Read an extract from Women Living Deliciously

Start reading the highly anticipated book Women Living Deliciously by international-bestselling author Florence Given.

BEAUTY HURTS

“Your body is an instrument, not an ornament.”
— Lindsay and Lexie Kite

Ever had a beautiful day out with your friends ruined by thinking about an “unflattering” picture someone took of you? Ever had incredible, delicious sex, only to be yanked out of the moment when you became conscious of your stomach rolls or cellulite? Ever wanted to look down at the person giving you head, but stopped as you imagined their view of your double chins? Breathed a sigh of relief when the person you’re spooning with has fallen asleep, so you can finally relax and let go of your belly? Skipped a girls’ holiday because the idea of being around other women’s bodies makes you anxious? Been pulled out from a carefree state the second you walked into overhead lighting, afraid it would reveal the texture of your skin?

Women rarely get to fully and deliciously fucking RELAX. Our ability to enjoy our lives and “be in the moment” is constantly hindered and interrupted by an image-obsessed critical inner voice and the livestream it feeds us of our appearance. Rather than experiencing our lives through our bodies in the here and now, our attention is often absorbed by the thoughts in our heads. It is so hard for us to exist FULLY inside our own bodies when we are taught to constantly observe them. We are unable to “sink into the moment” because we cannot escape our self-conscious thoughts.

How much more energy will we waste in this precious life on the imagined judgements of others? How much more energy will we waste on monitoring our appearance when we could be spending our time living, creating, dancing, relishing and being fully present? What kind of a world would be created if women unshackled the mental resources spent on perfecting themselves? Where would that energy go, what beautiful things would it produce in the world?

Renee Engeln calls this cultural obsession Beauty Sickness, defining it as “what happens when women’s emotional energy gets so bound up with what they see in the mirror that it becomes harder for them to see other aspects of their lives.” There have been plenty of times when I have “called in Beauty Sick”. Cancelled plans. Not shown up purely because the stress of being pretty had become all consuming. Most of us can remember a time when we skipped attending something because we didn’t feel we looked good enough to be there. Because we didn’t feel perfect or pretty enough to live our own fucking lives! Beauty Sickness reminds me of the days on the beach I missed, the sex I couldn’t bring myself to enjoy because if I can’t even look at my body, why would anyone else want to?, all the swims I never went for in the sea, the clothes I wouldn’t wear out of shame, or the food I wouldn’t “allow myself” to eat during family holidays or group dinners. I lived in a normalized, constant denial of any experience of joy or pleasure, to please others and project an image of perfection, constantly making myself smaller, or even invisible by not attending altogether. Even with the events that I did attend, there were too many times I was physically present, but mentally vacant – as a hefty chunk of my attention was focused on how I looked. If I’d had to be brutally honest and write down the real reason for my lack of attendance on RSVP slips, most of them would have said, “Can’t come, not feeling pretty
enough, throwing my clothes all over the room, screaming, crying in the mirror. Have overwhelming anxiety about the dress code, am afraid no one there will like me, that I won’t be good enough.” The worst part is that we grow up to think this is a normal part of being a girl. But existing is not supposed to be this stressful.

In case you’re thinking, We’re past all that shit now, we really, really aren’t. If your own experience of having entire days ruined because you didn’t think you looked pretty isn’t enough proof, Renee Engeln cites the depressing statistic that 34 per cent of girls aged five (yes, fucking five-year-olds!) report restricting their diet at least “sometimes”. Young girls learn to create boundaries with food before they learn how to have boundaries with other people. The separation of a woman from her own body starts so young.

