“Seriously? You think you’re a supermodel?”, I hear you cry. “The media tells us that no normal women thinks their body is amazing.”
I wrote a post on Instagram the other day, using a picture of me in a bikini in our garden in the Alps. I hesitated to post it but not for the reasons you might think… I hesitated because I am not used to publicly showing that much skin. I’m British and we’re a bit reserved about that sort of thing. Well, I am, anyway. I also don’t really care for gratuitous flesh shots to get likes.
I did not hesitate, however, because I was worried about how my body looks. And when I wrote that in the post I realised that it was 100% true. The kind of true you know is true, because it doesn’t even occur to you until you write it down and think “wow, I really believe that. Well done me.” I am not critical of my body. Let me say that again. I am not critical of my body.
It has not always been this way.
I am very tall (179cm/ 5’10.5”) and was taller than all the boys until I was about 15. The death knell of any teenage romance (well, that’s what I tell myself the reason was…).
I have been called thunder thighs, told I have fat ankles, been told by a drunken football player whose advances I was trying to rebuff, “F*ck off, you flat-chested lesbian!”. How I wish my 19 yr old self had been less shocked, mortified and teary and more able to ask why on God’s green earth that was even an insult, but I wasn’t too woke in those days. I’ve been sidled up to on a dance floor, where I tend to follow the advice of “dance like nobody’s watching” and told “you’re not as hot as you think you are”.
I was so self-conscious of having no boobs that I had this dress made with a super high neckline and only wanted it photographed from behind. Age 15.
Like most girls and women, I have taken these comments to heart way more than I should have. I have thought at various times that I was fat, chunky, unattractive and unsexy. I look at photos of me when I was that awkward 19 year old and try to tell her with hindsight how f*cking beautiful and perfectly in proportion she was.
The “thunder thighs, flat-chested lesbian, wild curls” era. Age 19.
Here are the objective facts about my body:
When I am very fit, and feel better and stronger than ever, my chest shrinks to make me appear more like an adolescent boy with hips than a full-blooded woman.
Thanks to some fairly impressive weight gains and losses over years (e.g. I put on nearly 20kg in my first pregnancy), I have stretch marks on the back of my thighs and on my bum. A masseuse, mid massage, once asked me if I had got them from gaining or losing weight! Needless to say, I didn’t relax much for the rest of the session.
I have the most impressive set of 1970s scars on my thighs from corrective hip surgery when I was a toddler. And when I was a child I was very very self conscious about them, because people always ask about them. Luckily I am Scottish so shorts and bikinis were not exactly every day occurences during my childhood!
They come from double hip dysplasia at birth which was not detected early and the broken femurs, pins and enforced leg rotations in plaster for a year have led to wonky knees and a leg length difference.
This weirdly shows most in my shoulders, the right one sitting quite obviously higher than the left. (Try asking me to carry a bag on my left shoulder and watch me sweat…)
I have teeth that were not quite sorted despite the years of braces, a chipped front tooth and thin hair that was too curly until I had my babies and now too straight.
My feet blister just looking at an uncomfortable pair of shoes or thinking about going for a run, hike, ski tour. My toenails will NEVER recover from training for an ultra marathon.
First holiday with my now husband. I thought I was fat. FFS. (Good scar shot!) Age 30.
Doing downward dog in yoga makes my stomach do that thing that mainly women who have had babies will experience; the weird soft skin lengthways pouch.
And I have hyper keratosis, which means a lot of the skin on my arms and legs is slightly bumpy as if I have an allergy or goosebumps. I avoided short shorts like the plague until my 40s. Also, because of my “fat knees” (this is not objective, quite obviously ragingly subjective).
And I have hated all of this. All of it. At various times. Not always and not all the time, but enough to be a thing.
But not anymore. And I didn’t even realise it until the other day when I wrote that IG post and I felt this rush of gratitude for not hating my body anymore.
I will tell you why:
This body was born with two dislocated hips and the resulting surgery left me with mis-aligned knees which can occasionally be painful. But to date this has never stopped me doing anything I wanted to. And those scars make me distinctive, unique and I actually think they’re pretty cool (when I even remember they are there).
I am so grateful for the obvious wonkiness because it has given me, through physio, osteo and scans over the years, a really good awareness of my body and how to look after it.
This body was knocked down by a moped (aged 9) and a car (aged 17) and thankfully came off almost unscathed.
This body has fallen off inummerable horses and pistes (and a few tables…) and still gets back up and keeps going. It has endured its left wrist being broken THREE times (being pushed over by a boy at school, an ice skating incident in Austria and learning to snowboard in New Zealand, in case you’re wondering).
This body tolerated, with remarkable strength, much of my early adult life doing as little sport as I could possibly get away with, seriously crappy food and a pickling amount of alcohol. As well as over 10 years as a sometime smoker.
This body has endured two rounds of IVF, two pregnancies and given birth twice - once naturally with no pain relief and once by emergency c-section, following induced labour (the most amount of pain I have ever experienced).
