Body Celebration, or The Frankenstein Blogger

Google +...it seems you either love it, hate it or are completely oblivious to it.

I, for one, love it. Maybe it's just the fact that I am one of the few people that don't have a facebook account, but I post fairly regularly on there. In fact, in a lot of ways I use it like an extension of Twitter - down to the fact I was been invited by someone from Twitter, and most of the people in my circles are the weirdoes and reprobates those I talk to on Twitter too.

Anyway, a couple of Twitter friends and I regularly post Man or Woman of the day - a kind of Hot or Not that generally just degenerates into a weird slanging match that most of you probably are frankly best off steering well clear of. After another random celebrity got pulled apart for whatever reason, it led to another of my rambling thoughts about body image.

I've mentioned in the past about various things I don't like about my appearance, but I thought it was time to turn the tables a little and focus on the positives. If anyone were to ask me which bit I did like, I would probably say my waist. Maybe my lips too, but mainly my waist.

In a lot of ways it's not a very exciting body part, but I distinctly remember as a young teenager lying in my bed and tracing the curve of my hip and waist, and feeling decidedly womanly. Later on, I was (un)fortunate to be in my prime when crop-tops were at the height of fashion, and a cinched in waist was a useful thing to show off. Now, after the passage of time and having given birth to two children, the skin may not be as taut as it used to be, but I'm lucky enough to still be able to fit into the same clothes as I could 20 (eek) years ago.

Women's magazines often feature an "ideal" celebrity, with features that apparently all women lust after - Jennifer Aniston's hair, Angelina's lips etc etc, and I wondered whether we could create a whole person out of our favourite body parts...

I'd therefore love to know what your favourite bit of you is. If you're feeling really brave, you could email me a picture (email address is on the "About" page), or post it on your blog and we can even see if we can get a whole person together...

Size Matters

I came across the image above on the deepest, darkest depths of the internet recently and it finally jolted me into writing a post that has been floating around the corners of my mind for quite some time.  I have somehow never managed to make the jumbled thoughts in my head on this one into a reasoned post as it’s a horribly emotive subject, so I hope I can manage it this time.

Let me make it clear before I start; I am sure the thought behind the original slogan; “Real Women Have Curves” is admirable, in that it is trying to get women to accept their bodies for what they are, not the stick-thing models they see in magazines. And yet, I will admit that every time I see it, it irks me terribly. You see, I have blogged before about how I am not a fan of labels if they can possibly be avoided, and it strikes me that there is a danger with this thought of simply replacing one unrealistic ideal (women have to be thin) with another one that may be shoehorning women into another defined box (women have to have “curves”).

I’ve thought long and hard about what it actually means for a woman to be curvy, and as with most things, if you trawl the internet for long enough you come across so many different definitions as to be pretty meaningless. One messageboard tells me that “when women describe themselves as "curvy", it's the new code word for "fat"” (charming, I think you’ll agree). The general consensus, however, appears to be that it means women have to be small waisted, large-bottomed, and most importantly, large chested.

Now, there is certainly absolutely nothing wrong with being a perfect hourglass shape. The fact of the matter is that not every woman is that shape, however. It may be true that women's chest and dress sizes have increased over the last 50 years, but that doesn't necessarily mean that everyone suddenly looks like Marilyn Monroe. Look at any high street and you will see a vast array of different shapes and sizes.

I suppose you will think I am lucky when I say that I have been naturally slim-ish all my life (yes, I might even have been called "skinny" at one point or another). That doesn't mean I haven't had plenty of hang-ups about my own body. Take the breast size debate, for example. It's not a huge secret to anyone that knows me that God missed adding some padding "up top" when he created me. Every time I get frustrated by lingerie companies that start sizing their sizing at a B-cup, I try and console myself with the fact I can still shop in the “my first bra” section of M&S if I really wanted to. (Hoorah for choice.) Technically I may have curves in that I am blessed with a small waist and large-ish hips, but I certainly don't recognise myself in the descriptions of curvy that I have seen. Id' like to think it doesn't make me any less real, however!

Photoshopping is commonplace in both fashion magazines and glamour shoots, and the rise of plastic surgery means nobody has to look as nature intended if they don't want to. As a mother to two girls, this saddens me greatly. I would like to think that growing up they will be accepted for how they look, whether that is like Twiggy or like Dawn French, and, most importantly, for them to be happy in their bodies. The last thing I would want is for them to feel the need to look like Katie Price because that is somehow what is now expected!

Saying that Real Women have curves is therefore meaningless and dangerous in my opinion– we might as well say real women are green. Can't we just agree that all women are real women, just like all men are real men, and that is all that matters?

It takes all sorts...

"Between friends, differences in taste or opinion are irritating in direct proportion to their triviality."
W. H. Auden 

The world up is made up by many different people, all with interests, hobbies and even desires that I know will differ vastly from mine. The world would be a very boring place if all anyone ever did was knit, and nobody played music, or acted, or even played with model aircraft! We need people who are interested in quantum physics, even if the phrase itself causes the blankest look on my own face.

