I wonder where I’ll find someone else who doesn’t care that I don’t shave my armpits. I know that anyone who cares is someone I don’t want to be with, but the thought can’t help but cross my mind. It was a choice I made for myself but being with someone who liked it made that choice easier – if I’m being totally honest, it might have been what made the choice possible for me in the first place, although I’m not about to go back on it now.

Sometimes when I’m out in a club and I’m dancing, I catch people staring, nudging their friends to point out the mad hairy woman over there. I love having hairy armpits and, while I can’t deny there is an element of making a political point about it, this is the way I like them. It doesn’t hurt as such when I catch people looking. It makes me a little angry, although I do understand why they look. But it also awakens this socially-inculcated fear that most people find my body disgusting. That I might meet a lovely man at a party and be having a lovely conversation, flirting away, and then reach up to get something and turn around to find him running in disgust and horror from my horrifying armpits.

I know that’s ridiculous. But it’s also not completely ridiculous. The beauty norms of our society make me – I think make all of us – feel the need to justify those things which are “abnormal”. And my hairy armpits are, by societal standards, abnormal. They are an abnormal choice that I’ve made, a choice which is bound up with various implications in people’s minds – dirty, hippie, man-hating… – and even though I love them, I still sometimes feel self-conscious. To put it bluntly, I worry I won’t get laid. Not that I’d want to fuck anyone who gave a shit about my armpit hair – but the idea that someone might find me unattractive because of that one factor of my appearance does cross my mind and it does hurt.

I guess this is all a part of coming back into my own body. It’s partly sexual frustration, partly the normal fear of being alone forever that surfaces when we find ourselves single against our will. It’s a big part societal norms that I’ve absorbed even though I consciously reject them. It’s the memory of shaving my armpits for the first time after some girls made fun of me on the bus to PE when I was thirteen. But I’m not on the PE bus now (thank fucking Christ) – I’m twenty-three now, and I love my hairy armpits, and someone else will too.

I’m so glad to be back in touch with my body. It’s no longer a site of too many memories of happiness gone sour; it’s a site of happy memories to come. It’s a place I’m living in again. I look in the mirror and it’s all mine; it’s not missing anything by not being next to his.

– by Hannah

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Roma Women: the Call for an Autonomous and Unified Voice

An excellent short essay by Kirsteen Redpath on the topic of ideological oppression of Roma women and the need for grassroots resistance.

Roma Women: the Call for an Autonomous and Unified Voice

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“I still have bad days body-wise, but realising that I am, for the most part, normal, and doing my best in a society governed by warped ideas of female fitness and beauty always helps.”

I’m 23. It’s taken me this long to have some semblance of acceptance of my body. For a period of about 18 months I really liked it, because I lost a lot of weight and was the lightest I’d been since I was 13. Still podgy, you understand, but from 13 stone to 10st 7 in a year and a half pretty much by accident felt pretty good. For a variety of reasons (moving back to Glasgow, Stodgeland; illness, new relationship, etc.) it’s crept back up to the high 11st-ish. So I don’t like it as much any more, because I know I used to look “better”.

BUT. Given that I had absolutely despised myself and my body since I was in nursery school, I reckon that’s pretty good going.

So what changed? Basically, I came to the realisation that there were different body shapes. This sounds incredibly stupid, I know. Bear with me.

I’d spent my entire life wanting to wear the same clothes and look the same as tall, willowy teenage models, as seen in Topshop, New Look etc. Indeed when I was a teenager I hated myself because I wasn’t delicate and skinny. If only I could get rid of my belly, if only I could make my arse smaller, if only I didn’t have such a round fat face…you get the idea. Then two things happened: the “ 1950s vintage style” thing- i.e., dresses that suited people with hips. And I got told I had PCOS. So I found a style that I felt good in, and got an explanation for why I looked the way I did.

PCOS – Polycystic Ovary Syndrome – has two effects which affect me in a concrete sense. Having children will probably be a bit problematic, and it makes me carry weight round my middle, which is also harder to lose. I’d like to think I’ve reconciled myself to the “probs no kidz lol” thing. The only time it’s caused any problem to anyone is when I went for a GP check-up and a demented duty doctor phoned me 2 hours later saying, “Your hormone levels are insane, get to hospital now!“ It was a Friday night; I wasn’t even ill. I told him that, and poured myself more wine.

But the weight thing – hallelujah! I can now accept that I will always have a big stomach, always have a big arse, always have hips. They may fluctuate in size, but they’ll always be there. And when I try to lose weight, I don’t weigh myself any more. I’ve done that for too long, I know that to lose any great amount of weight, personally, I need to cut out carbs and drink only water. I did it when I worked abroad out of necessity, because I was poor. But now, frankly, I have a life to lead. Fuck me if you think I’m gonna subsist on pulses when I have a boyfriend who makes good quality, mostly healthy, food for us.
I do get a bit down about myself still- especially my face. It’s round, and I hate that I always look fatter in photos than I really am, because of my face. But I’m working on that. And yeah, I’d like to lose some weight. So I joined a gym, for the first time ever. And finally, the fear and anxiety engendered by years of bullying in communal changing at school has disappeared. I might not be lighter, but I will tone up. I don’t care how much I weigh. I care how I look.