The beginning of the “dance like no-one’s watching” era, mortifying my friend Geoff somewhere in Europe (I think Amsterdam). Age 21.
This body has breastfed two babies, showing that a flat chest can do exactly the same job as its more curvaceous counterpart.
This body has been more sleep deprived than I care to remember, been fed some utter sh*te over the years and been pushed beyond any limits I could ever have dreamed of.
This body has gained and lost a LOT of weight and I now know that those stretch marks don’t matter a hoot. They are battle scars and I wear them with pride.
This body allowed me, at age 38, to start doing sport and from there to a multi-stage ultra marathon and the world’s toughtest ski mountaineering race, wtih several other adventures in the mix. And despite the evident shock, has adapted so that I am fitter and healthier at age 47 than I was when I got married aged 33 even though nearly all the things mentioned above are still part of how I look.
This very tall body married a man two inches shorter than it, who doesn’t care if I wear heels and who, in part, married me for my very long legs.
This body knows how to ski, ride a horse, kitesurf, run, cycle, ski tour, do yoga, dance (like no-one’s watching, obvs) and myriad other activities.
This body is strong and most of the time, pretty fit. It just seems to get better and fiercer as the years go on.
So when I look at my body, I no longer mind all the things I used to hate. I sometimes notice them but now I see a body that has endured a great deal but that still carries me and my crazy ideas into the next adventure. I see a body that is so much better for how I look after it and how I feel about it.
I had to be forced into wearing these shorts bought for me for for my hen night. And man, look at that booty! Age 33.
How did I get to this point?
How did I go from a well-proportioned, healthy-looking girl and young woman who was often convinced she was unattractive, chunky and never quite the “right shape” to someone who looks in the mirror, sees the unevenness, the scarring and lumps and bumps and says, “hello, amazing body”?
I think I got here by being able to see what my body was capable of, by realising that it was there to be used for more than attracting boys, for more than “fitting a mould” of how a woman should look.
I think an inkling of it started giving birth to my son, aged 35. I had such an unshakable faith that my body was able to do what it was designed to do that despite labouring for 16 hours and being rushed to hospital for unexplained bleeding, I still managed to deliver an almost 9lb (3.95kg) baby with no pain relief or intervention. I later likened it to running a marathon, which my husband had recently done, so that he understood the journey and the pride I felt in myself for carrying and delivering this baby.
12hrs post birth - probably the start of the appreciation of my body’s amazing capabilities. Age 35.
It was helped by taking up sport and learning how to eat more healthily and how to look after myself properly instead of just worrying about whether I looked like Pamela Anderson or Cindy Crawford (insert “perfect” body of your choice) and just sort of magically hoping that I would wake up one day and be petite, toned and curvy (for example). Becasue that’s what it was, unattainable wishing and hoping. And it’s bullshit.
I learned that hurting while training, suffering with stiff muscles the day after and fueling myself with good, nourishing food not only made me feel better but made my body more useful! I could do stuff I couldn’t do before, like ride a bike with friends, go for a run, go skinning before breakfast. Yoga made me more flexible and training made me stronger. The right food kept me feeling alert and full of energy.
My first cycling sportif. Geneva to Lausanne. The face says it all - I did it! Age 38.
Competing for up to 14 hours in a race became an attainable goal and all because my bloody wonky, bumpy, scarred body was firing on all cylinders.
So, even now, when I stop training for a while, eat more pizza than normal and my jeans don’t fit quite as well as they normally do and I get a bit soft around the middle, I don’t hate my body. I still celebrate it, because it has and will hopefully continue to charge forward and conquer all the dreams and plans I have.
I give myself a break and I take small steps back to where I feel strong and healthy again. I start to do a bit more exercise, I make our family meals more nutritious. Because I want this body to keep going and to keep me in adventures for as long as possible.
I refuse to beat myself up anymore about not being uber fit all the time and about sometimes eating enough chocolate to make Willy Wonka wince.
I don’t look like anyone else and I never will. It is liberating and fairly emotional to realise that all those things I hated or felt self-conscious about are now things I either don’t notice anymore or I think, “who gives a f*ck?”
And also, I have a daughter. Despite all the fears and misgivings I have about being a good mum, the one thing I am sure I am giving her is positive body image. I truly believe that because I love and respect my body that she will see this, absorb it and hopefully feel the same way about hers now and as she grows into the incredible woman I know she will be. (That, though, is a subject for another time…)
So, there you go. My body is amazing.
And truly, so is yours.
Ask yourself how has your body served you and taken you on a journey? How would your life be different if you stopped wishing you looked like someone else and embraced the only body you’ll ever have?
And PS, dancefloor stalker, I am as hot as I think I am. Hotter, even… Stick that in your pipe!
Suited and booted for the 1st Half Marathon des Sables. 3 day, multi-stage, self sufficient 120km ultra marathon. Age 44.
Finishing the Patrouille des Glaciers. 14hrs 27mins overnight from Zermatt to Verbier. Age 45