Archive for the ‘Body Image’ Category

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Day from hell! Part 2

Friday, August 6th, 2010

Remember Day from hell had last week? Well it was actually more hellish than I described. You see there was another minor complication that I wasn’t at liberty to discuss. So let me fill you in.

During the 2 hours of tantruming I was also vomiting. Nothing drastic, no food poisoning, my body just doesn’t seem to appreciate food at the moment.

Then there was the getting dressed. I was having the mother of all fat days! I thought my tummy looked podgy (more so than usual) and flabby and nothing fit me. I tried looser clothes and then I just felt like a slob. I slammed wardrobe doors and literally sat amongst a pile of discarded clothes and cried!

The carrying of the bleeding and broken child home was also more difficult as well, because I had a hell of a bruise on my right elbow. Not from being a klutz; though I am un-coordinated and I would forgive you for believing it was self inflicted. I had had a blood test the previous day and the pathologist had hyper-extended my elbow and stabbed me as deep as possible to extract the blood. It would have been quicker and less painful to punch me in the nose and try to catch the nose bleed.

Finally to top off the day my two year old called me ‘fat’. I nearly cried (again). He called me ‘Fatty-Patty’. To check that he wasn’t just rhyming nonsensical sounds I asked him what it meant. He replied “Means you eat too many cookies like Cookie Monster.” Nope, not nonsensical silliness, real two year old logic. *Sigh*

So if you haven’t yet put the puzzle pieces together I’ll spell it out for you; As of today I am 10 weeks pregnant. [Double points for those who guessed it from part one.] Pregnancy is not the easiest time for me. (Before you tell me its all in my attitude – yes, I am holding space for it to be easy and breezy.) I am certainly not part of the glowing skin, beautiful hair and radiant brigade. I am more of the vomit from dawn to dusk, cravings and moods swinging wildly type. You will get to hear all about it in the coming months – just you wait.

*Photo credit

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Is objectification a prerequisite for sex?

Thursday, July 8th, 2010

“I have no problem with women objectifying men in ads, or men objectifying women in ads. Because, really, the only reason we [humans] are still here after 65 million years, is because someone has been shagging.”  - The Gruen Transfer.

I’m sorry, did I miss something? Since when was objectification a prerequisite for sex? Is it because I am a woman that sex to me is more than visual attraction and physical possession?

Need I be terrified that men today subscribe to this theory that in order to perform a most intimate act, which is at its heart prone to our deepest vulnerabilities, they must first objectify their partner and presumably protect their manliness? Have I got it all wrong? Please tell me I have it all wrong.

I understand that sex isn’t always a beautiful thing. Sometimes is it about pure base attraction, heat, pheromones, friction, sweat and climax. Great sex for the sake of great sex, is still great sex. But can it really be great if it is essentially one object fucking another? Barbie and Ken in the sack was never the hottest idea.

Something tells me that our pop culture adopting the values and aesthetics of soft porn may have something to do with this theory. And really, the Gruen Transfer is a show about advertising and we all know that the advertising industry have been justifying the proliferation of the male gaze and over-sexualisation with the simple catchphrase ‘Sex sells”. The prude in me asks; at what cost.

Everybody with two grey cells to rub together knows that the brain is our sexiest organ. If it weren’t then natural selection over the past 65 million years would have produced an aesthetically superior race by now. And that simply isn’t the case. So, how is it that a comment about objectification on a national TV program so flippantly accepts objectification as a part of sex?

For me all I hear are warning bells. Are our young women growing up understanding the in order to be attractive (and receive physical love) they must come pre-objectified; spray tanned to within an inch of their lives, hair highlighted, teeth bleached, hairless except for that on their heads, carefully styled to appeal to the narrowest possible idea of sexy? Are our young men growing up understanding that in order to be a man they must act like the degrading assholes you see in most porn these days (professional or amateur) and order women around, ‘take’ all three orifices available, include ‘light’ bondage and spanking and end ejaculating on her face?

