Why Be Happy When You Could Be Skinny?

The topic of fat as a feminist issue has hit the headlines again. Namely the gob-smackingly smug missive Michelle Thomas received from her Tinder date, who considered her too fat to fancy. 

Then, in the same week, I watched a video of comedian, Luisa Omielan.  I was expecting to find it funny, and it was - but I wasn’t expecting it to land a punch right quite so firmly on my ego. That ego that still witters on annoyingly in the background with its doubts and criticisms. 

As Luisa hugged her belly and knocked her thighs together (and how the words ‘ample’ and ‘shapely’ beg to be collocated to those nouns) Ego/Vanity - whatever you like to call it - gave a horrified scream and Real Self raised her regal head and nodded - “That’s right, Love. You are still influenced by the bullshit beauty standards that were instilled from the moment your boobs began to bud and hormones wreaked havoc on your girlish, bum-less, beanpole body and turned it into that of a bodacious-buttocked sexually mature female. 

Remember?

Yes. Cue criticism and self loathing. 

In fact I can remember the exact moment. It was a Sunday. I was wearing jodhpurs, about to go riding. I was looking out of the window, my back to the door when my mother walked in and uttered a cry of dismay. I turned around. What could it be, I wondered. What could be so bad that it made my mother exclaim out loud? I looked at her expectantly, waiting for her to tell me of a catastrophe, an awful omission…

“Your arse!” she gasped. “It’s absolutely huge!”

And from then on, she felt duty bound to remind me of this, along with her keen observations on my imperfect nose, my meager breasts and my appalling posture. As I described in my post about Marilyn , I came to realise eventually that such afflictions did not preclude me being attractive to men. However, the ‘ huge arse’ comments and the complete contempt in which my mother held anyone even slightly overweight made its impact. 

I recall the first time a man said I was beautiful, I thought he must be slightly mad, or a flatterer, or just kind. I didn't know what to do with compliments.

I was far too busy frantically trying to stave off any trace of fat. It was so hardwired I didn’t even realise I was doing it. I’d say things like ‘I can eat anything I want!’ and partly in thanks to a youthful, maniacal metabolism firing on nicotine and caffeine, the minimum exercise came up with the right results: skinny. 

When I checked my height to weight ratio I was bemused by the fact that it always came up as ‘underweight’. But I’m not! I thought. 

For a while taking the contraceptive pill and being actually quite happy put pay to my skinny obsession. When my ex-husband saw photos of me from this time in my life he remarked: “What a fatty!”

What a crime! I was proving my mother right - inside me there was just a hideous fat cow waiting to slip out when I was preoccupied with silly things like enjoying myself. “I’ll show her!” I thought. 

Living in Japan was the perfect place to nurture such an ambition. Imagine living in a place where no shoes are big enough - and when you tell the shop assistant your size, she exclaims, “Gigantic!” Imagine discovering you even too big for the fat-granny’s oversize department.  Imagine only being able to buy clothes from American catalogues (apologies guys). This was a sorry episode in my personal style. I was so happy when Freemans became available overseas. British fashion in my size! 

But, by then, I had subjected myself to such a gruelling regimen of exercise and food control (in my head I was never on a diet) that I had slimmed down to the largest size available in most Japanese fashion boutiques: British size 8 (American 4, European 36). But I still believed I was too big. Especially when another smirking shop assistant was kind enough to ask me when the baby was due. Miaow! 

It was years later, on that watershed day I have reflected on in a previous post, when my mother was finally too ill with dementia to recognise me, that it finally dawned on me how the chief motivation in my battle with weight-gain was simply to spite her! Now she didn’t know who the fuck I was, there was no one to prove wrong anymore. 

I’ve done enough work on myself to extinguish almost entirely the spiteful voice that once had the power to reduce me to a baseline of self-loathing and self-harming every time I did something ‘wrong’ or looked less than very slim. And now I am suspicious of my relationship with exercise - I question why exactly I do it; whether it’s doing me more harm than good.  

Food and drink are two other contenders for addiction and abuse. That’s a whole blog post in itself.

But, as Luisa Omielan says as she cuddles her middle. “I love this - this means I have dinner with friends.”

She’s so right. Listen up, Ego. 

Something for the Weekend

Baking, scorching, melting ...

