This was the question put to all the female interviewees at a recent 'Ladies Who Impress' event I attended. It was really interesting to see all three of these successful, confident women struggle to provide an answer to this apparently simple question and to me it demonstrated what a complex relationship most women have with what is commonly called their 'body image'. What we want to see and what we do see are very rarely reconcilable and this can lead to very negative and damaging emotions. Why do we have such difficulty accepting who we are?
In the introductory chapter to her very interesting book 'The Ministry of Thin', Emma Woolf, herself recovering anorexic, cites a US study from 2011 which found that 1 in 6 women would choose to be blind than obese, whereas others would prefer herpes or alcoholism to being overweight. In the UK, you only have to open a tabloid newspaper or gossip magazine to find an article focusing on a celebrity's weight gain or loss, featured as headline news. The obsession is universal, it appears, but why?
The media definitely has something to do with it, with the constant portrayal of slim, perfectly coiffed and made up celebrities. However, it is clear that those in the public eye also feel the pressure to look "good". It is rare to see a female actress, musician or model anything more than a size 10 (though there are some notable exceptions, whose size is never without media comment) and it seems all too common for young female celebrities in particular to seek to alter or cover up their natural appearance in many different ways; hair extensions and highlights, fake tan, false eyelashes, heavy make up and even breast implants have become the norm. Worrying numbers of teenage girls now think it necessary to employ the same techniques themselves on a regular basis to keep up with their style icons.
Even if you don't go to these lengths, it is difficult to find anyone who doesn't have at least one part of their body that they would desperately like to change (or, usually, reduce in size). I recall a recent skincare commercial which asked women to name the favourite part of their own body; not one had a ready answer. This physical dissatisfaction leads to an almost obsession with analysing everything that passes our lips. I cannot remember a day when I didn't have at least two conversations with other women about "being good" in the face of gastronomic temptations, berating themselves for even considering indulging in chocolate or cake (but in the end doing so anyway and entering into a spiral of guilt as a result). Why shouldn't we treat ourselves to a little of what we fancy ever so often? Would we not be a little bit happier? We might even stop at one slice instead of writing the day off as bad'un and consuming the rest of the cake, whilst being simultaneously consumed by guilt...
On the other side of the body image coin, Breast Cancer Care have recently released a video on the subject of Body Image, featuring a number of incredibly brave women who have undergone major breast surgery following cancer treatment, but who all seem to have retained (or perhaps regained) confidence and pride in the bodies they have been left with. Faced with their own mortality, the ease with which these women appear to be accepting their new 'normal' is humbling and extremely moving. It is of course absolutely true that you only appreciate the value of what you have when you lose it, or at least part of it. But it is of course also true that we shouldn't have to wait for serious health problems before we discover our body confidence.
So, how has cancer affected my body image? To be honest, although I am proud of my body's resilience in the face of adversity, I cannot (unfortunately) place myself in the same confidence category as those wonderful women in the Breast Cancer Care video. Having just experienced both childbirth and post partum complications, my body already felt so far removed from 'normal' so as to be unrecognisable. To then be told that I had cancer felt almost like a parallel reality at first and it was only when I had finished the treatment that the enormity of the experience really hit me. Although my breasts are still almost all my own tissue, with a little bit missing, they just do not feel like part of me. This feeling of detachment isn't helped by the rest of my body all being that little bit larger than pre-pregnancy silhouette; a result of a combination of hormone therapy, not enough exercise and perhaps a few too many cupcakes...!
Put simply, when I look in the mirror, I don't see me. For this reason, the prospect of reconstructive surgery doesn't scare me. I know I can and I will adjust to the new body, whether it takes weeks, months or years.
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