How oh how can we restore intimacy to sex? I think it begins by reversing the over-sexualisation of our youth, introducing instead real sexual education (i.e. something more than sex is bad and dangerous don’t do it), by adding erotica to challenge the stronghold [mostly] degrading porn has on the ever-growing market, and by individually asking more for our partners. If it is normal these days to objectify, demean, humiliate in our sex lives then I say let’s do something radical like honour, respect, and worship in our sex lives too.

*Photo credit

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Lets talk about…sexiness

Friday, April 9th, 2010

A few weeks back, on my hens’ night I witnessed a phenomenon I am only just beginning to grasp. Walking ahead of me (up the enormous hill that is William Street, Sydney) were 3 mid-20something happily coupled women. They were laughing, confident, natural and oozing sex appeal. While they passed scantily clad teenagers, it hit me. I think for a moment I saw what men see.

I remember watching an interview with Naomi Watts where she mentioned that she felt unattractive as a young woman. In her late 20′s her cheekbones ‘arrived’ and she came into her beauty. I think Naomi’s experience about coming into her attractiveness in her late 20′s is more typical than we like to admit. Until we, as women, accept our bodies and own our sexuality we are merely teenagers playing dress up. And it wasn’t until  saw the two extremes juxtaposed on William St that night that this truth really became evident to me.

This is a post I would not have been able to write a few years ago for fear of earning the immature label ‘Lezo’. But the things that make a woman sexy have absolutely nothing to do with the shape or size of her body. Her hair colour or style makes no difference. Her clothes have far less importance than we like to think as well. These things merely catch the eye. What makes a man stare, smile, fantasise about a woman is… ineffable.


What makes a woman sexy cannot be bought. No cream, wonder bra, shaping underwear, surgery, stiletto, hair style or dress has the capacity to make a woman sexy. Sexy is certainly paid for. Sexy is the result of living with gusto. Of putting yourself out  there. Of trying new things. Of a life well lived and a self actualised. Experience is sexy. Experience comes at a price – tears, pain, failure, change, growth.

What makes a woman sexy is behind her eyes. It is the promise of a woman who can stand toe to toe with a man and make him moan without lifting a finger. You must know pain to understand that kind of pleasure. You must know longing to conjure that depth of desire. You must be capable of ugliness to be that beautiful. You must have lost yourself somewhere along the way to own your self that completely.

That night, a few weeks back we were goddesses in motion. Men were magnetised to our sides. Flocked to our table. Fought for a glance. We were playful and open and owned our selves. We bought and paid for our own drinks. Oh and handed out little red heart lollipops. (The tackiness of this gesture offset by the dept of character of the women dolling out the sweets, perfectly aware of the irony.)

I found it life affirming to see that men evidentially agreed with my mantra for the year (maybe longer):

Healthy is Beautiful ~ Happiness is Sexy ~ Soulful is Irresistable

*photo credit

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Lets talk about… body modification

Monday, March 15th, 2010

This is such a wide and diverse topic. Controversial. Like boiling a frog we are comfortable with the gentle cooler manifestations of the practice, but are we in danger of boiling alive as the accepted mutilations become more extreme?

Body modification is defined as the deliberate altering of the human body for non-medical reasons, such as sexual enhancement, a rite of passage, aesthetic reasons or self-expression.

Most of us think of female genital mutilation or facial piercing when we think of body modification. But these are only the more extreme manifestations of a sliding scale. Cutting our hair and piercing our ears don’t really register as body modification, but indeed they are. The list of body modifications the ‘regular’ western woman may willfully undergo, many on a regular basis, is huge:

  1. Hair cut
  2. Hair perm
  3. Hair straightening
  4. Hair colouring
  5. Eyebrow shape
  6. Underarm hair removal
  7. Leg hair removal
  8. Pubic hair removal
  9. Arm/face hair removal
  10. Manicure
  11. Pedicure
  12. Tanning/ Melanin pills
  13. Ear piercing
  14. Belly piercing
  15. Tattooing
  16. Breast implants/Breast lift
  17. Tummy tuck
  18. Liposuction
  19. Botox
  20. Tattooed makeup

I know I am ‘guilty’ of a number of the above. I don’t know a woman who isn’t. Even my grandma vainly perms her hair and during the second world war stained her legs to mimic the appearance of her absent stockings. We do these things of our own volition - willingly following the conventions of our culture. Endlessly making ourselves more attractive to our desired mates. Continually pandering to, for the most part, the male gaze.