So to sum up: 5’ 3”. Big arse, big hips, big stomach, round face, small breasts. But I have a great waist, I’m not a blob like I always thought. I love my long, thin fingers. My shoulders are nice. Small breasts are useful – I can run for buses! Yay! And I’m fit – I had always thought, “Oh I’m podgy, I must be hideously unhealthy”. This is BOLLOCKS. I’ve been walking uphill for about 45 minutes most days since 1998, when I moved into a house on top of a fuckton of hills then didn’t bother learning to drive. I might not be fast, but I have stamina and I’m strong. So I needn’t have worried about being shit at the gym, the crosstrainer and rowing machine hold no fear. I might not be skinny and delicate. I might be clumsy and flabby. I’m overweight, but I’m not ugly. I wish more people realised that being skinny isn’t the only option. There are so many issues bound up in the “must be size eight to have self worth and be attractive to men” thing. If I started I’d never get off my feminist soapbox. Since I left school, I’ve never had any problems finding boyfriends when I’ve chosen to look for them, nor any complaints from them about the size of my arse/chest/face/stomach/occasional PCOS beard/insert other cause of neurosis here. I still have bad days body-wise, but realising that I am, for the most part, normal, and doing my best in a society governed by warped ideas of female fitness and beauty always helps.

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Killing Us Softly 4

Killing Us Softly 4

Someone reminded me about this documentary and after watching it again I can’t recommend strongly enough that you all watch it and share it with everyone you know! Deeply important analysis of the way advertising images shape the way we see ourselves, and Jean Kilbourne is an engaging speaker.

WATCH IT NOW!!!

(You know, if you want to)

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“We’re so alien to the nude figure here, unless in some perfect representation of the Western ideal, that people think they have the right to judge when they’re challenged with something regular.”

I have a really confused relationship with my body. In some ways, I love it. It works very well, does everything it needs to and that in itself is something to be thankful for. Other days I look at myself and wonder if surgery really could make me look better.

For most my teenage/young adult life, I’ve been around size 16. My parents would bring up my weight with every conversation, it felt like, and at school, I couldn’t even bring myself to stand on a set of scales for a science experiment. I felt so confused when I was younger. I was brought up with my parents telling me that intelligence and creativity were so much more important than make-up and clothes, and I still feel that way, but when you get to a certain age, your physicality becomes an issued whether you want it to or not. I couldn’t understand why my achievements in school or my hobbies wasn’t enough for my parents to be proud of me.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my parents, and they have supported me so much over the years through thick and thin; and I can see their logic even if I don’t think they’re right. The way they saw it was my unhappiness was down to me feeling “ugly” and not dating guys like every other girl that age, and being skinny would fix that. In my head though, it was always “I am what I am, why should I change for someone that can’t appreciate who I am now? And on top of that, is a man actually the answer to all my woes?” And to this day, I still feel like that. I’m not sure I’d want to date anyone who was held looks in such high regards. Not saying they have to be completely nonchalant, but I’ve always put intelligence before looks, and I’d hope to be with someone that felt the same.

So these days. I’m still the same size. The way I see it, my weight sits mostly in the right places, so I’m curvy as hell. I’ve got a reasonably pretty face and in it’s own way, I own my weight. I’ve made it suit me. I’ve started going to the gym recently, but not really to lose weight, but because studying art does leaving you sitting down for hours on end and I just want to move more. I’m going to say something strange: I’m terrified of losing weight. I’m scared that everything will just head south, or my body won’t firm up and I’ll be this bag of skin. Saying that, if I do, it’s just another change in my body, not the first and won’t be the last, I’m sure.

I really hate the attitude we have towards nudity in this country. When I was 18, i went skinny dipping with a German friend in a lake, which totally changed my views on nudity. I loved it. I loved being liberated from this idea that your body is a sexual organ, instead, your body is a living, moving natural being. Since then, I’ve had a lot less qualms about being naked in front of people, and travelling in Scandinavia has reinforced it for me. The sad thing is, I don’t know if I’ve got the same confidence here. Even last night, I was at a screening of The Room. I love the heckling, but there was one scene where the crowd were shouting “Jabba the Hutt!” because when the main actress leaned over, she had a few rolls, despite being a very normal sized woman. We’re so alien to the nude figure here, unless in some perfect representation of the Western ideal, that people think they have the right to judge when they’re challenged with something regular. I’m not sure if there’s a way that body issues will never exist in the way they do, but I’d be a lot happier if it was something for us, as women, to discover ourselves our feelings and we could remove patriarchy from the whole equation.

– Anon.

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Call for stories

Hello 🙂

We hope that reading women’s stories about their relationships with their bodies, happy and sad, can inspire us to think about the way we feel about our own bodies. These stories aren’t always happy – and they’re rarely happy all the way through – but they are all important. This project is collecting real stories, and it can’t exist without your help.

We think that we have the potential to continue creating something amazing together as women, not just here in the online space but engaging in a wider conversation about how we relate to our bodies.

If you would like to share your story, any thoughts or experiences, you can email us at projectnaked@gmail.com. Even if you don’t want to share something online, it can be a cathartic experience to spend some time thinking about how your body makes you feel and finding what you love about it.

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