Edel Coffey: How much happier might we be, if being ourselves was good enough?
Edel Coffey: "I wondered what a really forward-thinking and modern attitude towards our bodies might be. How about just wanting to look like ourselves" Photo: Ray Ryan
Last week, Victoria Beckham launched VB Body, a new line of bodycon dresses designed to look good on ‘curvy’ bodies. The comment that made global headlines, however, was Beckham saying that wanting to be really thin was an ‘old-fashioned attitude.’ ‘Women today want to look healthy and curvy,’ she added. Sure, I thought, but isn’t that just another version of prescribing what women should look like? This week’s prescription is – curvy and healthy.
I wondered what a really forward-thinking and modern attitude towards our bodies might be. How about just wanting to look like ourselves?
It was interesting that Beckham mentioned her 10-year-old daughter, Harper, in her conversation about bodies. Beckham said her new line was inspired by a trip to Miami, where she saw lots of body-confident curvy women. ‘I loved that Harper was around women who were really celebrating their curves and enjoying how they look.’
There’s clearly a desire in Beckham for her daughter to feel body-positive and to enjoy how she looks as she grows up. Having children, specifically daughters, can do this. It certainly made me more aware of how negative the ideology around women’s appearance is, not to mention how unforgiving I was towards my own body. And it’s something I actively worked on changing. It’s funny how, when it comes to our children, we know that all that really matters is their health and happiness, but we can’t seem to extend that same good sense and simple generosity to our own bodies.
I’ve got what I would describe as an average body – average shape, average size, average ability, I can find my clothes size in most shops, I can do most of the things I want to do with my body. In short, I’m really, really lucky. And yet, even as a mature woman, a mother, a wife, a person with lots of love in my life, a person who ought to know better, I still feel the negative influence of oppressive and unrealistic body standards creeping in from the edges of my mindset from time to time. That’s despite the privileged fact that my body fits into the narrow parameters of what we are told is acceptable, and despite the fact that my body is a really comfortable healthy physical body to live in.
I had a bit of an epiphany a few months ago listening to a professor Clare Chambers being interviewed on the radio. She’s Professor of Political Philosophy at Cambridge University and has written a book called Intact – A Defence of the Unmodified Body. She made an excellent point about the body anxiety and shame most of us now feel, saying, ‘if everybody feels bad about their bodies, it’s not the bodies that are the real problem.’
When did our bodies stop being good enough? When did we become body deniers? Our bodies are living things. They change all the time. The idea that our bodies shouldn’t change with biological events like pregnancy or menopause or even just age is simply anti-scientific. Look at what hormones do to our bodies in puberty. Look at what they do in pregnancy. They have the power to grow a new organ (the placenta), to soften ligaments and widen bones. Why then do we expect those bones to ‘snap back’ into place afterwards?
Or why, when menopause hormones kick in, do we punish our bodies for changing in the face of something they have no power over? We see it with ageing too. Remember the shock and horror that accompanied the Sex and the City reboot around the fact that the characters (and actors who played them) had aged? Sarah Jessica Parker was prompted to snap, ‘What am I going to do about it? Stop ageing? Disappear?’ It was so good to hear her expose the ridiculousness of the expectations around women and age. We need to hear some similar truths around bodies (Lizzo is doing a great job on this front) to remind us that our bodies are good enough as they are, ageing, morphing, alive.
I was lucky enough to grow up in a very body-positive environment. My mother grew up in the era of Twiggy, and yet I don’t ever remember her wanting to look like Twiggy or prizing the idea of thinness. She and her friends were all shapes and sizes and all of them were confident and glamorous and fun. The attitude was, you are what you are so make the most of what you’ve got and get out and enjoy yourself. It was a healthy attitude I think. There was never any suggestion of taking drastic action, of changing anything about ourselves. The focus was on self-acceptance so you could forget about how you looked and focus on having a good time.
We encounter lots of feelgood advice now on the endless daily scroll, things like ‘what would you do if you weren’t afraid?’ I sometimes wonder what would we do if we weren’t feeling bad about our bodies or investing exhaustive time and effort in shaping them, sculpting them, tanning them, gluing them, waxing them, lasering them, microneedling them, punishing them? How much time would we get back? How much more fun could we be having? How much happier might we be, if being ourselves was good enough?
