Recently, I’ve been spending a lot of time around truly inspiring feminist and anti-capitalist female activists, on top of all of the wonderful women in other spheres of my life, and it has got me thinking (I mean mostly about the blatantly iminent revolution in which we utterly and fantastically smash the fash forever and irreparably destroy the patriarchy but ya know, other stuff too 😜).

Other stuff like the fact that all of these incredibly intelligent, kind, creative, passionate and all round brilliant women around me that make me feel so empowered and so lucky to be surrounded by such beautiful people, all have bodies. Not all of them have flat stomachs or tiny waists. Not all of them have Marilyn Monroe curves. Not all of them have full lips or a “thigh gap” (I mean really whoever dreamt that one up really has too much time on their hands IT IS LITERALLY AN ABSENCE OF BODY. IT IS EMPTY SPACE wow I like THAT BIT OF YOUR BODY THAT ISN’T THERE! Okay I’m done on thigh gaps). Not all of them have vaginas. Not all of them have long hair or large breasts or are above 5’9″. (Or below 5’9″. Because whatever you are, you’re too something. Because the patriarchy says that you’re too big, but you’re also too small. And you’re too muscly, ew look how manly you are, no one will be able to love you looking like that! But ugh, that flab! Get toned for a bikini body this summer, don’t you know that men like girls with abs?)

And you know what?

It

Doesn’t

Matter.

It doesn’t matter one bit what their bodies look like, because we are so much more than that. Our bodies are merely a facillitator for the expression of our minds and, while bodies are cool as shit and we should totally love them (because let’s face it, society ain’t gonna do it for us), they are so incredibly irrelevant in determining our worth as a person or our character. The women I know and love are in my life because I think they’re bloody fantastic, and I would think they were bloody fantastic whatever shape or size or sex or build they came in.

And that’s why, today, right now I have decided that I am wholly and definitively choosing to stop allowing capitalism, the patriarchy and some bullshit part of my mind to make me hate my body. I know it’s never that simple, and I’m fully aware that yes, I probably will have days where I don’t feel happy with how I look but I am absolutely determined not to allow that to manifest its self in self-hatred any more. Because I am sick of feeling guilty for hours after eating – something you have to do to stay alive. How fucked up is that? And how fucked up is it that it has only just occured to me that that is an issue and an entirely unhealthy attitude? Because I’m sick of dreading going shopping in case I’ve gone up a size or in case I can’t control my emotions in the changing rooms, seeing how I look in clothes I need to buy or in case I see someone I know in the store and they look at me, holding the bra I’m about to try on and they think “why the fuck is she trying that on? No one wants to see that”. Because I’m sick of not wearing my favourite clothes because I don’t want people to see my body, in case they hate me in the ways that I hated myself.

Past tense.

I am far from the person I want to be, and I appreciate that I have a long way to go before I can be completely happy with who I am, but that happiness does not in any circumstance correlate with the size of my waist, and I know this. Some days it’s hard to see, and that makes me so mad at myself because I KNOW this. But I’m not going to take that out on myself, because it’s asking a fucking lot in a society that prescripts guidelines on how to look so that you can love yourself, to say “you know what, cheers but no, I’m going to love myself because I am doing the best I can to be the best I can”. And we can’t all do that all of the time, and that’s fine, and it doesn’t make us weak or worthless or politically dubious when we openly refute such damaging ideals – it just makes us members of society, sold self-loathing. Obviously this isn’t just an issue that effects women, but this is an issue linked intrinsically with misogyny: it’s this toxic midset of “can’t be bothered to hate women? Make them hate themselves. For money!” But this logic doesn’t solely apply to women, hell, they’ll exploit each and every one of us if they can find a way.