The current British summer has taken us all (as usual) by surprise. And (as usual) the transport system has failed in a huge way, electrics are blowing up, and many a fair-skinned bod has been toasted a startling shade of scarlet.

As this taste of the tropics continues, the comely invitation of al fresco pleasures and picnics will be impossible to resist this coming weekend. Nevertheless, I feel the lull in my blogging should be interrupted, so that if anyone is so inclined to peruse their 'device',  they might stumble on this amuse bouche.  

An offering that, in my languorous state, requires little more effort than a few clicks, is a story that I adapted for inclusion in a story cabaret held by the delightful editorial duo Little Fishes, here in Lewes, East Sussex. 

The theme of the cabaret was 'Objet D'Art' and offered such an array of talent, that when I finally took my place for the final slot, I felt a tad amateurish and intimidated. However, the cocktails worked admirably at steeling my nerves, and it was well received. 

So, here it is - The Ersatz Idol.

 I was still teaching English when I saw Kinkakuji for the first time. If you're anything like me, that won’t mean much. It means Golden Temple. That golden temple in Japan, on all the postcards and stuff? I went along because that’s what you see when you're in Kyoto. We spent five hours on a train to get there. I bloody wanted to see that temple.

It was almost Autumn, but it was still hot. It was late in the afternoon when we got there, me and my two Aussie colleagues, Chris and Kate. It wasn’t even that crowded, but it felt like there were too many people. I started to feel panicky and suffocated. I fumbled for my camera and watched helplessly as the lens cap fluttered to the ground and disappeared into the grass. The camera felt slippery in my hands as I squinted through the viewfinder at the temple.

It was so golden; I was dazzled. It was delicately perched above a pond like a dancing maiko draped in her wedding kimono. I had never seen a building like this. It was too beautiful to be true. Too beautiful to exist.

I felt butterflies in my stomach. I had senses only for this beautiful object. The incomprehensible muttering of the visitors faded. I only heard birds, the wind in bamboo and I seemed to sense the temple itself resonating with a tone too low or too high in frequency for my human ear. I wondered if it was a time machine hosting the spirits of eagle faced samurai and emaciated zen masters. Shifting in its shimmering form between eras; appearing to me now in my stunned and static present.

Then I felt the tourists pressing against me, anxious to do the next thing on their itineraries.  The brief, magical rapport between me and the golden temple faded. I realised Chris and Kate were both hovering hesitantly, eyes questioning. I ignored them, turning away to skirt the boundaries of the tiny wooden fence, my head inclined awkwardly, with one aim: to capture the temple at any and every angle and fix those visions in my mind’s eye.

Reluctantly, driven on by the surge of the crowds, I followed the path to the gardens, and still my eyes searched for the temple that winked in tantalising  instances through dense bamboo.

I found Chris and Kate near the exit. We sat on a dry dusty rock across from the souvenir shop and waited for the bus. I began to read the creased pamphlet in my hand. I must have gasped.

“What’s wrong?” asked Kate.

 “The temple. It’s a fake.”

Chris grimaced as he swallowed cold tea from a can.

“Yeah,” he said. “Some guy burned down the original.”

“I think there was a book about it,” added Kate.

I couldn’t believe they'd known and hadn’t said a word.

“It’s still amazing though, isn’t it?” said Kate.

I didn’t answer. Kate stood to join Chris in an attempt to flag down a taxi.

I thought about how I had been sold this fake thing. How I’d been cheated. I had wanted to possess that thing of beauty -  I wanted to suck up its essence inside me.

And now, here I am in a hostess bar, perched up on my high stool staring at my reflection in the black granite table top.  Now when I try to imagine the man who could destroy something as beautiful as Kinkakuji,  I can. All too easily.

When I hear the door,  I keep my eyes cast down and put on my demure smile that’s twisted into a smirk by my reflection. Mama-san rattles out her greeting with fraudulent delight and I listen to the reply.

It’s for me.

Kimura-san sits at my table, eyes round with pleasure, ready to glug down his gorgeous gaijin along with his whisky. He doesn’t know I’m a fake. The real thing burned down years ago.

My Weakness for Marilyn

At 14 years old I enjoyed my first taste of recognition as a writer - I won a prize in the annual Post Office Letter Writing Competition. 

The theme was: write a letter to someone you admire, so I wrote to Marilyn Monroe. 