We do it to feel beautiful, often without thought as to why these arbitrary characteristics are deemed beautiful. Why is it that perky breasts, shaven armpits and pubic mounds are beautiful when they effectively rob a woman of her womanhood and visually return her to the realm of a child. Are women more attractive when they appear less fertile, less powerful?

We do it because it is what women do, unaware of the point when we made the decision that these standards are sufficiently important they are worth painfully or permanently altering our bodies to achieve them. How is this forgotten decision any different from mothers in Cameroon who Iron their pubescent daughters’ breasts with hot stones? Or the 2 million mothers world-wide who help hold down their daughters as their clitoris is removed, by way of an initiation into womanhood and to curb their sexual desires (often with no anesthetic).

Yes these are extreme, but the recent internal bra (soon to become a part of a breast lift) is equally as painful and unnecessary. It is only more palatable to our delicate sensibilities because it is performed by doctors in hospitals on consenting adults.

My question is this: If clitorises were removed, in the pristine theater of a renown plastic surgeon, would we find it any less offensive?

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Lets talk about…Hair

Friday, March 12th, 2010

Hair is such a trivial issue in some people eyes. Yet ask any woman the easiest way to make her feel sexy and I guarantee a fabulous new haircut is high on her list. In fact I know a couple who consistently have ‘haircut sex’ when she comes home with a new do. I have spoken to women undergoing treatment for cancer, they cope with the fact that they lose their hair as it is preferable to losing their lives. But they find it much more difficult to get in touch with their inner sex goddess.

Indeed hair is so integral to the visual concept of femininity that the icon for woman is distinguished from a man by one of two things – a dress, or long hair. Unconsciously we make assumption about women, especially, by their hair. On a side note we do the same about men, salt and pepper is distinguished, bald is less virile, long and curly like my partner is seen as less conventional. And there is a reason why so many male fantasies about women involve healthy, shiny flowing hair. It is iconically feminine. (Not to say women with shaved heads or pixie cuts are somehow less of a sexy woman.)

What isn’t factored into our identities is that our hair is linked to our hormones. As our hormones change so does our hair. You remember how greasy your hair got during puberty don’t you? And the exciting or terrifying advent of pubic hair that puberty bought with it. The same is true as you get older. Your skin, hair and nails look amazing when pregnant due, in part, to the different hormones your body is producing. And also because you don’t lose much hair when pregnant, so your mane becomes thicker and glossier.

Then during menopause everything goes to hell in a handbag. Not only are you more likely to cut your hair, if not from the social pressure not to appear mutton dressed up as lamb, out of necessity as hot flushes and night sweats make your locks a giant sweat trap. Worse than this your hair may thin or grey or both – seen as the ultimate sin for women. The hair from your head may reappear in blemishes or moles or on your chin, as the archetype of crone becomes manifest in your body. A process that should be revered for its significance, is instead demonised as we unfairly expect crones to appear maidens. Because we are uncomfortable with female wisdom perhaps??

I discovered today that even your eyebrow hairs grow at strange and wonderful angles as you age. I would like to be able to look forward to my gracefully aging body as opposed to lamenting the direction my eyebrow hair grows. How about you?

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Lets talk about masturbation

Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

The formative teenage years for an average girl involves slumber parties. Lots of slumber parties. Slumber parties consist of junk food, secret-girls-business and truth and dare.

I never performed a dare in truth and dare. Ever. There was no need and no point. My face is incapable of hiding strong emotion, and I always considered myself an open book. I chose ‘truth’ every time, and I told to truth too. I answered every question faithfully bar one, which was invariably delivered with an embarrassed blush and giggle; “Have you ever masturbated?”