The distorted thoughts we have about ourselves when eating, dressing up, looking in the mirror, are not the “truth” – they are a habit. They are messages that have been implanted into our minds, messages that have been absorbed from our environment. They are our programming. We receive nudges and social cues throughout our lives which push us to feel we are not worthy of living until we are perfect. Perhaps it was the cruel objectifying headline you read about a woman’s beach body on the magazine cover your mum left on the table. The way you watched the girls around you discuss their figures at school. How they sucked in their stomachs to “not look pregnant”, which led you to buy the stomach-shrinking lingerie you found next to the aisle of bras. How the girls around you started to order less food at lunch with the phrase, “No bread for me, I’m being good!” Wanting to fit in you thought, Perhaps I should do the same, I want to be good! When these thoughts are left unchecked and accepted passively they seed themselves in the soil of our minds and begin to grow and root, becoming thick, stubborn beliefs we later realize in adulthood we did not choose.

When we don’t interrogate these weed-like thoughts, they grow deeper, thicker and stronger. We start to say it’s just “who we are”. No longer something we have merely overheard, they become deeply accepted, rooted and nurtured in our minds as our beliefs. This outside voice we hear from others becomes the inner abusive voice we use to talk to ourselves. Yes. It is abusive. How would it make you feel to say out loud to another person the things you tolerate from within? “I can’t even look at you in the mirror today, you’re disgusting.” “No one would want to look at you, hide yourself.” “How is anyone ever going to love you?” “You’re a failure who doesn’t deserve anything.” It hurts me to even write these things down and to publish them in a book! Just as you would defend your friend from someone who was saying these things, you must defend yourself from the voice that reverberates in your mind. You must cultivate another, kinder voice, a separate one that talks back to the critical one in your head. Otherwise, you become your worst critic. You mistake it for who you are.

In a world where we have culturally pressured and convinced women to obsess over every inch of their bodies and pull them apart, it makes you wonder… was this the plan all along – to intentionally exhaust us? To drain us of our source of power? To create obstacles in our path that make it harder to think and feel clearly?

Years ago, I was running late to a therapy session in the middle of a hot London summer. I was wearing a tight pair of cycling shorts, a bra and a blazer. On my commute I was experiencing severe anxiety and struggling to take in a full breath. I had to keep yawning in order to take in oxygen fully. I brushed it off and thought to myself, This just happens when I wear tight clothes. Once I arrived at my therapist’s office I told her about my erratic breathing. She asked me when it started. I thought back to a date around two weeks earlier. She nodded slowly, pursing her lips. “Wasn’t that when that man made those rude comments about the shape of your stomach?” I nodded – “I think so, why?” As soon as the words fell out of my mouth, it clicked. “I think you’ve been subconsciously sucking in your stomach since you read those comments, I think it’s restricting your breathing. You’re taking shallow breaths which is triggering anxiety.” Even as she said these words, I was clenching in my stomach. I took a deep inhale and, on the exhale, my stomach stretched the tight shorts to their fullest and I’d taken a deep breath for the first time in weeks. Well fuck. She was right. The worst part is that I didn’t even know I was doing it! Those words about my body from that man had been passively accepted by my mind without me knowing, adding fertilizer to the overgrowth already there. By sucking in my stomach, my brain was trying to protect the part of me that had been “attacked”. This all happened without my awareness. Frightening fucking stuff! Beauty Sickness has a lot of us witnessing our bodies instead of existing in them fully, even to the detriment of our own comfort. I have spent years watching my body twice. Once through my own eyes, the other through the imagined gaze of others.

I once found myself sucking in my stomach reflexively when a man looked in my direction on the set of a photo shoot. As though I’d been caught off guard by literally breathing, like a woman who’d gone off-script, and had to quickly pull herself back into perfect composure to “step into her role”. Why did I do this, when I know I am not a doll, or an object, but a breathing woman with a stomach full of life? I felt the second round of feminist shame, for realizing how instinctual it was. He didn’t force me to suck in my stomach. He just looked at me. Yet something inside me “knew” to do it. Isn’t that frightening? The way we learn to bend and contort our entire existence into something presentably doll-like at the expense of our comfort and health. It is not our fault, it is a habit we have been beguilingly encouraged to adopt, to slow us down and drain us.