I also know that making assumptions about someone is the easiest thing in the world - I've certainly written about that often enough on this blog. Every now and then I have to hold a mirror up to myself and I don't necessarily see thoughts that are particularly charitable. I guess that's also (sadly?) pretty normal human behaviour.

There are some things, however, that to me personally are things that I take for granted that everybody should be interested in. It's therefore a surprise to come across someone who isn't. Take, for example, people who don't read. Now, I know not everyone does well at school. Literacy levels are not where they should be in a lot of cases. A love of books is not something that gets handed down in all families. I am, however, talking about someone who comes from what I would probably term similar social circles to myself, where the normal assumption would be that reading was something that happened in their home.
I once offered someone fitting this description a stack of magazines to get them through the boredom of the first few weeks with a newborn. The response, "I don't read - not even magazines. I prefer to watch tv". Nothing. Nada. We were not talking about the novels of Dostoevsky here either. I had offered things like Heat and OK, real high-brow stuff that really only involved looking at pictures...

The second thing I take for granted is that everyone should have a love of travel. This may sound ironic given a relatively recent post of mine about how I am happy staying at home, but I love travelling and seeing new sights and sounds. It's something I think shows a healthy curiosity about life, and certainly teaches many things you could never learn in a classroom. For someone to therefore recently announce that they really don't even like going on holiday surprised me, and I didn't know what to think. Should I have been jealous of the fact that this person's four walls were obviously so idyllic they didn't want to escape them every now and then? Or should I go with my first instinct to simply consider this person narrow-minded? I'm not expecting everyone to go backpacking around the world at the drop of a hat, but even a week on a beach must be something that is desirable?

Wait Until Your Father Gets Home...

Source

...seems to be a phrase most of us remember our mothers uttering at one point or another. The dreaded "father as disciplinarian" is something I certainly remember from my own childhood (which is strange considering how much of a pussy cat he is now with his granddaughters...).

Whilst I would not go as far as saying that my husband and I have a good cop-bad cop thing going on when it comes to parenting, it is very true to say that the girls tend to respond to us differently on different occasions. For instance, I am normally better at cajoling them into getting ready for school in the mornings, while their dad has more luck with them at bedtime for some reason. Of course this is all very well and good when you are both around to take on your roles, but it only takes one of you not being around to throw the precarious equilibrium out of kilter.

Take Wednesdays, for instance. Wednesday is the day I officially start early (historically the day I have gone into the office, vs working from home), and him indoors therefore takes the kids to breakfast club. Or rather; it's the day they refuse to get dressed, howl like banshees over brushing their teeth and have to be dragged kicking and screaming to the car...

I like to think we have a more or less similar approach to disciplining our children, which I think is incredibly important. It's still funny, however, funny to see how our daughters still try that age old tactic enjoyed by generations of children, of playing one parent off against the other. Why do they think asking a different parent will get a different answer? At which age will they learn that the standard answer will always be "what did daddy/mummy say?" And at which age will they finally learn that, in general, we do not issue empty threats, but follow through on any threatened punishment...? (I suspect the answer, as with any questions related to children, is; when they reach 21... )

There's No Place Like Home

It's no secret that I have been lucky enough to travel a reasonable amount, mainly around Europe, but also (with the exception of South America and Australia) briefly touching the other continents.That's not to say that there aren't a great many places I have yet to visit that are on my "to do" list!

I've also been lucky enough to spend extended periods of time living in other countries in my childhood and early adulthood. I'm therefore no stranger to adapting to different cultures, although to be fair they have been mainly Western European!

Whenever I go anywhere, whether for business or for pleasure, I therefore naturally find myself wondering what it would be like to live in the particular country I am visiting. In my head I've lived in the US, done the expat lifestyle in Dubai, lived the good life in France, and even returned mentally to Germany and Finland. Whilst there have never been concrete opportunities, I am sure if at any point I had really wanted to, I could probably have found a chance to push for one of those locations over the past *cough* years.

I do often wonder what has stopped me from taking the plunge. There was always an excuse or other. I guess the truth is that in a two-career household neither of us felt strongly enough about it in order to warrant the inevitable disruption to the other partner's career it would have entailed. Then there are the little excuses that creep in; Dubai is too hot (true, and very valid), the US seemed too far away at the time, France has too many smokers (although the wine may balance that out), Finland is too cold and dark for half the year, I don't think I could cope with the formality of Germany any more etc etc.

When it all comes down to it, this funny little island we live in suits me. Don't get me wrong, I don't think the UK is perfect - far from it by all means. What I am trying to say is that I guess I have finally realised it is kind of perfect for me - probably more by a process of elimination than anything else.

Of course, now that there are children to throw into the equation, and they now both at school, there are different considerations to bear in mind. There's no doubt I'd love to give my children the same experiences I had, and the ease at which they would now earn a foreign language is almost too good an opportunity to pass up. However, I also remember the stress it caused me in my own childhood - the stress of starting a new school in a whole different country when you already have a grasp of the language is reasonable is bad enough... Whilst I know, deep down, that children are adaptable, maybe I'm just not brave enough to take that chance with my own. Finally, from a purely selfish point of view I have friends and family here. I have a support network - not something to be underestimated as a working parent, after all.

It never stops you wondering though, does it...