Boot Camp

Over the last few days I have been reading, with a growing sense of extreme sympathy, my housemate's account of having spent a few days at the New You Boot Camp.

Zara is a beauty writer, and thus she gets better freebies than I do (I'm a classical music writer). She gets free haircuts, more make up than she'll ever use, swanky spa treatments, Rapunzel-style hair extensions, and until now I've been quite envious. Not any more.

Zara has just spent a week somewhere that explicitly describes itself as a "military-style weight-loss camp" on a strictly-enforced diet, surrounded by other women who are also on a strictly-enforced diet. When I first heard that she was doing some sort of fitness camp I thought it sounded quite fun - I'm quite the fitness freak myself. But the more I've read her diary, the more horrified I've been.

Lots of exercise? Bring it on.
Healthy food? Yum.
Healthy food in very small portions? Hehe. That's funny. Where's the rest of my food?
5am starts? Eeeep...
No caffeine? WHAT???
5am starts with no caffeine? Oh HELL no!
Swimming in freezing cold water? I wanted my mummy just from reading about that.

It was the swimming in freezing cold water bit that made me realise that I was never, EVER doing ANYTHING like this, no matter how desperate I am to drop a dress size. It also made me wonder why on earth any woman would pay to have some burly guy in an army uniform yell at her and drag her out of bed at 5am to go for a dip in the North Sea in November. Was it perhaps some sort of self-punishment for not being thin? Over tea last night she told me: "I think a lot of it's to do with control. A lot of women have serious issues with food and exercise, and somewhere like this, all of the control is taken away from you. I think a lot of the women are paying for someone else to take responsibility as much as anything else."

Interesting.

Zara is now back from the camp and very much alive, although she doesn't look any thinner...but then again, she was very slim in the first place. I have gained a lot of respect for her, and also an appreciation of the fact that I get sent to concerts for work rather than boot camps.

Shoes

A couple of years ago I was on a quick lunchtime shoe shopping binge with a colleague. She picked up a pair of high heels, turned them round, and put them back on the shelf with a distasteful, "Eurgh, they've got lesbian heels." Since the heels in question were of a clumpy nature I guess she was buying into the idea that gay women wear ugly shoes and thus are ugly women. Since when did women's shoes become so ridiculously fetishised? How did it come to pass that there is a style of shoe associated with being an unattractive individual? In a way, it's kind of liberating - you can control how attractive people think of you as being by changing your shoes. But it's also just plain weird. And it royally sucks that in order to be considered "attractive" you have to be uncomfortable.

Why must our sexual attractiveness be tied up in being uncomfortable? Why is a woman teetering in stilettos more attractive than a woman walking confidently in trainers? Why is "sexy" underwear made of scratchy lace, "chicken fillets" and what a male friend of mine charmingly refers to as "arse floss"? Why is it so difficult to find nice, pretty underwear that doesn't involve "arse floss"?

In so many cultures throughout history, a woman's attractiveness has been directly related to how uncomfortable, and in extreme cases how disabled, she is. There was foot binding, which rendered the victim unable to hobble more than a few metres, and corsets which rearranged the internal organs. There are some cultures today that feed their girls until they are morbidly obese in order to make them more attractive marriage prospects, some that butcher girls' genitals for similar reasons. These are things that parents (usually mothers) do to girls though, in order to increase their prospects in highly patriarchal societies in which the best a girl can hope for out of life is to be well married. High heels and arse floss are things that women do to themselves in a society in which they have the same legal rights as men. They choose to do it to themselves. But then again, and depending of course on what your profession is, being attractive can massively increase one's success at work. Has anybody ever seen that back page of Glamour magazine, where they take photos of random people on the street and critique their outfits? There was a horrid one a while back, in which they'd photographed a woman wearing a suit with trainers and said that this was a massive no-no. It made me spit with rage - this woman probably had to wear horribly uncomfortable shoes at work, and why the hell shouldn't she wear comfy shoes for the journey and change when she got to the office? Are we to look perfectly sexy 24 hours a day? I wonder if Glamour thinks that it's acceptable for us to take our heels off at night?

There is nothing inherently vile about high heels. I like high heels as much as the next girl. In my wardrobe you will find several stratospheric, spangly, studded creations that would make Carrie Bradshaw weep with envy (although thankfully for my bank balance, none of them are Manolos). However, on an everyday basis you're much more likely to find me in old martial arts trainers. I have worn out several pairs of jodhpur boots in my time, but I have yet to wear out a stiletto heel. Does this mean I'm a minger? Well if it does, at least I'm comfortable. And at least I have a filter for any men who are so ridiculously shallow that their opinion of a woman is coloured by her shoes not being sufficiently sexy.

