It’s kind of hard to believe a whole year has passed since I started this blog. So much has changed since then, most noticeably my self-confidence:
I’ve gone from being afraid of crop tops, to wearing them as just another part of my wardrobe.
I’m on the list of life models for a regular life drawing event.
I have far more good body days than bad, and have developed tactics to deal with the bad ones.
I’ve cut from my life any people who (deliberately or not) push the wrong buttons, and I’ve made my introvert timenon-negotiable.
I’ve learned to answer back and argue my point instead of being a good, quiet little lady and letting people walk all over me.
And so much more.
Honestly, I kind of expected all that to happen. Maybe not quite so well or so quickly, but I was ready for ‘fake it til you make it’ to work out as it has in the past.
I was not expecting my eyes and ideology to be thrown wide open.
This blog started off for me. I was going to do things I was afraid of so I could change. But over the last year I’ve realised that there’s a good deal more in the world needs changing, and if I can help, in even the tiniest way, I just have to.
My first year has been a learning year. My next year will be one of action. Watch this space.
The bubble had always been there, from the moment she was born, and everyone around her had one too.
It filtered everything she saw, and made the world look just fine, but it also made the woman feel bad. Her reflection through the bubble was distorted, so all the things she didn’t like about herself looked much bigger than they were, and she could hardly see any good parts.
One day she saw some people who looked strange, although she couldn’t work out why. They were loud and confident, and moved through the world with power, leaving it changed behind them. She tiptoed closer to them and realised why they looked so different; they had no bubble!
She ran away as fast as she could, afraid of these strange people who were not living the way they were supposed to.
But she couldn’t forget about them, and eventually she started to wonder what it was like to live without a bubble. The thought terrified her, and yet the non-bubbles had seemed so… alive.
She searched for them and found them again. For a while she only watched them, learning how they moved and talked to and about each other. Sometimes they waved at her and she waved back, but didn’t dare get any closer.
Then she overheard one of the non-bubbles explaining that she had been born with a bubble as well, but she had burst it herself. Set herself free.
The woman decided to try it. She stood in front of her mirror and pushed at the bubble, but it was so thick and strong that she could only open a tiny hole in it. She pressed her eye to the hole and looked in the mirror. She couldn’t believe how different she looked! It was too strange so she looked away, but she left the tiny hole there.
She tried looking through it every day, and every day it grew a little wider, until one day with a pop her bubble disappeared completely.
She spent a long time looking at herself. Without the bubble blocking her view she saw there were so many wonderful parts of herself she had never been able to see before.
Then finally she looked around at the world, and realised that the bubble had been distorting things there as well. Everywhere she looked were things the bubble had been hiding from her.
Why did that advert for washing powder only contain women’s voices?
Why did that poster have only white people on it?
How could people say that trans women aren’t real women because they can’t have children? If she needed a hysterectomy, would she no longer be a real woman? So… did that guy actually believe he was complimenting her by saying she ‘looks fertile’?
Why did this clothes shop only stock 3 different sizes? All of which are well below the national average?
Did that song always have such rapey lyrics?
The people still in their bubbles couldn’t see the problems. Some of the non-bubbles tried to explain, and a few people burst out to join them, but most of them just got angry. They liked their bubble and the way it made the world look.
The bubble-free world was sometimes hard and frightening and painfully unfair, but the woman loved the feeling of being free to see it and try to change it.
She realised she could never force people to leave their bubbles. She wasn’t even very good at persuading them to try, but she decided to do her best anyway. Even if her trying only yielded the smallest results, it would be worth it.
It was the only bubble-free way to live, and she vowed never to let her vision be bubble-clouded again.
This limit never really bothered me before, because I don’t like stripes. Horizontal, vertival, thick, thin; doesn’t matter. I do not like them.
But then I was out shopping, and I spotted this:
It’s totally stripey. About as stripey as they come. And yet, I instantly wanted it.
After years of being told fat people shouldn’t wear stripes I was sure it would look awful. But being stubborn and contrary as I am, I picked it up and tried it on anyway.
Result.
The reaction wasn’t even “well it’s nice, but see how it makes your hips/bum/chest/arms/other random body part look. Ugh.” – I tried it on, looked myself up and down, and thought “heck, yes!”. Then I bought it.
Now I don’t really want to take it off.
I’m eating ice cream, in case you’re wondering.
Wet hair. Don’t care.
I think you’ll find I can wear stripes. I’m actually finding it quite difficult to stop!
Today is an exciting day, a day of firsts for my blog.
It’s not only my first ever official guest post; it’s written by a man! OOooOOooh exciting!
So make sure you’re sitting comfortably, and I’ll let him begin.
