I think I have a bit of a fixation with being funny.
I’m not sure what it is exactly, but to me being funny is almost more important than being nice or kind or any of those other things that I’m led to believe are positive characteristics. I am always the one in restaurants telling loud jokes at the expense of her children for cheap laughs. It’s attention seeking behaviour I know – probably symptomatic of some sort of hideous self-esteem issue* – but in my mind being funny is the only way to be not boring and make people like me.
“But you are funny,” says my friend Kathie, “so it’s OK.”
“But what would I be if I wasn’t?” I ask, somewhat needily, “What would I have then?”
“You’d be nothing,” she says, “just an empty shell.”
Do you ever suffer from imposter syndrome? It’s that feeling that you sometimes get, maybe at work or in a social situation, were you are waiting for someone to realise.
Realise what exactly you’re not sure – that you don’t know what you’re talking about, that you are only pretending to know about current affairs, that you’re actually a nine year old girl trapped in an adult body… That’s generally the gist. (Possibly not that last one if you’re a man, but maybe.)
I’ve decided I really need to get over it. View Post
“You’re not fat Mummy,” Belle said to me once, “you’re just very, very, very chubby.”
It was her way of being kind, of trying to boost my self-esteem, but I’m not sure she quite got it. Still, she’s right, I am a bit chubby. I’m not sure about very, very, very though.
I try to be as positive as possible about my body, no matter how I might actually be feeling. I sell my squidgy tummy as an excellent pillow, and my rather large bottom as a secret defensive weapon in netball matches. I know how easily influenced girls are by their mothers, and how what feels like a harmless comment to you can stick with them as they grow up. It’s hard though, especially when Belle has such an opposite body type to me – the soft tummy and large bottom can’t be bigged up too much (literally and metaphorically) to a child with a naturally twig like build and a bottom the size of a ten pence piece. View Post
Are you happy with your wobbly bits? At peace with your wonky nose? Or do you cling to the dream that if only you were a few pounds lighter, a little bit taller, that all would be well with the world?
I wish I could say that I didn’t care about body image, that I was totally happy and accepting of my body, but it would be a fib. Like the majority of women, I too hanker after thinner thighs and tighter triceps. Not enough to actually do anything about it of course, but that’s really not the point, as the issue is clearly not a physical one.
The most worrying thing is the increasingly young age at which body image becomes an issue for girls and young women, as I talked about recently. I say recently… I just looked it up and the post I wrote about conversations overheard on a school bus is nearly two years old! Blimey, unnoticed aging clearly an issue for me here.
There has been a trend recently in the media to try and redress the balance, and change the way we feel about our body image, but to be honest I’m a little cynical. Take the Dove Real Beauty campaign for instance. Now perhaps it’s just me, but aren’t all of these women actually rather attractive? Some of them may be larger than traditional models, but none of them are fat, they’re all well proportioned with smooth skin and pretty faces:
Not exactly munters are they?
Dove’s latest idea for improving our body image and raising levels of confidence among girls is the Dove Self Esteem Programme, a series of workshops being held in schools throughout the UK, with the aim of reaching a million 11-18 year old girls by the end of 2012. My cynical side says ‘what a great market for them to tap into’ but at the same time I can’t help but think that one million girls feeling even just a little bit better abut themselves has to be a good thing right?
Again, not exactly munters…
Worryingly, it really is this young that body image starts to become an issue. Dove found that over half of the girls they surveyed thought they were ‘average’, ‘ordinary’, ‘plain’ or ‘unattractive’, and the stats I found when researching my post on pornography are even more shocking:
Over half of all women around the world say they first became aware of the need to be physically attractive between 6 and 17 years of age.
66% of teenage girls would consider plastic surgery and 20% would do it right now.
Polls suggest that 63% of young women aspire to be glamour models or lap dancers.
One in three people believe a woman is responsible for violence committed against her if she is wearing ‘revealing clothing’.
Have you seen the Dove ad about all the little girls giving up their hobbies because of their body image? It’s pretty scary stuff:
Further research by Dove celebrates the fact that over a third of girls cite their mothers as their role models. Great, you might think, it’s good that girls have someone real to emulate, but then you look down the rest of the list, and it’s the usual suspects – Cheryl Cole, Jessie J, Rhinanna… And we all know how I feel about Rhianna as a role model. Where are the political figures? The writers? The scientists? Why are young girls so focussed on role models famous purely on the basis of their looks?
Which leads me to my key question – do campaigns like the Dove Real Beauty campaign, or their self-esteem workshops really do anything to tackle issues around body image, or is it a much deeper rooted problem? Are programmes like these just a drop in the multi-million pound ocean that is the beauty industry, or are Dove trailblazers, leading the way for others?
Answers on the back of an anti-wrinkle cream box please.
You can visit the Dove facebook page for more information on their initiatives to improve body image among young women.
