The biggest mistake you’re making around movement and the feminist act to help you stop
Let's keep working to #detox from #objectification and feel the freedom
This newsletter contains discussion of body image and mental health. For help with anything it raises, I recommend:
Note: If you’d prefer this content in audio form, I’m rebooting my podcast ‘There Are No Rules’, you can find it on all podcast apps and here.
Well, how’s that for a clickbait-y headline, hey?
But I really mean it. There is a big mistake, it’s so common we don’t even question it, and it can be confronted - though it’s quite a radical move.
Bear with me as I try to navigate complex, nuanced and personal territory. I don’t want to not speak about this topic for fear that I don’t have definitive, defensible ‘answers’, or because I am still working through this stuff myself – because, let’s face it, the perfect time is never going to come.
The biggest mistake I made for well over a decade was that I was living in denial about the reason why I moved, and therefore my motivation to move, and the types of movement I chose.
I told myself it was for my ‘mental health’, which was partly true, or because I ‘valued health’, which was also partly true.
But. Deep, deep down? I was still living and breathing in our social and cultural sea of female objectification, and I had a deeply engrained habit of monitoring and trying to influence and control my own appearance (because we pretty much all do), and so, movement was still tied to aesthetics and trying to change (or keep) my body looking a particular way.
It is very complex to truly undo that motivation, and even more so in the ‘postnatal’ space. There are so many explicit and subtle messages we should change our body, or that how we look is why we should move. At worst, we have the remnants of hard core “bounce back” diet culture hanging around, and at best, the messaging on postpartum movement is still typically one breath away from encouraging you to change your body, or using self objectification and a desire to change how your body looks to motivate. Why? Because it works. Why does it work? Because it’s so normalised we don’t even realise that objectification of women has its grimy, slippery #fauxselfempowerment #fauxfeminism #bodypos #fitspo little hands into everything.
Nude With Crossed Legs, Venetia Berry
This is a phenomenon that it is tricky for me to speak out in critique of because I am a white woman who benefits from thin privilege (even if I didn’t engage in any body control or restriction). BUT. But. In the spirit of maintaining that suffering is relative, and that I know many new mums generally ‘like me’ do suffer, I cannot allow that to stop me. All we can do is speak and share our own truth, in the hope that it helps others.
Even with significant privilege, many women still suffer from self objectification and the belief that they can, and should, use movement to influence and control the way their body looks. If it ‘works’ or ‘has worked’ for them, then they are compelled to continue, fearful of the ramifications if they stop this body work.
Not only is it a toxic, unhelpful and limiting belief in and of itself, but it also radically influences one’s relationship to something that could be really positive and genuinely supportive: movement.
Is it possible to persist using self objectification as a movement goal, whilst also benefitting from movement in other ways, like being more embodied and confident in yourself?
Maybe?
But in my opinion, it is best to do a wholesale extrication of those core beliefs around self ‘improvement’ aesthetically speaking and its relationship to movement. Why? Because otherwise we remain stuck, even in a small way, in an allegiance to dominant ideas of beauty and worth that stop us from experiencing unequivocal self acceptance and worth.
Breaking up with the promise of working out to change how you look allows us to be free from a phenomenon of ‘duality’: of being in our bodies whilst imagining seeing and monitoring our bodies at the same time, which keeps us stuck in the oppression of objectification. It is something that research has shown a shocking number of us are engaged in most of our lives. The only way to be truly liberated from the idea that your appearance is tightly related to your worth, that you can and should monitor and control your appearance in order to have worth, and that this is good, moral, important work to do, and that it involves movement, is to challenge the idea that changing your appearance as something that you have to do at all, and especially that you have to do exercise to try and achieve.
But I don’t know how else to motivate myself…
Squats? Good for your posture, propulsion, alleviating pain, helping you lift, run, dance etc. Pushups? Again, good for posture, good for alleviating neck and shoulder pain, helping you perform more sophisticated moves in yoga or pilates if you enjoy that for its own sake. Mid back strength? Good for standing confidently, being embodied, less pain and disfunction in your neck and shoulders… I could go on….
But perhaps my favourite motivation for movement is that it can cultivate more awareness of being in our body, as a body, rather than how it looks. Movement is my most commonly practised form of ‘meditation’ and allows me to access the ‘non-dual perspective’, which is that there is only one self – the observer and the object being observed are the same. We might think there is a ‘real me’ underneath thought, when we tune into a quiet observing mind (like when we practice some forms of mindfulness meditation), but ultimately my goal is to move beyond a sense of separation in my experience of being me, and live in the reality that ultimately it is all one. I am me, my body is me, I can observe myself but I can then recognise that it is me doing the observing of me.