‘No. Unequivocally, absolutely not!’ Would be my response, except in teenage language, which would probably sound more like ‘Yeah sure! Like I would do that – it’s gross!’ Because it was acceptable to steal alcohol from your parents, spread rumours at school, have sex, smoke pot or have a crush on your friends brother, but definitely not ok to touch yourself.

We had all suffered through ‘the talk’ with our mothers and sex education at school. ‘Sex education’ would probably best be re-named harm-minimisation for sexual trauma and dysfunction for all of the warnings and fear-mongering that goes on. We learned exclusively of the risks and negative outcomes/aspects of sex; teenage pregnancy, STIs, rape, regret. Dolly doctor clearly explained things like discomfort during first time sex and feelings of inadequacy during intercourse. So all in all sex in our minds was devoid of pleasure though we were convinced that it would get better.

Pleasure or no, sex was still high on the ‘to-do’ list. It was a mark or maturity, status, fearlessness. We wanted to ‘get it over with’ since we all agreed it was ‘backwards’ to wait until we were married to lose our virginities.

In the end our initial sexual experiences were everything Dolly doctor and out sex-ed teachers had attempted to prevent. A number of studies have shown why; We were never taught about pleasure, sexual curiosity, foreplay, erotica. No body encouraged us to masturbate it was seen as dirty and slutty, where as male masturbation was seen as normal. The tiny proportion of girls who were initiated into the positive aspects of their sexuality are more likely to have safe sex and enjoy the experience, as opposed to the other 75% who felt pressured or rushed into physical intimacy.

As we matured into adult women with healthy sex lives masturbation is more acceptable, as is erotica. Yet is it still more widely acceptable for men to masturbate than women. And certainly it is still taboo for young women to touch themselves.

With further studies showing that for the most part teenagers use contraception as faithfully as adults and have sex most often in loving relationships, why are we still teaching our young women about the dangers to the exclusion of the pleasures. Wouldn’t we as women (mothers, mentors, aunties, big sisters, friends) do well to teach our teenage sisters the power of their bodies, its capacity for pleasure and that their desire is healthy? It certainly would have changed my life.

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Lets talk about…Breasts (boobs, knockers, tits, jugs, fun-bags, globes)

Friday, February 26th, 2010

I have never much been ashamed of breasts. I come from a long line of well endowed women, so I have been comfortable with the idea of cleavage for as long as I can remember. Breast were normal.

In my final year of primary school I had the largest breasts in class. By far. I found them awkward, over sized and embarrassing. I didn’t know quite what to do with them, and felt uncomfortable in my bras. Breasts were mortifying.

In my teenage years I was known for my outrageously plunging necklines and I quite liked provoking reactions from boys my age, and relished the opportunity to lecture them on their sexist behavior should they look for too long or make a comment. Then, breasts were powerful.

When I settled into my relationship and began rediscovering sex as tender and romantic, my breasts had yet another role. They became lovely, sensitive, adored and an important part of our sex life. My breasts became feminine.

A few years later I fell pregnant. Other than the constant vomiting, one of my first signs of pregnancy was breasts so tender even my bra hurt. Throughout the pregnancy they grew and changed in shape, colour and even function. Before too long my breasts had become mammary glands.

When the beautiful baby boy finally arrived he almost instantly began rooting for a nipple. He came close to finding his father’s before he was placed in my arms. I was flabbergasted at the force with which he began to suckle and bemused by the process of organising the breast and baby correctly (yes there is such a thing, and it is tricky to achieve in the beginning). My breasts became a learning experience.

Five weeks later on my second trip to the early childcare nurse with my happy and settled newborn I was faced with a different prospect. “It isn’t a personal failing dear” she said, “it is just that god didn’t give you enough milk.” With instructions to buy formula as soon as possible, my breasts became a failure.

It turns out the nurse was wrong. My breasts became their ultimate purpose, nurturers.