I get considerably more male attention when I wear high heels than when I wear flat shoes, to quite an amazing extent. I can simply change my shoes and nothing else, and watch the number of neanderthals who try to grope me in the street skyrocket. I can't believe that they actually make me that much more attractive. I just can't believe that being a few inches taller is going to make a significant difference to my attractiveness - I honestly don't think many men are that bothered about the difference between 5ft2 and 5ft6, surely? Likewise, I don't think looking slightly thinner is going to make much of a difference either. There's also the theory that wearing high heels forces the wearer to arch their back and stick out their tits and arse, but I don't buy that either - I happen to have a lot of tits and arse and a very hollow back even without high heels, and the heels still massively affect the amount of male attention I get. I'm sure it's about more than just how you look in the shoes. Because high heels are stereotyped as "sexy", wearing them gives out a "message" that you are hot and ready and up for it. (I may well be hot and ready and up for it, but not with some creep who yells at me to get my tits out just because I am wearing "heterosexual shoes").

Most of the time this attention is just annoying, but it can be terrifying. It takes me ten minutes to walk from the tube station to my house, and last Saturday night, whilst wearing a pair of high-heeled cowboy boots with skinny jeans, I had two rape threats during that ten minutes. One of them was particularly unpleasant, involving two guys in a car cruising past me for a couple of minutes wolf whistling and shouting about how they were going to take me up the arse, and then speeding up and turning into a side street which of course made me think they were lying in wait. Of course they weren't waiting for me in that side street - they had sped away by the time I walked past. They'd just been threatening me for fun.

Because you're more likely to get harrassed when you look "sexy" and because you're more likely to look "sexy" when you're wearing something that in some way restricts your movement, the very time at which you're most likely to be threatened is the time at which you're least likely to be able to physically defend yourself. The main reason I was scared by those naughty men on Saturday night was that I knew I wouldn't be able to run as fast as them, and that a black belt in taekwondo is no good when you're wearing skinny jeans. I wonder if vulnerability = sexiness. Would I have been even more "sexy" if I'd been wearing shoes so uncomfortable I'd been struggling to walk? Is a woman who can't fight back the best kind?

I know that the official feminist party line on this is "it doesn't make a difference what you wear, women get harrassed regardless" but let's face it, women do get harrassed much more when they are dressed in a manner which the patriarchy defines as "sexy". I know damn well that if I had worn that skinny jeans and bomber jacket combo with flat boots, I would not have received anything like the same amount of harrassment, and the harrassment I had received would not have been so unpleasant. I know this because that is exactly the sort of outfit I wear on an everyday basis with little or no trouble - it's only the addition of a pair of high heels that makes men think it's okay to harrass me in such an aggressive manner. This is one of the most annoying things - you know that if you hadn't worn the heels you wouldn't be being harrassed so much, and so you feel some sense of responsibility for it. Or, if you're me, you don't feel that the disgusting behaviour of such lowlifes should affect your wardrobe choices and so you wear the heels regardless and get very angry at the patriarchy.

I was out from 6pm - midnight on Saturday night, and during that time I probably walked past hundreds of men. Only three harrassed me, so it's not as if men in general are a problem here. But those three were enough to make me feel petrified, furious, embarrassed and, as ever, astounded at the effect a pair of heels seems to have on what "sort of girl" people think I am. It's frankly weird that the shoes a woman wears are considered to be so heavily indicative of attractiveness, sexual orientation, sexual availability, so many attributes that really have sod all to do with shoes. How did all this happen? Why are we judged as ugly or "easy", gay or straight, depending on whether or not we happen to have chosen spangly stilettos or DM boots to go with our outfits on any given day? And how the hell can we stop it?

Fight like a girl

Lately I've been thinking about how great it is to be a sporty woman. I think getting seriously involved with a sport is one of the most empowering things a woman can do.

Three and a half years ago now I took up taekwondo, a Korean martial art based on karate. I'd always wanted to do martial arts, but my parents had vetoed it when I was a child on the grounds of my propensity for getting into fights at school (probably a wise decision I have to admit). At 21, I finally got round to donning some "angry white pyjamas" to learn how to kick ass. I'd acquired enough disposable income to join a gym, but it cost about the same to join a taekwondo club instead, and the rest is history. I'm now just about to take my black belt grading. I'm a much more confident person in general than I was at 21 for a variety of reasons, but taekwondo has probably been the biggest influence in terms of having more confidence in my body.

As women we are bombarded with pressure from the media, from our peers, sometimes from men, to see our bodies as wayward things that must be kept in check, that mustn't be fed too much, that exist largely if not solely for aesthetic purposes, and that life will not be worth living if we gain a few pounds. A woman's body exists to be beautiful, not athletic, and beautiful according to pretty strict guidelines at that. How we feel about our bodies, and often consequently our self-esteem, is dictated by a cruel lottery of genetics. And if we have drawn a poor or even a not-quite-perfect set of numbers in the genetics lottery, we are to spend our lives striving to improve our bodies, not allowing ourselves to be truly happy or relaxed until we achieve perfection. It is of course much more important that we are attractive than healthy or fit.