Being fit doesn’t look any particular way. Health, also, doesn’t have ‘A Look’.
We think it does. But I challenge you to really inquire, with a gentle and curious attitude, into some of these taken for granted ‘truths’. Do they stand up?
(If you feel defensive at this point, with open loving patience, ask yourself: what’s that about?)
I argue that research shows that you cannot tell how healthy someone is from looking at them – especially if we take an appropriately wholistic perspective of health that includes mental.
An ethical idea?
That there is one dominant beauty and aesthetic ideal for women and that we should be doing the work to pursue it is so widely accepted it has reached the status of a ethical pursuit, argues Heather Widdows in her book Perfect Me. That we must continually strive to improve how we look has come to be understood and referred to as a moral duty, that takes work, and requires an ‘imagined’ future, better self to motivate us. Because according to the paradigm, you never actually get there. The reality is that even the most stunningly objectively beautiful women still feel body shame. There is always more work to be done.
Well fuck that, is what I say.
So, what instead?
Grieve the loss of the possibility of one day working hard enough that you attain some future better you, and the distraction from the work of true, unqualified self acceptance (which offers a much richer and more fulfilling path).
Opt out of that weird way we bond over mutual self criticism about our bodies. We do not need to affirm others at the expense of ourselves, or experience camaraderie through body shame.
Try to notice when you speak unkindly or critically (even – especially! – internally) about your current body. Ask: Would someone else say this about me? How does thinking this make me feel? What is there was no ‘better me’ to get to? What if there was nothing I needed to change about my body or appearance? Let the questions echo in your physical body. Notice how you feel.
Practice asking yourself:
How am I feeling in my body today?
How does movement or rest influence how I feel?
Do I have any niggles or aches and how does movement influence that?
Notice the expanding notions of beauty we’re experiencing, celebrating diversity and traditional ‘flaws’ like cellulite, hair and postpartum bellies - which is a positive thing! - but notice how if we stop there, that keeps us stuck in preoccupation with what is beautiful, rather than expanded notions of worth and value of bodies and women more broadly.
In closing, lest I sound like I’ve got it all worked out and am not a #guiltyfeminist - do I still do things to change my appearance? Yep. Eyebrow grooming, hair colouring etc. I’m definitely not being judgemental of you, or adopting any high ground here. But in the space of movement, I’m trying really, really hard to change, shifting motivation away from the aesthetics. When I do, I realise that sometimes ‘enough’ is 10 minutes. Sometimes I want to do more. But it’s me deciding, not my internalised body police, perpetuating the self objectification we’ve all come to live with.
Are these new ideas? What’s been your biggest challenge in your relationship with your body, particularly postpartum? Have you fought against your body to try to influence your appearance? Have you let go of some of this? Are you happy with where you’ve landed?
Let me know your thoughts. You can leave a comment by clicking on the speech bubble icon near the title of this post, or just replying to this email.
If you want more, I enthusiastically recommend the following resources:
Anti-Diet by Christy Harrison (@chr1styharrison)
Just Eat It by Laura Thomas PhD (@laurathomasphd)
The Body is not an apology by Sonya Renee Taylor
More than a Body by Lexie Kite PhD and Lindsay Kite PhD (@beauty_redefined)
Train Happy by Tally Rye (@tallyrye)
The Rundown:
I’m starting teaching in-person classes at the beautiful Eve Studio, a space specifically for women in Preston (there is also one in Brunswick), so, look for me on the schedule - I’ll be teaching mat pilates and yoga over summer.
I made a playlist based on songs we associate with the strong feelings of our 20s (thanks to those who shared their picks on Insta!)
This is a brilliant article (shared with me by a friend) on the mamasphere (“a blur of dusty peach and terracotta, blonde hair, and white teeth”), where big players are understood as “precarious labourers in a marketplace of creative and affective labour”, creating in service of “the algorithm”. Good god!
Interested in trying movement with me that is not motivated by trying to change your body?
Try practicing 10-15 minutes a day to feel free, connected and strong? The first 7 days cost you nothing at all…
What an incredible piece of writing. I found so much of my own experience echoed here and have come to a really similar realisation in my post partum. Thanks for capturing the complexity and writing with such tenderness. You’re awesome!!!!