I Heart Me (15 page)
Authors: David Hamilton
âThe reason we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our behind-the-scenes with everyone else's highlight reel.'
S
TEVE
F
URTICK
âI can only be happy if I accept what I look like from this day onwards.'
Those were the words of a young woman who attended one of my âI ⥠Me' workshops. She was talking about the pressure many young women feel under to be slim, have clear skin and have small hips. She said the pressure bred dissatisfaction.
âAccepting what I look like is my only hope,' she explained. âI'm never going to be like that, so there's no point in trying. If I try, I'm only going to be even unhappier with the way I look.'
Her words were met with nods of support from the other workshop participants. One of them tried to encourage her by saying that she was beautiful as she was.
âBut you miss my point,' she replied. âI need to
not care
whether I'm pretty or not. I want to like myself just as I am.'
Does that sound familiar? It's something we'd all love: to like ourselves (not even love ourselves, just like) as we are. We'd be free.
âHow do you do it? How do you get there when the world tells you different? I'm fat,' another woman said, making an open-armed gesture with one finger of each hand pointing at her waist. âEveryone knows that's not pretty.'
Someone else said, âYou need to find what is pretty about yourself
.
'
The woman got emotional at that point. For her, it just didn't feel possible to find something about herself that was pretty.
This is such a common feeling. I meet lots of people who would be unable to find anything they liked about themselves.
From this perspective, learning to love yourself feels like having a mountain to climb, but like all mountains, it starts with small steps. In this chapter, I'd like to offer you some small steps that might help change how you feel about your body image.
The vast majority of women have dieted. A UK study estimated it as 87 per cent of the female population.
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I have three sisters. Each of them, and my mum, has dieted on numerous occasions. When quizzed, most women say it's to be slim and to increase their self-confidence and self-esteem. That's the answer my mum gives too.
Body image is in fact the number one Major Shamer. Whether it is because of weight, shape, thighs, tummy, breast size (in women), penis size (in men), body hair, going bald (in men), skin blemishes or something else, most people feel self-conscious and insecure about and want to change at least one part of their body.
It might come as little surprise to know that shame about body image plays a role in eating disorders. In a 2014 study, researchers compared 46 people with an eating disorder with 50 healthy participants and another 22 people who had recovered from an eating disorder. Those with the eating disorders were found to have the highest levels of shame.
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Shame was also higher in those who had recovered from the eating disorders, which might suggest that whatever way they'd managed to recover, they hadn't dealt with the issue of shame. It's the same reason why many people yo-yo diet. While a diet might help us lose weight, if it doesn't deal with the issues of shame and self-worth, there's always a chance we'll gain weight again.
Learning self-love involves learning to be comfortable with ourselves as we are. It doesn't mean we won't ever want to change. Change is natural. Self-love, in fact, usually does inspire positive, healthy change.
My partner, Elizabeth Caproni, is an actress and filmmaker. She knows all too well the pressures on women. She entered a competition to promote positive body image as part of a campaign called âBody Gossip', the brainchild of actress and puppeteer Ruth Rogers.
Elizabeth's short monologue/poem is about the transition from
not
enough through
had
enough to
am
enough. It's about being comfortable with yourself. It was one of the winners and was performed by celebrities in front of audiences around the UK, including one containing the Duchess of Cornwall, the wife of Prince Charles. You can find a recital performed by UK celebrities on YouTube.
3
Here is the poem:
Yah, I'll have a decaf extra skinny mocha choca latte please. My waist will be smaller to accentuate my double Ds!
You see that's the only part of me that's allowed to be big. Otherwise the press will have a field day and call me a pig.
They papped me on holiday, lying in the sun, Then proclaimed to the world, âHa, look at her bum!'
In a terrible state I rushed to the gym, Pleading my trainer, âPlease make me thin!'
The next two weeks I was worked to the bone, My ass, thighs and abs ordered to tone.
My dairy became soya and steak became fish.
The pounds were dropping off, I was getting my wish!
I grabbed my trainer and said, âYou're my hero! I've dropped 3 dress sizes, I'm now a size zero!'
On top of the world, I attended a première, Expecting the press to say, âWow, what a derrière!'
Instead, though, they didn't, and this is what I read, âShe looks like a rake and has a lollipop head.'
Shocked and confused, just what the hell do they want?! I thought I'd be praised for looking skinny and gaunt.
What, I get slagged for being fat and for being thin? Well, I give up, I don't know how to win.
Now young girls are starving to look like me, Viewing my airbrushed pictures, if only they could see
That I have blemishes, lumps and bumps just like them. See, if they could see that, well, maybe then
Things could change and we'd be allowed to be free, No dangerous diets and starving, but we could just be
Whatever size we naturally are And we'll be admired from close-up and afar.
They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, We should believe this, instead of looking over our shoulder
At who is thinner, prettier and whose bones stick out most It's time to take a stand, I don't wanna be a ghost!
When will we be happy with what we see in the mirror? We are beautiful â let's stop getting thinner and thinner!
You know what, forget what I ordered â for goodness' sake I'll have a full-fat latte â and a carrot cake!
