I know it’s really annoying, but I have a lot of principles.
See what I did there? I began a description of my character by criticising
myself. Because I’m female. I had a friend at uni who had a, frankly hilarious,
habit of responding to a compliment on an item of clothing with “It only cost
£_!!!” by way of defending herself for having something nice, or perhaps for
trying to look nice that day. One of my principles is that I can’t bear (and
yet can’t get away from) head to toe assessments of women’s appearances. If you
are female, breathing, and in contact with other humans on a regular basis you
will know that your appearance never, ever goes unnoticed. Sometimes it’s
lovely – your haircut gets noticed, the shoes you carefully matched with a
necklace gets appreciated from an open car window by a friend driving past
(true story). But other times it’s the total stranger (male stranger) who feels
that it’s fine to say “cheer up!” or “smile love!” to you as you walk past
frowning intently but actually just thinking about whether or not your keys are
definitely in your handbag. It’s the builder who whistles at you, or the guy in
a fast car who beeps you and makes you jump out your skin. It’s the shop
assistant at the post office by your work building who always, always makes an ambiguous
statement about the way you look – “haven’t seen you in a while. You look
different. Very different.” That happened to me on Wednesday. The same man has
a fondness for telling me I look tired, and I’m willing to bet the entire £15 I’ve
paid into my pension so far that “you look tired” is not a compliment. OMG, I
LOVE the bags – is that purple eye shadow? No.
Cate Blanchett, on the red carpet at the Golden Globes earlier this year, bent
down to look into the lens of a camera (attached to a photographer’s face,
naturally) that was currently spanning her from the toe up extremely slowly,
and asked “do you do that to the men?” She was being light-hearted, it was not
the heated exchange that some papers made it out to be, but she made a valid
point.
So when I became gradually aware yesterday of a social media
craze, which amazingly and completely brilliantly raised over £1 million in 24
hours, of women taking selfies with no make up on and nominating other friends
by name to do the same in the name of cancer, I sighed just a tiny bit. When I
see something that sits badly with me, like this, I spend some time thinking
about it to work out why my instinct is to wince at photos of my friends with
no make up on. But I can’t emphasize this enough: I was not, am not, will never
ever be, wincing at raising money for cancer research – why on earth would I? I
also was not wincing because I thought it was vain, or petty, or frivolous, or…
whatever else. I’ve done selfies, although they never make it onto the
internet. When my boyfriend travels we send one another photos throughout the
day so we can see each other’s faces, and every time I take one (then retake
it, retake it again, retake it once more for good luck and trying to narrow
down the quantity of chins in the picture) I think “urgh, I look awful. I hate
my teeth.. and my eyebrows. And that extra layer of chub on my cheeks.” So it
was highly possible that when seeing endless pictures of my friends in their
natural, unadorned state could have made me feel good about not being perfect
myself. But that wouldn’t have been a very nice emotion – never mind if I look
like s**t, so-and-so from uni looks worse! I can’t help that my reaction was to
feel disheartened that in order for one such vital, wonderful thing (ie the cancer
fundraising surge) to occur, something else close to my heart had to be, in my
opinion, set back a little bit. And it’s not just close to my heart. Did you
know that the Girl Guides have a
“be body confident” badge campaign at the
moment? It’s a pledge to be “B.R.A.V.E”, I’ve signed it, and it entails:
B.e myself, and be proud of myself
R.ecognise and reject body image myths
A.ccept how I look and how others look
V.alue my body by treating it well
E.ncourage more people to be body confident as well.
According to statistics from the Guides, 87% of 11 to 21
year olds think women are judged more for their looks than their ability, and 71%
would like to lose some weight. I can believe this without a second’s doubt for
two reasons – I don’t think women are judged more for their looks than their
abilities, I know they are. Secondly, I can remember being 11 and I thought I
was so fat.
I do think it’s better that we’re beginning to reinforce a
positive, more realistic body image through things like no make up selfies, and
idolising (to the point of despair, for the women concerned) curvier women. But
I watched an interview on Youtube with Christina “Mad Men” Hendricks, the woman
who Lib Dem MP Lynne Featherstone has encumbered with the mantel of being the “correct”
body ideal, in which the interviewer incessantly asked her questions about her
curvier appearance. As though Hendricks were some alien who just landed on
earth from space, the interviewer seemed fascinated by the fact that this
actress was not a size zero and asked her twice “what has been your most
inspirational moment [as a curvaceous woman]?” The first time she was asked
this question, her face fell and she floundered for words before looking to her
publicist for help, who advised the interviewer to move on. The interviewer
asked exactly the same question, immediately. This time Christina responded “you
just asked it again!” and ended the interview shortly after. She was there to
talk about a film she’d made and discovered the only thing anyone was
interested in was the size of her arse. The point I’m making being: while it’s
nice that there is one, solitary woman on TV who is simultaneously curvy AND
desirable to men (jackpot!), the media, the world, everyone, is still focussing
on what she looks like instead of what she’s doing. I would rather have no body
idols, personally, than a choice between natural, curvy “correct” ones and
thin, unrealistic, “negative” ones. In short – it’s fine to look good, it’s
fine to look bad. It’s not fine to focus on it above all else.
Part of the reason I felt disheartened by the campaign, is
that I believe there are myriad ways that everyone could have been kept happy.
Yes the nature of the viral selfies and nominations got everyone buzzing,
talking, arguing and in the end, apparently, “that’s all that matters.” It’s
not to me, when I am so sure the same awareness (a word I’m reluctant to use
because awareness implies a spread of knowledge, which this was not. It was
great, and while it did not spread awareness, it spread generosity) could have
been achieved through means with less potential for bad feeling. My own
approach was to write “check your:” above a drawing of some boobs on my face,
of which I took an extremely close up picture showing only my cheek and eye. I
didn’t nominate anyone to do the same thing, but I did donate. Twice, in fact,
I thought it hadn’t worked the first time. Then when I was out walking on my
lunch break today I saw a breast cancer screening unit in the car park of
Waitrose and I thought – aha! That would have been great. Write the location of
your nearest screening unit on a piece of paper (a quick google search would
give you the answer to that question) and take a selfie of you holding it up
for all to see. Wear make up for it or don’t, whatever. Or how about a selfie
of you holding a sign with one golden rule for checking your breasts on it? My
doctor advised me that when you feel them, it’s OK if they feel like cottage
cheese but not if they feel like marbles. So simple, so memorable. Or a less
informative but definitely saucy and bound to spread like wildfire idea – post a
photo of the bra you wore that day. Totally relevant to breast cancer and still
personal without being vulnerable. If I’d been nominated to do that I’d have
thought it was brilliant.
To anyone who thinks I’m cynical for not wanting to just be
involved like everyone else, sorry. That will never be how I think about
anything. But don’t be angry with me and others who voiced their distaste for
this, because we kept up our half of the bargain: we argued, made people angry
and contributed to the success that goes along with a controversial campaign.