18 months later my toddler still feeds a few times a day. Now he feeds for his immune system, to top up his nutrients, for comfort, for bonding and to soothe the busy toddler to sleep. Like the proverbial Swiss Army knife, the one tool has millions of uses. My breasts became utilitarian.

I would like to point out that as varied as my experience of my breasts has been my breasts have never been any of the following: lewd, inappropriate, dirty, obscene, pornographic, offensive, a problem or anybody else’s business.

I think it is time we reclaimed our breasts. Inherent to our femininity, as they are, they should be revered and respected. A woman accentuating the feminine curves of her body or feeding her child is as natural and normal as can be. If you disagree then the problem resides with YOU not breasts or the woman they belong to.

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Posted in Body Image, Femininity, Grace, Life, Motherhood, The unspoken, Womanhood | 2 Comments »

THE Wait

Wednesday, February 24th, 2010

I hate it. You probably do too. I think I hate the wait more than the requisite pissing on the stick. You know the wait I am talking about. It is the oh-god-I-think-my-life-might-change-in-a-millisecond-once-this-5-minute-wait-is-up wait. If you are a sexually active woman, you have probably experienced this wait at least once. I mean, no contraception is foolproof, right?

Patience really isn’t one of my virtues. Dealing with whatever happens, when it happens I’m great at. It is the damned limbo style wait between the ‘Hmmm something isn’t right here’ feeling and the little blue line appearing, or not, that I don’t cope well with. I find this wait utterly excruciating. I mean I only ever experience this wait IF:

  1. My period is absent
  2. I am feeling ‘off’ AND
  3. My body is doing something else weird like say making my breasts super tender or falling asleep in the middle of the day for no reason at all AND
  4. I have suffered the indignity squatting over the toilet trying to catch my suitably concentrated urine in a cup or on a teeny-tiny super absorbent strip

Worse than the list of crap that actually goes into making you consider the possibility that you might be pregnant (whether this is a shocking surprise or eagerly awaited news) your life flashes before your eyes in those 5 minutes in a way that the potential baby-daddy can never imagine. He doesn’t think about stretch marks and mentally say goodbye to his body ( a survey found that 86% of new mums felt more attractive before pregnancy than after), he doesn’t immediately panic about his career, cringe at the thousands of nappies he might have to change or lament the nights out he will miss and the alcohol he will have to abstain from. His life gets more complicated but, generally, also more respected. Other than the potential changes to his sex life (which I guarantee you he isn’t thinking about yet) he skips out on most of the sacrifice.

Being that I am one child down and one child to go in my childbearing plans, I expect that I will experience this wait again many a time. (A prospect I am only willing to face because I know how amazing motherhood can be.) To those who experience the dreaded wait only to find the test negative, my advice is to have a drink. Have a few actually to wash down the sushi and soft cheese you will be eating before you do something physical like paint-ball or rock-climbing, then have a great nights sleep and a sleep-in followed by a double espresso. You may not know it yet, but you will miss these when the line does go blue.

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Posted in Body Image, Femininity, Grace, Life, Motherhood, The unspoken, Womanhood | 1 Comment »

Musings on Grace

Monday, January 18th, 2010

I firmly believe that it takes a village to raise a child. In a ‘village’ children grow up at the feet of elders, learning vital lessons. Adults in a ‘village’ mentor and teach adolescents, instructing them in the skills and knowledge that they will need to contribute to the village in adulthood. Sadly I feel that my generation grew up largely without that village. This is not a criticism of our for-mothers; they were focused on creating a society where we (as women) would be valued as equals. It is because of them that we have an opportunity now to instruct the daughters of our new ‘village’ in all the skills of an adult and not just half of them.

As a result of growing up without the village microcosm we are drastically short of role models we can aspire to emulate, again not because our mothers are not ‘role models’ but because our paths are likely to be very different to theirs. Young women are in search of mentors and are coming up short. The ‘self help’ genre is growing exponentially as women reach out for help, desperately craving guidance and support.

