Bullshit Bell 4: The perfect body

Welcome to Bullshit Bell, the new semi-regular series of posts in which I call bullshit on various ridiculous things. How semi-regular, you ask? Whenever I feel like it. Whatever, schedules are bullshit.

 I have the perfect body. My body is perfect. Why? Because it's mine. Because it functions. Because it contains a heart and two lungs and a liver and kidneys and a ribcage and muscles and ligaments and tendons and nerves and a brain. It gives me the ability to see and hear and taste and smell and touch. I can feel things from my toes to my head. I can walk. I can run. I can laugh. I, when the situation demands it, can even swim. I eat fairly well and take medication to fix my only chronic health problem. My body is perfect, because it is me.

Unfortunately, I am aware not everyone agrees with me.

Previous readers of my blog (hi, YOU EXIST?!) may remember the time I wrote about body diversity in advertising, and concluded that I ought to buy a bikini.

So... I bought a bikini. To follow is a picture of me wearing my bikini. But, to make it easier for you, I've listed 10 things wrong with me. Don't worry, you're welcome to add more.

1. My hair. For a start, it's not very evenly dyed, and bits of pink are poking through the brown. For another thing, it's short. And if the media has taught us anything, it's that Real Girls have long hair. Anne Hathaway even postponed her wedding after cutting off all her hair for Les Mis. So, hair makes the girl - and I don't have much of it.

2. My make-up. Admittedly, you can't see my face in this picture, but let me elaborate. I have a few blackheads and a few spots. My skin is not flawlessly clear. Additionally, I wasn't wearing any make-up, and that is a cardinal sin. But wait! I was wearing eyeliner! Oh, actually, that's a sin too - if the make-up doesn't look natural, it's fake and tacky.

3. My arms. I don't have neatly defined triceps and biceps. I can't fit my hand around my upper arm, and it's not rock-hard and toned. I have low-level bingo wings. If I jiggle my arm, it wobbles.

4. My tits. They are not pert tits. In fact, they are beholden to the force of gravity. Luckily, a decent bikini top helps out with this, but that leads me on to another problem: I am above a D cup. This apparently means that I am either a) fine with having minimal choice in most high street shops, or b) affluent enough to be able to spend £30 or more each time I need a new bra.

5. My... I don't even know what to call this. But, in short, I bulge out slightly under my bikini top. Yes, it is squishy. Yes, it is probably fat. Yes, I have never seen a girl in real life without this, even a little bit, no matter how skinny they are. But everyone knows models and celebrities don't have underbra handles.

6. My waist. It is both too small for my hips according to standard clothing size measurements, but also too thick for me to be attractively curvy. Apparently, the ideal waist-to-hip ratio is 0.6: mine is more like 0.75.

7. My stomach. I have a bit of a Buddha belly, and child-bearing hips, so despite my large breasts I think of myself as being pearshaped. Pearshaped girls with tummies don't wear bikinis, lest they frighten onlookers and drive the public into a state of shock. If you have a chubby tummy, the magazines kindly advise you, in the way of a condescending but well-meaning aunt, to wear a tummy-sucking swimsuit and sarong. That way, nobody - not even you - will have to think about the horrors of a convex abdomen.

8. My bikini line. I don't shave it.

9. My thighs. Again, they are wobbly, which is repulsive because it is a sign I do not dedicate my copious spare time to doing squats and leg lifts. They touch, which is repulsive because it is a sign I have not taken the tumblr thinspiration posts seriously enough. There are numerous white stretchmarks along the top of them, which are repulsive because they are a sign my body has changed and may even change again.

10. My calves. I haven't shaved those either. Plus, sometimes, I have trouble zipping up boots over them. This is not a sign that the boots are too small, but rather that I am fat and nobody will ever love me.


What else is wrong with me? Come on. Tell me. Shout it at me in the street. Because your opinion does not change anything. My body does not exist for you to scrutinise and mark out of 10. My body does not exist for a mysterious other being to find attractive or hideous. My worth is not dependent upon my sexiness, which in turn is held up to standards that are perpetuated by media with a vested interest in lowering body confidence.

I do not have to prove myself to some ethereal arbiter to be deemed thin enough to wear a bikini. I will wear one, whether you like it or not.

My body is perfect. And yours is, too.

Confessions of a hairy girl.

I have a very privileged life, which means I get to spend a lot of my time thinking about things which aren't very important. While I could concern myself with how best to sort out the global hunger crisis, or trying to determine if the rise of UKIP will have any significant impact on mainstream UK politics, I instead find myself contemplating rather less weighty topics.

Like hair.