She is mesmerisingly beautiful and a joy to behold, so it’s not immediately obvious why a lank-haired, flat-chested English teenager might feel moved to write to a bosomy blonde American sex goddess. Yet, the moment I saw her on screen and then found myself caught by those bewitching eyes staring down at me from the shelves of the Athena poster art store, I sensed a connection. 

Reading about her unsettled and deeply unhappy childhood and her estrangement from her mother, I discovered the common ground we shared, and what I (and countless others) had recognised in Marilyn’s eyes. To the teenaged me she was a beacon of hope - she had survived suffering and become a star!

Marilyn Monroe’s gift for connecting with people has transcended her death, not just through her stunning photographic portraits. Year after year, memoirs of her briefest affairs and friendships have ballooned into books and films to feed the public appetite for all things Marilyn.

A few weeks ago, decades after my teenage crush, a paperback of Lois Banner’s Marilyn: The Passion and the Paradox caught my attention, and once again I found myself bitten by the Marilyn bug. 

Banner, a scholar rather than a fan, pinpointed Marilyn’s mysterious and untimely death as a chief reason for her continued popularity. She argues that people are free to make of her story what they wish, depending on how they believe she died. And, had she survived, given the extraordinary decade of race and gender politics that unfolded following her demise, there are almost endless permutations of how she might have become.

But, for me, reading about Marilyn again was an uneasy trip back to my former self, as well as an examination of  where I am now. 

Banner’s scrupulous exploration of her highly nuanced character, the sheer drudgery and sexual exploitation that lay behind the glamour of Hollywood, her extraordinarily fast-paced, demanding life and the debilitating demons that dogged her to the last, all served to make me feel far more informed about Marilyn than ever before. But it was also difficult to distinguish where the research ended and my wisdom had grown. 

At 14 I eagerly read anything about her I could get my hands on. It was usually disappointing. Most books about her seemed to be by men who claimed to have slept with her. The experience of having sex with Monroe was not something that particularly interested me, and I was too young to appreciate the self-harm that her promiscuity signified. I was far more intrigued by the dichotomy that her meteoric success crowned by such tragedy represented. 

In fact, it went deeper than that. To some extent I wanted to be Marilyn. I didn’t see how just being me would get me anywhere. Being told on a daily basis I was a Plain Jane and I needed to ‘work on my personality’ proved that. 

But, if the physical transformation lay beyond the realms of possibility, playing the part wasn’t. I spent my Saturday afternoons listening endlessly to a cassette of Marilyn’s songs, learning every word of them down to the last boop boopy doop. Desperately hoping some of the magic would rub off. 

Marilyn’s magic is inimitable. Michelle Williams in My Week with Marilyn, came close to portraying it. But as I grew older I began to understand that I did have something that Marilyn had in spade loads  - and that was sex. 

It seemed like magic when, despite everything my mother had said, I realised that men found me attractive. And it easily became addictive as my shredded ego sucked up male attention like a drunk hoovering up dregs at the end of a party. 

But as intoxifying as it is, it also becomes its own trap. If your currency is sexual attraction, then age can only devalue your net worth. As your bum and your boobs shift southward and your complexion becomes less than pristine, you need to search your soul for something else to cherish. 

I wonder if she would have managed?

I no longer have a copy of my letter to Marilyn, but I think I probably asked her, why oh why, when you had everything that is supposed to make you happy in this world - beauty, success and fame - were you clearly not? Surely you are the proof of their fraud? 

Thirty years after writing that letter, I realise that she is also the proof of something else. To be absolutely yourself is by no means easy. It is a work in progress and the hardest thing you will ever do. To find yourself without being taken in and taken over by the fake promises of money and drugs and vanity is a momentous task. 

You might just die before you do it. 

How to be Friends with a Tory

Lib Dem Norman Baker. Sad to see him go. 

The result of the election in Britain which took place May 7th 2015 has been the most divisive of any election I’ve participated in. 

In the town of Lewes, the collective reaction to the Conservative victory has been amplified by the local results. For the past 18 years we’ve had the pleasure of a dogged and dynamic local MP in the shape of Liberal Democrat, Norman Baker. But on Friday we woke up to find we had lost him for good. For the first time since I moved to this town in 2001, we have a Conservative (Tory) MP, Maria Caulfield. 