I am fortunate in that I have had the loving guidance of mentors throughout my journey thus far. There is no substitute for experience; lessons only become permanent when one has lived them and been transformed by the experience. But the transformation isn’t automatic, the generation of women who repeatedly turn to inappropriate relationships, emotional eating and ‘retail therapy’ are a testament to that. The disconnect is that the skills necessary to courageously face life, walk towards our dreams and learn from adversity were the ones we never learnt at the feet of our elders.

We identify women of grace that we wish to grow like, but lack the vocabulary to identify what it is about their person that we value. The closest words we have to describe what it is we want are; beauty, respect, success and charisma. So we blindly stumble in search of what we think will bring us these; physical ‘perfection’, celebrity and the adoration of men. But we have the cart before the horse. Celebrity (lasting celebrity and not infamy) and adoration are the by-products of a life lived gracefully with purpose.

The deceptive nature of grace is that it ‘appears’ effortless. It seems as though it is a gift bestowed at birth when it is an attitude and a set of skills. Grace is a carriage, a way of being, that has nothing to do with external beauty. Though a graceful woman does possess a ‘glow’ that is often mistaken for, or perceived as beauty. There are guidelines, tools and secrets that graceful women live by and demonstrate, that when applied to our lives, transform them as though they have been bewitched by a fairy godmother’s wand.

This year I am working on embodying grace a little more… what about you?

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Posted in Body Image, Femininity, Grace, Inspiration, Life, Womanhood | 1 Comment »

5 steps to feeling great in your skin

Monday, November 30th, 2009

What has been niggling at you for months? Is it an item on your ‘to-do’ list that gets transferred from list to list when everything else has been checked off? It it something you haven’t dared to even put on the list? Something that you haven’t even admitted that you want?

I want a new wardrobe. Not the structure to put clothes in, but the fashions to fill it with. I have clothes, tonnes of clothes in fact, but I don’t wear many of them. My wardrobe consists predominately of clothes I can breastfeed in or the crap that I haven’t sent to charity that I was wearing over 2 years ago, before I fell pregnant. So as you can imagine my wardrobe is full of stunning dresses, silks, delicate embroidery, tailored pants, flirty skirts and fitted jackets – NOT! My wardrobe has way more stretch cotton than should belong to one woman and is mostly a few basic colours that wash well and work with tan skirts or jeans.

To make my wardrobe woes worse, my body is alien. The pants I wore pre-pregnancy are too big now and the tops from the same era and way too small. (Pretty much everything else stretches, so it still fits). My hips and thighs need a L, my waist is a M and my bust is somewhere between an XL and an XXL, depending on the store and the cut. So most of the time I aim for ‘presentable’ or ‘good’ and try to avoid looking like Betty Boop.

I would really like a wardrobe that is classic, effortless, comfortable and flattering. Clothes I can wear to a café, to see a client and take the baby to the park all in a day. Why does this blog find a home in the category of personal development I hear you ask? Because I deserve clothes that make me feel good. So do you. There is nothing wrong with wanting your clothes, and indeed your style, to reflect your personality. There is no hard and fast rule, despite the glossies telling us otherwise, that says that you must be a size 0 or even a size 4 to look and feel good. Our bodies are wonderful pieces of kit – we will never own anything as versatile, useful and fun as our bodies so lets celebrate them.

As a coach I feel it is important to follow-up each epiphany with action steps. So here are my steps that I think would work for just about anybody:

  1. Make a rough list of what I wear from my wardrobe (DONE)
  2. Make a list of what is missing to mix and match with existing pieces to make desired wardrobe (DONE)
  3. Go through existing clothes, sort out what the keep, what to throw out, what to pass to charity and what to gift to friends (like the stunning designer gown my bust no longer fits in)
  4. Book an appointment (in the new year) with a stylist to do my colours and styles. (I am desperate to work with Coby from Stylewish and if you are a Sydney local you should check her out too.)
  5. Go shopping! Gradually….

We might even save money by avoiding purchases that we won’t wear more than once, time in looking for clothes because we know what we are looking for and avoid horrifying fashion mistakes. That is my justification and I am sticking to it ;)

*This blog was not a paid recommendation

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