Guest limit #1: Boys can’t wear dresses.
A couple of weeks ago an acquaintance of mine was describing a dress they had their eye on. “It’s dead good, ‘cause, like, you can wear it to go out in, or to go to work in. Well, obviously you can’t. You’re a boy.”
My immediate thought was “oh can’t I?” (I’m not entirely sure why: maybe I’m just contrary like that) but as the day went on I got more and more annoyed at the exchange.
Imagine if the script was reversed. If the person had said “You can’t do x, y, z; you’re a girl” they’d be in so much trouble. But I’m a guy, so that’s just fine apparently.
Fast forward to a couple of days ago: It’s Christmas eve and head office has sent down a memo saying everyone in our local office is allowed to wear our finest festive dresses for the day. I’m pretty sure they were trying to be clever, but ended up making a typo. Still, head office must be obeyed, so I swore I’d follow orders and show up in my finest dress.
The dress was “Noelle” by Hell Bunny with a white t-shirt underneath to deal with the scandalously low neckline. It wasn’t a drag act; I didn’t shave my arms and legs, I didn’t wear make-up or a wig, nothing of the sort. I was simply myself, but in a dress.
I was worried. The people I work with are not the most mature people at the best of times and given that I’m ‘the weird one’ anyway I had a feeling it would end badly. Still, I looked at myself in the mirror and said “Damn, you look good” before walking into the lounge like nothing was different.
The reaction around the office was…varied, we’ll say. Some of the younger women said I looked very pretty, just not as pretty as they would look in the same dress.
Some of the guys thought it was hilarious. One colleague made a point of saying, quite loudly, “Look at him, he even walks gay.” Because wearing a particular kind of clothing means you’re gay, you know. My girlfriend will be heartbroken.
But I digress. The response was mostly positive.
And now it’s boxing day! The office is surprisingly normal. I’m not ‘that weirdo in a dress’ or ‘that pansy’ or any number of awful insults I imagined I would be. It’s almost like people don’t care what I wear at my desk (provided I rank at least two less than them on the scale of perceived hotness).
The trouble is, while my acquaintance couldn’t have known this, they were absolutely right. The official dress code says that female employees can wear anything they want, so long as it’s company colours, while the male employees have to wear a shirt and trousers. And no that isn’t sexist, for reasons entirely too obvious to explain. To anyone. Ever.
Still! I did something new (and hijacked this blog for 519 words), and all because someone said I couldn’t do something when I think you’ll find I can.
Shop changing rooms. They’re tricksy little beasties, somehow highlighting every ‘flaw’ you have while making new clothes look amazing. I’ve always wondered how they do it. Sorcery, probably.
I would hate to count up the cumulative hours I’ve spent in those cubicles, cataloguing the parts of my body I hate most. What a horrible, sad waste of my life.
But since jumping feet-first into body positivity, I thought I had left that changing room self-hate behind me. I’ve completely turned some of my most hated parts into my favourites. I love my body now, so how much better would it be to see it in full, lit up, in shiny new clothes? Surely it would be fun!
Turns out, no.
I went in to try on the most beautiful dress in the world, and some other fairly nice dresses, and the inner snark started from the second I closed the door. It went for my socks, the size and shape of my feet, my thighs, my hips, my stomach, my arms, my overall size, my hair, my stretch marks, the clothes I was wearing that day, and the clothes I had taken in to try on.
Honestly, it nearly overwhelmed me at first. It’s been so long since I faced such a tirade from my inner Nasty Voice that I couldn’t remember how to defend myself. My eyes filled up, and I was on the brink of a major meltdown.
Then up popped the Body Pos voice I’ve been working on for months.
“Excuse me? You seriously think it’s okay to speak like that? Would you say that to your friends? Would you let your friends, or anyone for that matter, say those things to you?
No. No you wouldn’t. So what makes you think it’s okay to speak to yourself that way?”
*Nasty Voice mumbles something incoherent*
“You can shut up now. We have, in fact, noticed that we’ve become bigger recently; you don’t need to point it out. We also decided that size/weight/body fat percentage have no effect whatsoever on our inherent value and self-worth, remember that?
You know only 5% of the population can achieve that shape you’re comparing us against. You know we are not in that 5%, never have been, never will be, no matter what. And you know that doesn’t stop us being hella sexy and downright fabulous.”
At which point the Nasty Voice died a violent death and vanished, leaving me and Body Pos voice to live in peace forever more!
Except this is real life, and I’m only human.