The difference is, women are subjected to this reductive and abusive objectification not just through advertising, but in pretty much every walk of life. Newspapers – NEWSpapers – will shamelessly balance covers with headlines about male celebrities debating politics, and headlines about female celebrities having gained “appalling” amounts of weight (awful, so much more damaging to the general public than spewing poisonous nonsense blaming immigrants / the poor / other marginalised groups for the dephicit wow cheers, telling people to systematically hate each other rather than their oppressors is no biggie but an extra three pounds is offensive.)

Essentially, what I’m trying to put across is that I have had some much needed time out from studying over the past couple of weeks, and while I am stressed about that and I really do feel like I should probably have started revising sooner, this acceptance of myself beyond physicality and realisation that I should not, can not and will not be defined by something as trivial and irrelevant as body image is incredibly important to me. And you know what? Societal structures aren’t going to stop me from loving my legs and stomach and face and back and every part of me that allows me to exist how I do, and feel like myself. And there are things about myself that I love, physical or otherwise, that no one is going to take away from me through bullshit definitions of what should make a woman. And if those things change – if I lose or gain weight or change my mind about something or age or anything, that’s fine too! We are changing all of the time and there will always be things to love and to embrace. Change is natural. And if they don’t like “natural”, or even “unnatural”, if I’m too large or too small or too hairy or not hairy enough or too curvy or too muscular then the answer I have to that is this: fuck your gender roles, they tell me nothing about my identity and if you don’t like how I look then there is literally nothing you can do to make me change. You can hate my body but I hate your ideas. And that is infinity more powerful, because ideas matter, and I am willing to fight them with everything I’ve got until no girl has to grow up feeling how I felt about my own body because of systems of oppression and exploitation. (No gaps in our thighs? No problem. No gaps in our blocs either.)

The human body is something so incredibly personal that these constant violations of our images of it are an absolute breach of privacy and a hindrance to development in so many ways and it is not okay.

None of this is okay, and this is why I am proud to call myself a feminist, why I won’t stop opposing the patriarchy, gender norms, capitalism and fascism and why I am incredibly happy and incredibly excited about my future when I think of how empowered I feel, how much self-love and self-care I have right now and how, for the first time in months, I feel beautiful tonight. And that’s something that sounds wrong to say, because we are so used to hearing criticisms of people expressing self-love and so used to this, actually, genuinely damaging culture of “selfie shame” (reapproprating the selfie 2k15 – I don’t give a shit if your patriarchal “vanity detector” doesn’t approve of my photos – women don’t get a lot of opportunities to openly share their experience of feeling great about themselves so sit your pathetic arse down and deal with my selfies because you can’t touch me, and if I have a tiny way of expressing my confidence and saying a little “fuck you” to my own and society’s demons then I’m going to take it thanks and goodbye!!). But there you have it. I feel beautiful and its not because of my body or despite it. I’m not fighting against myself tonight, and how I look is entirely irrelevant to that.

And of course, its not as simple as “deciding” to feel better about myself. If I could do that, I would have done it a long time ago. It’s about changing my mind set, deciding that this isn’t good enough any more – it’s not good enough for anyone, so it’s not good enough for me. Maybe I’ll have a salad tomorrow, maybe I’ll have a double cheeseburger and fries. And nothing will change, the universe will keep on doing its thing just the same, history won’t rewrite itself and oh! Actually all of the birds won’t fall out of the sky!! And most of all I will still be me. Because I am not defined by my physical form.

The struggle isn’t over, not for women by a long mile, but not for me either. But I will keep fighting it with the vehemence that I’ll fight for other women with. Because I appreciate that I matter just as much as anyone else. And every time I feel myself slipping under and reverting to detrimental and unhealthy ways of thinking, I’m not going to go to the gym or buy 100 bananas or skip breakfast – I’m going to read this. I’m going to read this and appreciate that I’m probably never going to feel thin enough and I’m probably never going to feel pretty enough and I’m probably never going to feel flawless – but I can feel happy with myself and I can feel beautiful, and I can do beautiful things with my life if I just give myself the chance to live harmoniously with my outer self. And that is what matters.

Share this: Twitter

Facebook

Like this: Like Loading...