Politics is one of those subjects which, like religion, is looked upon as something to avoid if you don’t wish to offend. But all such caution has been thrown to the wind around here. Everyone’s talking about politics, and every left-leaning citizen feels as if they are part of a  Tudor court conspiracy, where every neighbour they once trusted, every friend they’ve taken for granted, could be one of the secret Tory voters who have betrayed them. 

The truth as I understand it, from the remarks I’ve read and a perusal of Caulfield’s plan, is that it’s not the town voters who have suddenly turned blue (in fact there has been a swing to Green). It’s in the outlying areas such as Newhaven and Seaford where people perceive nurse and farmer’s daughter, Caulfield, as someone who is working in their interests for local hospitals and causes, as opposed to republican rebel Baker who they see as preoccupied with Lewes Town issues. 

The most notorious Lewesian backlash, so far, has been from a local plant-shop owner, Matt Woodruff, whose polite notice informing Tory-voting customers they will be charged a 10% tax on their purchases prompted photos of his message to go viral, and he was even featured in The Guardian.

For my own part, I was startled on Sunday morning when I saw the responses to my Saturday evening status update: “Heartened by the news of protests in London #Toriesoutnow”. Two friends had responded - both with the same argument - though one was clearly angrier than the other. That was the idea that by supporting the protesters in London, I might also condone the vandalism of the war memorial which took place during the demonstration. 

I do not condone vandalism. It’s ugly, it can be inconvenient and even dangerous. But as another friend of mine put it, “... people are very,very angry ...” about what a Conservative victory means to them - loss of benefits, loss of public services such as buses and hospitals, loss of facilities to care for disabled children and adults. 

It was vandalism of the memorial that gave the victors a stick to beat the protestors. Yet, I find it extraordinary that some people can take such high umbrage at graffiti on a piece of stone (which was cleaned up the next day) and yet care so little about the vandalism of our society at the hands of a self-serving government. 

Another point is, if defacing a memorial to the war-dead is so offensive, we have to remember for what reason these people died. Surely not to see their grandchildren queuing up at food banks? For their descendants to think twice about a visit to the dentist because of the expense, or to have to lie for hours on a trolley in a corridor because a hospital is overrun and understaffed?

I thanked my friends for their comments and my ensuing discussion with one of them. It’s instinctive to turn away from opposing opinions and judge our political opponents as much as we feel judged. It’s far more challenging to seek a common ground rather than draw conclusions about people’s values and insult and objectify them.  

I love and appreciate biting satire and heartfelt, articulate diatribes. I find some views of humanity distasteful and bizarre. Yet, if we insist on only being friends with likeminded people we only perpetrate the animosity of an ‘us and them’ mentality.  How are we ever to celebrate diversity if we continue to draw these lines? How are we to be prompted into examining our opinions and see if they are worth defending (and vice versa)? 

And, even if our political opponents are so dyed in the wool that they believe they are absolutely in the right, perhaps for one tiny moment, because you are friends and you like - or even love each other - they can see that even a leftist, would-be protester is a human being. Just like them.

A Bloody British Shame: Let’s See the End to Tampon Tax

Gender equality is often measured by opportunities - to be educated; to work ; to be paid the same money for the same work. Education and wage inequality get a lot of attention in the Western world where the school system seems to favour female learners, yet women often experience the very opposite out in the working world. 

However, societal attitudes to gender can be more subtle; more fundamental. When countries choose to tax menstruation, for example. 

Among those countries is Britain.  

A Value Added Tax of 5% is added to sanitary goods in Britain. True, it's certainly not the biggest menstruation tariff in Europe, and it was reduced from 17.5% in 2000. However, why do these essential items need to be taxed at all?

It's no secret that the British General Election 2015 is just around the corner, and politicians are thrashing it out on issues they hope will inspire us to vote for them.

And here's an issue that is important to me because it affects me, and millions of women. 

Oddly enough, if I want free condoms, I can get those from my doctor. If I want free contraceptive pills, I can get them from my doctor. Am I being too cynical to view these as things that are for the benefit of men, as much as me?

And, of course, how do homeless women cope?(Read this informative article to find out more, and how you can help).