It seems that part of the rite of passage of self-identifying as a feminist involves a period of time where the Baby Feminist forsakes all razors. "These are tools of systematic male oppression!" they cry, and hide the razors in the back of their cupboards - but don't throw them out. "The shaving of hair is part of the patriarchy!" they holler, and swear off ever cutting their precious leg forests again. Outgrowths of dark curls sprout in their armpits, and their bikini lines go fantastically untended.

And then - after a while, be it days or weeks or months - these Baby Feminists will find themselves returning to the safety of their razors and waxing strips, and suddenly their bodies will once again be lithe and hairless and socially acceptable. Maybe they will vacillate between the two extremes of hairy and hairless, or maybe they will settle on one side or the other.

I will vacillate.

My relationship to body hair isn't so much driven by feelings of self-loathing or a craving for social acceptance; it's more reliant on my individual whims. Through the winter months, I make a point of cultivating body hair. I consider it an extra layer of warmth and insulation against the sudden sub-zero winter winds of Britain's temperate climate. My legs and armpits retain that little bit more warmth, and I tend to wear jeans and long pyjamas, things which hide the new growths. You'd never know, to look at me - I have the same face as I wear the rest of the year round; I haven't suddenly sprouted a beard or moustache - though that would be pretty cool - but under my clothes, I am naked. Naked, and hairy.

The exception to this rule is occasions when my body is on show. In the summer, my legs get shaved maybe once a fortnight - more if it's warm enough to necessitate wearing shorts every day - and my armpits probably every week. I don't consider dark stubble an enemy. Rather, it's an old friend, an irritating in-between stage which then gives way to the soft curls of body fuzz I've come to rather appreciate. (Currently, as it's still winter, my 'pits are only shaved if I know I'll be wearing a sleeveless shirt - something which came back to bite me in the butt recently when, on a first date, I realised midway through that I was wearing a strappy dress, and hadn't shaved my armpits. Cue awkwardly refusing to raise my arms for the rest of the night.)

However, this week, I found myself in the bathroom with some time to kill before dinner, and I wondered - what would it be like to be shaved all over? According to porn, muffs don't exist: all women are pre-pubescently shorn, an unbroken expanse of soft flesh running from their belly-buttons down to the Holy Grail of their vulvas. This, of course, is bullshit. But we as a society seem to have accepted this baldness as the norm. PETA use it in their adverts to advocate boycotting fur; razors are sold in putridly girly shades of pink and purple to be used specifically for "feminine hygiene"; girls as young as 11 have been reported going to beauty salons for a Brazillian wax. Personally, I could never go to a salon - the contents of my knickers are between me, the people I sleep with, and medical professionals; beauticians aren't included. Sorry to disappoint.

So, for whatever reason, I decided to shave my bush. My rationale went something as follows: a) Why not? It's perfectly possible. b) It's something I haven't done before. c) Next time I get my period, it'll be nice not to get menstrual blood caught up in my pubic hair. (It can't be just me that has this problem, right?) And thus, my usually neatly-trimmed fanny warmer was no more. Gone. In its place was skin I hadn't seen since I was about nine: pale, sensitive, with an almost waxy quality to it.

I didn't particularly like it. And I couldn't imagine particularly liking it on another girl, either. There appear to be no health benefits to a shaved minge, other than it makes things easier to see from a medical perspective, the same way the head is shaved before brain surgery. But the idea of eating a girl out, to be confronted by such a conspicuous absence of hair? I'd prefer my mouth to come into contact with some nicely-trimmed tangle than with the slippery skin I'm currently experiencing.

I am also painfully aware, a few days later, of the stubble growing back. And unlike the almost downy fuzz which spreads over my calves, this stubble is coarse and spiky. I'm not a fan of it, nor of the small dark polka-dots which are now spreading over the region, making it look like I've contracted an artistically-inclined STI.

I will be glad when the hair returns in its entirity, a soft silky hide I can run my fingers through and condition in the bath. But I'll also continue to shave my legs and armpits when need be - more out of a nagging sense of obligation than of genuine desire to. Maybe in order to fuck up the system, I ought to wander round proudly hirstute - and I have a whole-hearted respect and admiration for people who do - but I already work outside the system in so many other ways. I don't grow body hair to prove a point, either; it's more just arbitrary laziness. The Baby Feminists can carry on with creating long flowing thigh-tresses; I'll happily get rid of them if I've got to wear a skirt. Does this make me a bad feminist? Spoiler alert: the answer is no.

However, I have decided to keep my pubes from now on. We have pubic hair for a reason, and there doesn't seem any convincing arguments to get rid of it. I'm not sure it's a feminist issue, particularly; it's a case of You Do You. If your significant other is pressuring you to remove hair when you yourself want to keep it, that's another story - but while it's a free choice, there is no wrong answer. And if I'm ever confronted by a bed partner who doesn't like my downstairs hairstyle choices... they can suck it.