I silenced the Nasty Voice long enough to not cry, and to try on the clothes I had picked up. But when I tried on the most beautiful dress in the world it pointed out that a size 12 would have fitted me 6 months ago. I tried another and it sniped at the way the material lay over my hips and bum. A third and it laughed at the sag in the chest area that I can never quite fill.
The difference this time was that the comments slid over the surface instead of cutting in deep. They flitted across my mind and then they were gone.
Then I tried on a jumper dress. It’s the kind of thing I would never normally go for, but I tried it on anyway and Body Pos voice said “Heck yes!”.
This is what progress looks like, I suppose. I am changing. I am kinder to myself now than I ever have been before. But when the simple act of walking into a changing room can cause a meltdown, I clearly still have a lot of work to do.
“Basically, I take everything I’ve ever been told I can’t or shouldn’t do, and do it anyway.”
Lately I feel like I’ve been explaining my blog to people a lot. The first few times I stumbled through some wittering rubbish that probably put them right off. Because words out loud are difficult.
But then I polished it up a bit to get the sentence at the start of this post. I think it sums it up pretty well.
People’s responses have ranged from “cool!” to “um…okay.” to “What, even ‘don’t put a knife in a plug socket’?”. But last week I got a really interesting and thought-provoking response:
“Have you ever regretted the things you’ve done?”
Well. If we’re talking about life in general then heck yes. Regrets ahoy over here. Like you wouldn’t believe.
But do I regret anything I’ve done for this blog?
Not even a little bit.
Don’t get me wrong, there have definitely been some uncomfortable moments (did someone say crop top?) along the way. But that’s actually good; being uncomfortable forces me to grow.
There were some things I was absolutely certain I would regret. But didn’t. In fact I really enjoyed them, learned some stuff about myself, and figured out a way to help fix society. Result.
I don’t even regret the responses I’ve had from people. There have been rants. They’ve told me they found my posts intimidating. There was one guy who greeted me by repeating the word ‘fatty’ over and over, getting more aggressive with each repetition, and ending by calling me a ‘f*ing stupid girl’.
I do not regret this. In fact, it makes me want to do even more. There’s nothing like an extreme reaction to reinforce that what you’re doing actually matters. The fact that someone would shout and swear at me simply for calling myself fat, proves that there’s a whoooooole lot of work to be done. I’m looking forward to helping with that work!
And that right there is the real reason I don’t regret any of this; it has completely changed me.
Even if the me I used to be ever said anything to invoke such a reaction, she would have taken the anger personally and run off to cry in a corner, vowing never to even think of that topic again.
But I never would have said anything. My confidence and self-worth were based so entirely on what other people thought of me, that I tried never to say or do anything that could possibly get a negative reaction.
Really, it’s no way to live. Hating my body and everything about it because it didn’t fit into the widely-held belief of what a ‘perfect body’ was, trying to feel better about it by waiting for other people to say nice things about it, or putting it down in the hope that they would argue and say how wonderful I was. But ultimately being disappointed because everyone else is too busy with their own issues to soothe me like a nazzy child. And even if they did say something nice back to me, somehow all I remembered was my nasty comments, not their lovely arguments.
Compare that to last night:
Walking home after choir, my hair had frizzed up in the rain and the wind kept blowing stray bits of it into my face. But instead of thinking “WHY WON’T YOU BE PERFECT, HAIR??” I thought how lovely and soft it felt against my skin.
I was wearing a dress that used to be too big for me. I didn’t beat myself up or call myself names for gaining so much weight; I know now that weight has absolutely nothing to do with my worth. Whether I’m a size 6, 16, or 26, I am glorious.
In that moment I felt like I was actually floating on a cloud of body positivity. I could have done absolutely anything.
I regret nothing, except the fact that it took me 27 years to realise just how fabulous I am.
The class last night was actually part training for noob models like me. The group was split in two and one half posed while the other half drew them, and then we swapped.
I learned many things during those 3 hours, some more surprising than others:
1.I still can’t draw for toffee.
This one is not a surprise at all. I did discover that my issue is focusing on specific details rather than seeing overall shapes. But what can I say? I’m a writer; detail is my thing.
I gave it a go anyway and it turns out drawing good poses seriously helps you to create good poses when your turn comes around.
Here is my feeble attempt:
I mean, you can tell it’s supposed to be a human being. That’s improvement
I’m bizarrely proud of the left foot.
2. But some of the warm-up exercises were fun.
The first lot of poses were 2 minutes long. Obviously you can’t get a photographic copy in 2 minutes so we just had to sketch out the ‘energy and movement’ of the pose. Which is kinda fun.
This right here is actually my favourite picture of the night:
And here’s one somebody did of me, which is a bajillion times better:
Anybody recognise setenta? Or the fact that it’s me?