Interestingly, similar items that may be used by both sexes, such as incontinence pads, are exempt. However, sanitary goods AND maternity pads are both subject to taxation. Fair? I think not. This, as campaigner Laura Coryton argues, reflects the attitude of an era when women used old rags to soak up their menstrual blood and then discretely burned them. Perhaps back then the concept of a disposable sanitary towel  - let alone a tampon - was seen as a luxury. 

But Mr Osbourne, this is the 21st century! Today's news is that the Labour Party candidate, Ed Miliband has declared any tax on sanitary products as "ridiculous". But his disappointing caveat is, "I can't promise I will go further because there are these rules in place..."

But I’m excited to see that an issue that has bugged me for a large proportion of my life is finally being addressed by Laura Coryton, a 21-year-old student who, along with her supporters, took a petition voicing their objections to the government. Only time will tell if the noisy protests against this blatantly sexist tax has fallen on deaf ears.

Perhaps they were too discrete and polite. Just as girls and women are supposed to be about this subject. Perhaps to really make an impact a crowd of women standing in blood-stained pants brandishing blood-stained bed sheets should turn up at 11 Downing Street and demand to know why sanitary goods aren’t available free, let alone why women are taxed on these essential items.

Meanwhile, to check my facts, I find the www.gov.uk website on taxable goods makes for interesting reading. 

Children’s car seats and booster seats (a legal safety requirement) are also taxable to the tune of 5%, but …

Physical education and sports activities: exempt.

Betting and gaming, lottery games, bingo: exempt.

Cess pools and septic tanks: exempt. 

But this has to be among my favourites:

Helicopters - for sale or charter: exempt. 

At the bottom the page, I’m asked, ‘Is there anything wrong with this page?’

Well, no. I suppose not, if it all this data is entirely accurate. However, there is something wrong with this tax system. Because while children may be entitled to tax-free clothes and shoes, tax-free reading material and a tax-free education, as soon as a female begins her periods she is taxed for the necessity of her basic hygiene and comfort requirements. 

That’s just wrong. Period. 

Knowing the Drill: Why I Hate Going to the Dentist

Aaah! The relief. Half an hour of mild discomfort and two weeks of pain is gone. 

I love modern dentistry. At least, I should.

It still took me over a week after cracking my tooth to pluck up the courage to book an appointment. 

I hesitate to say I’m actually dental phobic, because I think there’s a rational explanation behind my anxiety.

I recall the utter disbelief I felt when an Australian work colleague mentioned  - not boasted - just happened to drop into the conversation -  that she didn’t have any fillings.

Yeah, right, I smiled knowingly. 

But she didn’t. Not a single solitary one.

We were the same age. She was not on a sugar free diet. How could this be?

It took me a while to figure it out. Years, actually. Probably not until I had my own child and took her to the dentist. And heard gentle, coaxing phrases like, “We don’t want to scare her, so we aren’t going to drill out that cavity. It’ll fall out soon enough.”

Then the penny dropped. I’d had the dentist from hell.

There was some pretty stiff competition in the 70s. I think most British friends in my age group suffered filling after filling after filling. The dentists drilled like children’s teeth were hiding some secret golden elixir that only two fillings a visit would procure. 

The first time I experienced a pain-free drilling was as an adult. So didn’t novocaine work so well in the 70s? Or was it that they didn’t want to use too much? Perhaps the terrifying haitus that anticipated the nerve-shattering agony of drill-hitting-nerve was thought to be character-building. 

But on top of all these generic dental delights, there was my dentist. A practitioner of such supreme awfulness, I think he modelled himself on Orin Scrivello in Little Shop of Horrors.  

You tend to take things for granted when you’re a kid: the huge dog, the blood on the apron, your mother laughing at the skid marks the dentist had on his overall when he pulled it out from the back of his trousers - yes, you read it right -  there was an actual dog in the room where I got my teeth filled. Hell, I didn’t care! Who wouldn’t want a distraction like that while having their teeth drilled?

Clearly hygiene was not a big issue (which is the only reason I haven’t mentioned the Nazi dentist of Marathon Man yet. He was cruel, but he was clean) and neither were the finer points of administering anaesthetics. 

For the kind of major tooth-yanking that a pair of pliers down the fairground couldn’t manage, it was gas, back then. Rubber mask over the face, psychedelic designs heralding your imminent unconsciousness and the vomiting of blood and bile that meant you were waking up again. 

