It’s been a while since I last wrote but last week I saw an
article in the paper stating that ‘boobs were no longer in fashion’. This got
my heckles up, not because I have reasonable sized boobs and so am therefore no
longer fashionable, my body has supposedly not been fashionable on many occasions,
(when it was fashionable to be skinny, when it was fashionable to tall and
slim, when it was deemed fashionable to look like you took heroin).
Other friends have had similar problems, some of them were
out of fashion when allegedly only women with Christina Hendricks curves were
fashionable, others when we were told that big lips were cool and there were
those that suffered from not been fashionable when it was deemed that ‘fat bottomed
girls make the rocking world go round’
What I find even more frustrating is that we all buy into
it. Sit in a room with a group of women
for long enough and eventually somebody will start talking about what they like
about their body, or more often than not, what they don’t like. More concerning is the amount of
conversations held about what we are and aren’t feeding ourselves. I admit that I have found myself having these
conversations but I have decided, no more.
At my age I feel that these are not conversations that women
should be having. In fact they are not the conversations women should be having
at any age. I have a niece and I don’t want
her growing up thinking that her body should look a certain way because the
media and other women say so. I know
I can’t change the world and I can’t even change the media, but I can change me
and make sure that that isn’t the message she hears from me.
Deep down we all know it’s about how you feel about yourself
that’s important and that nobody has ever liked anybody more just because they’ve
got thinner thighs, or big boobs (well this may not be true but people who like
you more just based on those things are usually the men your mum warned you
about). I’ve never sat with my mates and
thought I would love you all a bit more if your bodies were just that little
bit more fashionable or if you only consumed limited calories a day.
I’m not saying there is anything wrong with watching what
you eat and taking care of yourself. I
just feel that they are not things we need to be constantly conversing about,
thus giving the impression to younger girls around us that calorie intake is a
really important thing to be discussed on a regular basis.
It seems that we have all been conditioned to want to be
something we are not. I have even heard
myself saying “I want to be thinner” like some mantra, but when I think about it I have never really wanted to be thinner. I’ve
wanted to be fitter, I’ve wanted to be more toned, and I’ve wanted to be firmer
but thinner, not really, I understood a long time ago
that I am always going to have boobs and a bum and accepted it.
So I am taking a stand and I am going to say, something that
women very rarely say….I love my body, not because I have a flat stomach, I don’t,
and not because I have achieved the
elusive thigh gap, I haven’t, but I still love it.
The reason I love it is because it works. In my lifetime I have seen loss, we all have,
people cut down in their prime, people living with life threatening
illness or having their lives turned upside down by a cruel twist of fate and
it is because of these people that I have decided to embrace my body and accept
how it is.
My body works, it is strong, I exercise to feel strong not
to be try and be thin (I’m really not designed that way) I know what to put in
it to make it work at its best but sometimes I choose not to do this and decide
to eat chocolate, drink too much wine and stuff my face with pizza, but instead
of worrying about this for days I have learnt to accept it and move on.
If I live to be old and healthy, and my niece learns from me
that her body is beautiful whatever it looks like and yet my body is never
deemed fashionable again then I will be happy.