3. It’s harder than you think.
“Just turn up and stand up.” someone said. “You’ll be fine, you just sit there.” said another. And I’ll be honest, I did think it would be fairly easy.
No. Really, really no.
I want you to raise your arm above your head. Go on. Is it up there? Right, now keep it there for 20 minutes.
Too much? Okay then, twist your upper body to the side. Any side will do and you only have to go far enough to feel your back muscles engaging. Done? Now you can’t move for 7 minutes. And doesn’t breathing seem kinda difficult now your diaphragm is twisted?
Just ignore the stitch/cramp/pins and needles when they turn up, and try not to shake too much.
4. The initial shock at disrobing never really went away.
Seriously, every single time we swapped over and I had to take the robe off, my mind went
“WE’RE NEKKID IN PUBLIC!!”.
5. But then I always got used to it.
After that initial shock I just got into the zone, and during the 20 minute pose I actually relaxed so much I almost fell asleep. That’s bad, by the way. All your interesting shapes relax out if you fall asleep. It’s apparently perfectly fine if various limbs fall asleep though, you just have to shake it out when you’re finished.
6. Everyone should do life drawing /modeling at least once in their life.
There are several parts to this.
Firstly, at the start of the evening I was terrified at the thought of all these people (including men!!) looking at me naked. I’m female and apparently fairly attractive and also fat: I spend 99% of my outside life being looked at, appraised, judged, admired, wanted, dismissed, shouted at, chatted up, and catcalled because of my body and the way I look.
But in the class, even though I was more on show than I have ever been, nobody was looking at me that way.
I was turned into shapes and objects to be drawn, without being objectified. I was being seen rather than just looked at. I had at least 7 pairs of eyes on me but felt completely safe. Every woman should get chance to experience that (sadly rare) sensation. Every man too.
Secondly, some problems in the world come from over-sexualisation of people and parts of said people. Take breastfeeding in public for an example. “Sexy stuff in a restaurant?! Nobody wants to see that! Think of the children!!”. But breasts are actually not sexual organs, they’re just another part of a body. Like feet.
There’s no point just telling people to stop shaming mothers who feed their babies in public; they will argue, and get angry, and threaten rape, and all kinds of horrible things. But if we could get people to see that women are not just sexual objects, they wouldn’t struggle with seeing breasts used as something other than sex toys, and the shaming wouldn’t happen.
I honestly believe a life drawing class is a perfect platform for making that happen. You expose people to a bunch of naked bodies with no sexual context whatsoever, and they can’t help seeing them as bodies of actual human beings. Like I said – seeing objects without making it into objectification.
If everyone did this at least once, and got used to seeing bodies in this way, I wonder how much better society would be.
7. Do the things that scare you most. You might find something you enjoy.
That small voice in the back of my mind that thought I might enjoy modeling? It was so right.
I enjoyed a solid 3 hours of safety and the absence of judgement.
I enjoyed learning how to hold my body in interesting poses.
I enjoyed trying something adventurous, even though my shoulder is still complaining about it today.
And I really enjoyed seeing the drawings people made of me. It’s so interesting to see myself through other eyes.
Also I appear to be kind of good at it. For the 20 minute pose, half of the class drew me. Including the teacher. She said my pose was really interesting, and I nearly burst.
Not sure what happened to my head.The teacher’s drawing.My favourite drawing of me.
Limit #10 (again): fat people shouldn’t make art of themselves.
Tonight I’m going to have no clothes on in front of many, many strangers.
What the heck was I thinking??
It’ll be fine, you’ll be fine. Just stop thinking about it.
…
I can’t do this. Flips sake I’m the coldest person I know. I’ll be too shivery to make a good model.
Don’t be stupid, they’ll make sure it’s warm. Stop looking for excuses. In fact just stop thinking about it.
…
What was I thinking? It’s so far out of my comfort zone, I can’t even see it any more!
That’s the whole point, woman. You know outside your comfort zone is where all the fun stuff is.
See.
But it’s scary.
So was wearing a crop top, but you managed that twice and didn’t die.
…maybe.
…
But-
Just stop it. This is happening. You said you would do it, and you really want to be one of those people who always do what they say they will. You keep saying you’re not ashamed of your body; I can’t think of many better ways to put your money where your mouth is. Or do you only promote body love under certain, clothed circumstances?
Course not!
There we go then. Look, you can totally do this. You love your body and you know it’s worthy of drawings or paintings or whatever they’re going to make. You hear that tiny voice back there? That voice reckons you might even enjoy it.
It might be right. I have had fun with all the other things I wasn’t ‘allowed’ to do.
I think you'll find I can 