That’s if you did. 

Because not one, but two people died in that grubby black chair where I’d had my teeth pulled and drilled, due to the inexpert administration of anaesthetics. 

Interesting that it took two lives to get him finally struck off. Even more interesting for me that my mother was disappointed not to be able to take her child there any longer. 

Poldark: More than Just a Pretty Face

OK. I admit it it. It’s all too easy to be distracted by the Grecian form of Aidan Turner; the brooding angst of his knitted brow and perfect cheekbones. But in all truth - Poldark is immensely popular - is that really the only reason why?

 I remember the original BBC Poldark with Robin Ellis and Angharad Rees. Yes, I was knee-high to a grasshopper, but that just goes to show what a whopping impact this TV drama had. Attracting 14 million viewers and supposedly charming entire church congregations away from evening worship, it was a sweeping romantic epic during one of the most austere periods of British postwar history.

Let’s put it into perspective. 

Between 1950 and 1975-1977,  when Poldark was broadcast, hundreds of coal mines in the North East and the West Midlands had closed due to declining production. We had a national shortage of coal compounded by the 1973 oil crisis which drove prices - and inflation - sky high. The shortage was so critical that the government opted for a three-day-week to ration the commercial use of electricity. 

One of the most vivid memories for those of us who were kids in the 70s is the power cuts. Yet, though the cosy intimacy of those candlelit evenings huddled around paraffin heaters sipping Bovril might stoke a rosy glow of nostalgia for the kids of that time, our dads were nervously working to rule in the shadow of the unions and mums were struggling to prepare hot meals after queuing for hours to get basic provisions.

Could it be that the abandoned tin mines of Poldark’s Cornwall struck with its audience as familiar? And how many viewers identified with those country folk huddled around frugal candlelit meals when, in those unreliable times foreshadowing the Winter of Discontent, they might any day expect to do the very same thing. 

Almost exactly two centuries before, in 1773, the Boston Tea Party tipped British imperialism into a dispute that erupted into the American Revolution. 

Why do I mention this? 

Because this is the struggle from which Captain Ross Poldark returns, to find his father dead, his heritage in jeopardy, his beloved in another’s arms. But no less significantly, in the latest BBC adaptation, Poldark returns no longer loyal to his nation’s agenda. He casts bitter aspersions on the rationale of war, and his sentiments echo Thomas Paine’s Common Sense: the cause of America is …the cause of all mankind.  He is a moral man at odds with the amoral climate that confronts him,  personified by scheming financiers who pick profit over people. 

As a war ‘hero’ he stands as part of the powers that be, but by disputing the legitimacy of this label, he puts himself at odds with the establishment and its forces, consequently garnering suspicion, contempt and violence.

As John Buell writes in his essay ‘Politics of Heroism’, if anyone today questions the heroism of soldiers, they are treated to a barrage of abuse and disdain, “Typical of right wing efforts to use such controversies as an opportunity to question the patriotism and morality of those who oppose [the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq]”. 

Centuries on, governments continue our involvement in wars we do not understand or agree with. And the rich and powerful are still squeezing those with the least to give. 

I believe Poldark may serve, yet again, to remind us of the economic subsidence created by our nation’s evolution from one of industry and manufacture to one of services and finance. Rents and house prices in the South East continue to rise at a mind-boggling rate. Banks, hedge-fund managers and private investors are the movers and shakers. Our pyramid of needs is peaked with tax-avoidance schemes and squats on a base of the food-bank fed. 

So, how we crave a hero like Ross Poldark! A man who gets his own hands dirty, who eschews bribes and money-lending sharks for real industry, a man who takes responsibility for his employees, and takes in those in need - not as charity, but as an opportunity to work for a living and gain independence. 

The Telegraph good-humouredly describes the new series as ‘glossy but empty headed’.  To be sure, I’m not suggesting that at face value it’s any more nuanced and many-layered than the contents of The Great British Bake-Off. However, it’s a mistake to dismiss anything as popular as this without looking more closely. 

The press may choose to joke over the catatonic wonderment brought about by Mr Turner’s stunning physique, but just what is it that lodges Ross Poldark so firmly into the public’s affections?  Is it merely his perfect pecs, or is it that deep down we recognise a hero who could save us from those who would beat us and cheat us?