A healthy balanced diet with a few treats thrown in That's the way to go â that's the way to win!
So what if I have a few dimples on my thighs, It's about time that magazines stopped telling lies.
I'm taking a stand and being happy, not just thin. It's time to be content with the skin that I'm in.
Although most of this chapter so far has been about women, men experience similar pressures. It's just not as obvious or talked about.
Highly toned male models are now commonplace in male advertisements. And between the 1970s and 2000, the average
Playgirl
centrefold male gained 26lb (12kg) of muscle and lost around 11lb (5kg) of fat.
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Just as women and young girls are dieting, a growing number of men and young boys have been taking action in the opposite direction. In 2014, the UK Home Office reported that steroid use is now so widespread that they estimate around 60,000 people in the UK inject themselves with steroids each year.
5
Research teaches us that a large number of teenage boys are taking steroids because they think they're puny. Just as women compare themselves to ideal images in magazines, online and in the media, so boys do the same, and as a result, they feel under pressure to be more muscular.
Yet again what lies behind this, for both girls and boys, is the pressure to be what they think is attractive, so they can connect and belong. They get the impression that thin and pretty (girls)/ toned and muscular (boys) are normal and what everyone prefers to look at. If they attain the desired shape, they'll be liked, they'll be accepted and ultimately they'll feel they're
enough
. In the meantime, they can become stressed about changing their body image to fit the norm to the point where they end up ignoring what's good about themselves and only seeing what they think are faults. I know what that's like from when I was a teenager.
In the early to mid-eighties, hair was the big thing for boys. The idols when I was a teenager were Morten Harket from the Swedish band A-Ha, and Jason Donovan, who at the time was an actor in the Australian soap
Neighbours
, alongside Kylie Minogue. Both had well-groomed hair that was parted at the front and had three or four inches of length at the back, kind of like a mullet only the hair was straight.
I spent hours trying to get my hair to look just like theirs. When it wouldn't sit just right, I felt embarrassed. If the front didn't sit up as it was supposed to, I would even walk around all day at school with my head down to reduce the risk of people seeing it, or avoid eye contact in the hope that people wouldn't notice me. I could only see what was wasn't right and completely missed everything that was. Nowadays, we call this kind of thing body dysmorphia, though it usually relates to body size and shape, not hair.
Although the pressures are different now from how they were in the eighties, the issue is the same. Young boys and men, just
like young girls and women, attach their self-worth to their body image and believe that if they don't look a certain way, people won't like, love, be attracted to or accept them.
As a man, I can also tell you that we live with another, less obvious pressure. We need to appear strong, not just in the muscle department but emotionally. We need to âman up' whenever the situation calls for it.
This pressure leads to all sorts of bravado behaviour. If we didn't do it, we'd be comparing penis sizes instead. The truth is, we feel weak some of the time. For some men, it's a lot of the time. We feel weak about a lot of things. We get scared but feel we're not supposed to, we sometimes feel bad about our inability to provide, we sometimes feel inferior in relation to our sexual performance, especially if we know our wife or partner has been with other men before us. That's a big one for a lot of men, if you pardon the pun. We also worry that we don't look toned or groomed enough, especially when we compare ourselves with other men and learn than women like toned, well-groomed men. We also get emotional and we know that's not allowed.
At the risk of shattering the illusion some women have that men are naturally strong, a lot of men cry from time to time. We'd never admit it, though, not to women, and definitely not to other men. Of course, being a
real
man, I'm not talking about myself here. Just other men I've read about, of course. Ahemâ¦
I don't know any men who, on a first date, will say, âYou know, I had such a good cry last night. Wow, it was good!' Our fear is
the next thing we'll hear is a âwhoosh' sound and the distant click of our date's heels getting into a cab.
But emotions are as natural for men as they are for women. Some men suppress theirs, but that has its consequences. Either they stay quiet and live a life feeling that part of them is dead or dying, or the emotions burst out from time to time, sometimes in a display of erratic or stupid behaviour or sometimes in the form of bullying, abusive behaviour. The aggression helps keep the emotion down.
All in all, there's a stereotype that we feel we need to live up to. It's someone who is strong, toned, well groomed, in control of his emotions, sexual dynamite and a good breadwinner.
For men, part of self-love is accepting ourselves as we are â completely, not just the way we look. That doesn't mean we won't ever want to change. In fact, self-love usually does inspire creative change.
Which leads toâ¦
Diets help people to look different. And many people do feel much better about their new image. But if we imagine that we'll only be
enough
when we lose x pounds or reach a size y, we're saying that we're
not
enough now. And that's where the problem lies.
As long as we're saying we're
not
enough now, every action we take further compounds the idea that we're
not
enough. So, when
we're on a diet, although there will be weeks when the pounds drop off through sheer determination, the weight of the belief that we're
not
enough is likely to see them all put back on again. Each time there's progress, there's a piece of elastic pulling us back, an irresistible urge to eat cake, the thought of just having a takeaway this one last time, or even finding ourselves in the company of people who'd prefer to see us eating the way we always did. They're used to us like that, after all.