One hazy summer, I travelled to a retreat in the Cotswolds for a curious sort of fastinga grand cleaning of the body, or so the brochures promised. The days seemed to slip by sideways. One afternoon while I was stretched out under the pale English sun, there beside me, reclining upon a lounger, was a strikingly beautiful girl, the sort who might step straight from a fashion magazines pages.
We exchanged names and fell into a conversation, as happens in dreams where strangers become confidantes. We spoke about the curious reason each of us had come to starve.
I simply have to lose 14 ounces, she confessed. I laughed, thinking it a joke. Her lips stayed serious.
Ive been like this for a year nowfat. My boyfriend says hell leave me if I dont slim down There, see? She pinched at her stomach, her skin bunching in the light. Im ashamed even to sit.
For hours afterwards, the image of her clung to me; I began to refer to herinside my headas Daisy Fourteen Ounces.
Perhaps, I thought, by her boyfriends logic, someone like me ought to be chucked off a cliffthe ancient Spartans of Englands fair isles would only keep the slim and trim, and the soft and rounded would have no place in their pristine utopia.
A few days later, I found myself in the company of strangers at a lively gathering in a posh London restaurantthe sort of place where velvet seats and crystal glasses fill the corners of your vision. Amidst the flurry sat an immaculately kept woman, legs crossed just so, nylon stockings casting a faint shimmer on perfect calves; her shoe dangled carelessly from her toes. She sipped water from a wine glass, collecting the admiring glances of men at other tables.
And then her husband arrived. He swept round the table, shaking hands firmly with every bloke in reach, but when his eyes landed on her he hissed under his breath, Cover yourself up, will you! Stop flaunting your thighs!
She stiffened, colour rushing to her cheeks. She asked the waiter for a throw, though she sat right next to the marble fire, and wrapped herself up tight, shrinking to the size and spirit of a timid sparrow for the rest of the evening.
After, I decided to read up on the lives of great English writersDickens, Wordsworth, the lotseeking the secret of genius in their daily habits. I quickly quit the pursuit: its near impossible to match the living, writhing creature of a biography with the grandeur of their masterworks.
I finally gave up reading life stories when I stumbled on the biography of Thomas Hardy. I adore Tess of the dUrbervilles, but was haunted by other things. For instancewhen Hardys wife Emma was weakened by a fifth difficult pregnancy, the doctors begged her not to bear more children. Hardy supposedly muttered, Well then, whats the use of her to me? Emma went on to have thirteen children.
My Instagram feed is haunted by English Barbie girls, all gym-toned and polished. Their days are filled with Pilates, fake tans, wraps, and spa days. Building their bodies, chiselled by the beauty industry, is a full-time professionand an expensive, relentless one. I respect anyones hard work, honest, but it feels like somethings askew, doesnt it? The girls want to be beautiful, to be loved, to be noticed by the boys.
To them, beauty is spelled out in rules: thinness, sculpted brows, pillowed lips, and a bottom round as a Bramley apple. Dutifully, they try to warp themselves to fit.
But for the boys, choosing among identical dolls has become something of a chore
Once, my husband and I wandered through a garden market in Kent. He was buying seeds for our cottage, and I drifted dreamily between the stalls, none of it seeming quite real. I came upon a display of garden ornaments: lanterns, wind spinners, watering cans, rabbits and foxes. By a parade of garden gnomes in toadstool-red bonnets, two fellows bickered over which gnome was the most dapper. One was poking and prodding at them with serious intent, circling around them muttering, while the other burst into laughter:
Hurry up, mate, will you? Youre picking out gnomes exactly like you picked out the tarts last night
All very surreal, very funny.
Oh girls, Daisy Fourteen Ounces, Molly Cover-Your-Thighs, Emma Thirteen-Children Whywhy do we treat ourselves with such little fondness and respect? How did you ever come to mistake someones cold inspection for love?
Who whispered that a perfect body and face is the price of happiness? I have a hundred stories proving beauty bears little relation to love at all.
A friend of mine met her husband in the renal ward at a Birmingham hospital, where she charmed him in a faded robe, pale as a winter sky, with her catheter bag coyly poking from under her gown.
Look at Frida Kahlo. Have you seen those famous brows? She was loved ardently by brilliant men. Let that say something.
Years ago, when I had a wisdom tooth botched and my jaw torn, I lay at home listless, cheek swollen, bloodied, weak. My husband sat at the bedside, nursing me with bottles of kefir (all I could bear), so that even my lips grew milky moustaches. I glanced in a mirror and whimpered, Oh Godand cried from the sight.
He reached for my hand: Youre the most beautiful woman alive, hear me? Most beautiful! Right now, too! Will you marry me? Marry me
Later, when I was well again, there was a restaurant, a ring, applause, bouquets, and I will amongst drifting balloons.
Yet what stirs me most, even now, is that first proposal, in my most battered state. It was real. I believed him then. Beauty has nothing to do with the face, and love is never about perfection.
Its our crooked edges, the things that make us different, that make us lovablemake us human.
In truth, perfection isnt real. Or, if it is, it changes from heart to heart.
Recently, I told my husband I was thinking of getting braces for my truly wonky teeth.
He said simply, I love your smile as it is, and havent the foggiest notion why youd torment yourself with metal. If you want it, do it. But if it were up to me, Id keep everything just so.
After our first son was born, I weighed nearly nineteen stonemy husband flooded me with so many kind words, it left me with no reason to slim down. I lost weight only when I chose to.
We flipped through old photos recentlyme, all puffed up beside our tiny boy on the sofa.
Why didnt you tell me to lose weight? I must have looked enormous
You were my delicious doughnut. Lose weight if you like, but I adored you as you were, he replied.
Or that year I suffered a summer flare of psoriasisthe angry red blooms spread all over my skinand we flew for holiday. I refused to undress on the beach. He asked, Whats wrong? Only then I realised: he truly didn’t see the marks. I was still beautiful to himpsoriasis or none.
Im not advertising husbands; Im describing what love should look like. If your man demands you match his standards of beauty, thats not love, its domination.
If you’re the shiniest apple, and he sees only bruiseshe wants power, not fruit.
You might follow him from fear of losing him. But what would you really be losing? A tyrant whod treat you like yet another gnome under glass?
Every bloke wants to be top dogbut the right authority is not born from fear, but your admiration and respect.
Your willingness to follow must be a choice. Choose someone you wish to walk besideconfident, strong, reliable, and gentle. Someone wholl take your hand, who youd walk with to the worlds endbecause its your right to choose whose hand you take.
And that, that trust, must be earned.
