Rave: The reclamation of my own body

I've decided I need to write more in this blog, as a space for the things I can't put on any of my professional blogs. I shall try not to ignore it for nearly a year in future.

Being an avowed feminist, and getting more avowed by the day, I've been thinking a lot about the mind-body dichotomy and how it plays out where I can see social ideals exerting controls over women's bodies, through food and fat, through sex (and rape), through fashion, through forced childbearing or denial of the right to bear children, through sports, and ultimately through murder (to name just a few).

For me, personally, my body has been a source of discomfort for as long as I can remember. Because I cannot run fast or catch a ball, and I grew up in a society that values sports above all else, my body and its failings have made me an object of school ridicule since I was small. I do not fit in to an idealized beauty standard, and this has been readily apparent to me for a long time. And in my early adulthood, I suffered the bodily betrayal of chronic illness; pain, dependence, weight loss and gain due to illness and medication, loss of control in general (the illness with which I am diagnosed has particularly socially unacceptable symptoms, being intestinal in nature). And of course the usual stories of sexual harassment and the like that all the women I know could tell, well, I can tell them too.

I'm not saying all or any of this for pity, but because I want to demonstrate how from the time I went to school, my body has been a source of embarrassment, shame, inconvenience, pain, and discomfort. Until I left my teens, I walked with a hunch to make myself smaller and less obvious. I wished I could be like that Roald Dahl story, and just be a brain in a jar, because nothing good came of having a body.

Recently though, I have begun to realise the joy I take in my body. Now, for those of you whose minds have already hit the damn gutter, I'm not even going to talk about sex--partly because it too bloody obvious, partly because it is fraught and I don't want to get into it. Instead, I'm going to talk about other things:

• Discovering swimming at 13, and realising I could swim further than pretty much anyone I knew, but that that didn't matter because it was good to just move through the water and be tired afterwards.
• Discovering the gym at 14, and learning to enjoy group exercise in a way where I was my own master, and where I did not have to be able to run or catch a ball.
• Playing basketball in girls-only physical education in Finland, where all that mattered was that everyone was having a good time.
• Learning to climb and be the master of my own destiny, and getting bloody strong along the way (oh, and meeting my husband wasn't bad either).
• Lifting weights, and changing the shape of my body, not in a way that pleased society, but in a way that pleased me.
• Taking up running on the treadmill with a goal in mind, and being surprised at how fast I could run without even trying
  
• All the other gym classes -- step, where I was particularly talented and could learn anything; boxing aerobics, where I was quick and my aggression didn't matter, pilates and body balance where I learned to concentrate on what my body was doing and how small changes affected it, deep water running, where I could do great cardio without joint pain and most recently and importantly...
• ...body jam, where I dance. I've always loved to dance, but I've never had any faith that I didn't look stupid or pornographic. It's taken a year of jam, but I simply don't give a flying fuck anymore what I look like. I don't care that some of the moves are sexual. I enjoy moving, and I am moving not for anyone other than me. It's about how I feel, rather than how I look (though I've been told that my dancing is pretty damn pleasing to the eye, these days).
  

It's taken doing the jam thing (for a year!), and losing my shame about moving my "child bearing hips", "thunder thighs" "boobies" and all the other parts of me that attract less attention for me to look at all of these experiences and stand up and recognise the joy I take in them. The brain in the jar scenario doesn't allow for any of these joys, and finally I am choosing to focus on the joy in all of it, rather than feeling slightly embarrassed and apologetic.

This is not, of course, to say that I love the way my body looks, or that the creepy jerk staring at my chest in the gym/elevator/train doesn't make me want to hide (or smack him), or that pain and illness don't make me curse my body as a bastard traitor that isn't playing the game. It's just that that isn't the dominant narrative anymore; it's no longer about what my body can't do, or what it is, but about what it can and does do. I've reclaimed my body.

I can't help but wonder, though, if I wouldn't have come earlier to this if physical education at school had been better rounded, and exposed me to other things than running and catching balls (and after all, the majority of us are not great at these things or sports heroes wouldn't be worshipped the way they are), and perhaps I might have come to the joy in simple movement earlier. It wouldn't have completely ameliorated all the other baggage, but knowing my body did one good thing just for me might have helped along the way. If I have daughters who are as hopeless at sports as I am, I'm certainly going to do my damndest to expose them to other types of movement...just in case.

Rant: Body image, society, and disease (part 3)

Not only do I not know what to believe, but my food choices are limited due to ongoing illness, and it is hard to eat the "right" things. On top of that, my relationship with food is completely warped by not being able to eat for months, and then having compulsive eating as a med side effect for a year.

So what do I do? I have made the decision to work hard, and try to get back to my pre-illness size and shape. I regularly lift weights, I work out, and insofar as is possible, I try to eat sanely (though not during the blogathon, because some things are just too hard -- I can't think clearly enough to change my clothes, let alone my food choices, at this point). And I am finally at a point where I am doing it for me, not for society, for a doctor, for a partner or friend. And society, frankly, can go and get fucked.

This approach will get me so far, you know, and it is something I can live with. But, dammit, I am scared. One day I want to have kids, and how in the hell I am going to give them sane body image messages, I don't know. I hope by then society is ready to help me out, some organisations at least seem to be starting now.

Rant: Body image, society, and disease (part 2)

In this twisted situation where it seems every woman on the planet is either too fat or too thin, women are rebelling in different ways. The pro-ana movement is girls trying to take control of their body image by taking control of their weight, the fat rant tells society where to get off (and yet is done by a woman who, to me at least, looks healthy rather than fat).

The body image issue is of great personal significance, because with the illness I have, I have been both very thin, and very fat. While I was thin, I was very ill, and while I was fat, I was very affected by side effects, but much healthier. I was told by society that I looked much better ill than healthy. To this day, five years after the fact, I still do not like the way I look, and I am still aggressively working to change it -- and I don't even know what I am "supposed" to look like.

Recently this topic came up among people with the same illness I suffer from, and responses ranged from "you look great, what are you worrying about" to "be grateful you can eat". At my present weight I have been told by a medical professional that I would ideally be 10-20lbs lighter than I am. My perception of my own body has been so warped by rapid changes and society's images that I now no longer know who to believe.

continued in next post

Rant: Body image, society, and disease

We live in strange times. There is an obesity epidemic, and eating disorders are more prevalent than ever before. Women, in particular, bear the brunt of increasingly unrealistic social expectations about their bodies, where they must be thin and strong, and the average model is increasingly small compared to the average woman.

Models are suppsoed to be thin because "clothes hang better" on very thin women, but their thinness has a negative impact on the health and well being of women who see them, and average sized models don't, and yet average sized (or heaven forfend even plus sized) models are treated as a curiosity, and it is considered news when runway shows ban models that are too thin.

continued in next post