I am always fascinated by what my children think of me as a parent. Whenever we watch Wife Swap I make them place me on the line from one freaky parent to another, always wondering which way my mothering scales are tipping.
It can be hard to get the right balance.
Being a single parent makes it especially hard, as you somehow have to blend the two roles into one – good cop and bad cop become one flakey, inconsistent cop, who will let you eat M&Ms for lunch one day, (peanuts = one of your five a day surely?), and then go mad at you the next when you don’t eat your wholemeal bread crusts.
It is probably a sign of some deeper rooted insecurities, reminiscent of the hours I spent as a teenager fantasising about giving the whole school a compulsory questionnaire to find out exactly what percentage of people liked me.
(That sounds far more disturbing now I’ve written it down. Let’s move quickly on.)
This week though I got the chance to see, quite literally, how Belle sees me, as she drew me this:
I rather like it. It has a casual seriousness to it, the peering over the glasses, concentrating hard on who knows what. I love the expression she captures, not bad given we were in a cafe and she was sketching in felt tips.
Do you ever wonder about how your children see you? How would you like them to think of you?
I was going to write something today about being rubbish at netball, but then I only went and scored a bloody hat trick didn’t I?? And I was only Goal Shoot for ten minutes.
I think it was a fluke though, and the moral of the story still stands.
At the beginning of this year I started playing netball. I was always hopeless at sports at school, so don’t know why I imagined I’d be any better 18 years and two children later. For some reason though, I thought the fact that I am now a grown up woman, running her own business and able to hold a conversation without blushing would make a difference.
It doesn’t.
I am still rubbish. (Apart from the hat trick. Did I mention that?)
I have decided though that being rubbish is OK.
That may seem like an obvious statement to make, but personally, I find it really hard to do, let alone enjoy, things I think I am ‘bad’ at. I tend to believe that if I’m no good at something, there’s either no point in doing it, or that the people I am doing it with won’t like me.
I know it’s silly and possibly a little pathetic – I certainly don’t dislike people just because they aren’t the best at things. If anything, I like them more because I’m not intimidated by them, or worried about showing myself up. You’d think too that I’d have learnt after years of getting all the answers right at school, but being virtually friendless, that no one likes a smartarse.
In my mind, not being good at something means people won’t respect me, which is why playing netball is so good for me. Imagine the episode of Friends where they are playing football for the Geller Cup, and everyone keeps telling Rachel to ‘go long’. Quite often I feel like that. ‘Here!’ I shout, and my team-mate will look at me, standing in a massive space, wince a bit, and instead throw the ball to the player half way down the court, who is being marked by three people.
This is OK.
*mild panic attack*
No really, it is. Not being the best isn’t the end of the world. Not knowing the answer to something doesn’t make you an idiot. Missing the goal won’t make people hate you.
It’s a lesson I need to learn, even if it’s probably about 25 years too late – on court or off, it’s OK to sometimes drop the ball.
As a mother to two daughters, I’m extremely conscious of the way women and young girls are portrayed in the media and how this influences how they feel about their own bodies. There has been a lot in the press lately about the use of airbrushing and younger and younger girls wanting to wear make-up, but what can we do about it? How can we make our daughters feel good about themselves without closing them off from the real world?
Wednesday is my day for volunteering at Belle’s school. I sit on a coach with 50 small children and we all get taken to the nearest swimming pool. My job is to look after the girls in the changing rooms, supervise the switchover between the year threes and the year fours, and make sure everyone goes home with the right pants on. It is an intense couple of hours.
In my true fickle style, I have decided against the annual summary. As hilarious it might have been for others to read of my failings, my disastrous dates and my general parental incompetency, I am not convinced it would be a terribly positive activity.
I thought about it a lot last night in bed, by myself, reliving events from 2009, and, to be honest, the exercise didn’t do a lot for my self esteem. I was pleased to think that I had progressed from my seven year old sleeping in my bed every night to her only falling asleep there, but I’m still not sure that is a massive achievement. Are there many mothers who have to lug their quite grown up children across the landing every night before they can go to bed? Resolution for 2010 – convince Belle that her bed really isn’t such a bad place to be.
When you spend every evening on your own it is easy to become too reflective, to think over things you have said or done and wonder if they have somehow contributed to the aloneness. Should I have mentioned the naked dinner party photos on a first date? Did I eat with my elbows on the table? Was a bottle and a half of wine TOO much? Probably.
The truth is that none of these things should really matter in the grand scheme of things, and I shouldn’t be giving these thoughts any space in my head. Forcing myself to recollect every horrendous liaison is guaranteed to make me feel about 14 years old, plagued by irrational self doubt and loathing. I hated being 14 the first time – I don’t want to do it again.
Of course this is all classic procrastination. Post one – introductions, post two – this is what I’m going to write about, post three – no it isn’t actually after all…. Maybe at some point I will just get on with it.