I know that people go to the gym to "keep fit", but for a lot of women, "keeping fit" is synonymous with "keeping thin", and not just because slimness is for most people a by-product of fitness. Virtually every woman I know who has a gym membership sweats it out on a treadmill specifically in order to get or stay thin, and good luck to them for not achieving that just by starving themselves, but it concerns me that women by and large are more concerned with how their body looks than with what it can do.

If you do a sport rather than just going to the gym, you are doing physical activity for a purpose other than just to look good. Being sporty gives you the same physical benefits of going to the gym, but with none of the weight obsession, wall-to-wall mirrors, lycra, posing, sleazy guys and other assorted annoyances that gyms are associated with. You will get fit, and yes, you will get thin if being thin is the state that your body is destined to adopt when it is at the peak of fitness, but you will do so by focusing on having fun and getting good at something instead of on how your body looks. Much more enjoyable and massively more empowering.

When you are training or competing in an actual sport, nobody gives a flying fuck how your body looks. When I'm beating the crap out of a focus pad, demonstrating a pattern for some beginners, kicking a 6ft man in the head, or just sitting around comparing bruises after class, it is the only time I feel that nobody, absolutely nobody, cares about how my body looks.

At my taekwondo club, it is not at all unusual to find men discussing their diets. It's a given that everybody will be watching what they eat to a certain extent, making sure that they have a healthy diet giving them the required energy and nutrients to perform at their best. Being sporty makes it acceptable for men to take an interest in healthy eating. And it makes it acceptable for women to eat proper, substantial food that gives them the energy they need.

A while ago, I can't remember when, I was getting into the shower when I caught sight of myself in the mirror and suddenly realised that I had no cellulite. Before taking up taekwondo I'd had some - not a huge amount, but quite a lot for a 20-year-old. I hadn't been massively distressed about it, but I hadn't liked it either. I'd occasionally succumbed to that masochistic practice of standing in one's underwear in front of a full-length mirror and thinking, Yuk. And now, after a couple of years of regular exercise, it had gone. But it wasn't the fact that it had disappeared that I saw as significant - it was the fact that I hadn't even noticed its disappearance. At some point, I'd stopped caring.

These days, if I find myself in front of a full-length mirror, instead of appraising how my body looks, I throw a few kicks and admire my ninja skillz (fellow martial artists, don't try and tell me you've never done this). If I'd spent the last four years at the gym instead of in the dojang I would be just as fit, but I wouldn't be able to do a pretty mean 540 degree turning kick, I wouldn't have a shelf full of trophies and medals, and I'd still be examining my thighs for cellulite. If I was ever in danger of getting involved with the mad body beautiful culture that plagues young women, taekwondo saved me from it. I am no longer a slave to my body - my body is a slave to me.

Sorry to pontificate but I really think if there's one piece of advice I can offer to every woman it's to find a sport you enjoy and do it. What physical activities did you enjoy as a child? What have you always wanted to try? It's not often that women are encouraged to take up an actual sport as opposed to simply squeezing themselves into pink lycra and going to spinning classes in order to keep their lardy bits in check, and I think that this is a great shame. There is a lot of untapped female sporting talent out there, and a lot of women who are missing out on getting fit in a massively enjoyable manner. There are some who would say that running around like a mad thing and getting sweaty and dishevelled is unfeminine, but to hell with them. Taking up a sport allows you to reclaim your body and to use it to its true potential.

Happy new year!

The more eagle-eyed amongst you may have noticed a distinct lack of posts recently. This is not because I have seen the light and decided to abandon my feminist sensibilities for a career as a glamour model (although whether or not this is specifically an "anti-feminist" thing to do is of course debatable...) It is because I have spent the last six weeks in Central America eating termites, climbing active volcanoes, drinking “local” alcohol purchased in old Pepsi bottles from street vendors of questionable personal hygiene and other such dangerous activities after which I am probably lucky to have escaped only with a broken toe and an unexplained rash. However, before I departed on my big dangerous adventure, I did promise myself that I would return with as much feminist-type stuff to write about as possible.

I had of course had fantastic visions of securing killer interviews with downtrodden indigenous women who had undergone forced sterilisation, teenagers who didn’t know what a condom was, people whose relatives had died from back-street abortions and stuffy politicians who thought that women should all go back to the cocina and make them some gallopinto. Unfortunately, the fact that I was more inclined to climb volcanoes than to ask random women about abortion laws, and the fact that my Spanish is far from fluent, meant that I returned with nothing quite so spectacular. I do however have some (rather crude and elementary) musings about young Central American men and their attitudes to women.

The last time I travelled outside Europe was to Egypt where, as I’m sure many readers are aware, harrassment of women, and Western women in particular, is a serious problem. My friends and I endured horrendous harrassment, the men all seemed oblivious to the word "no" in any language and I managed to escape from a potential rapist who caught up with me and asked me to marry him (I quoted Clueless - "AS IF!!!") So I’m sure you can appreciate that I was a little apprehensive about travelling to Latin America, where I had heard that the men had something of a “Casanova” reputation.

I’m pleased to say that in Central America, my experiences suggest that this reputation is unjustified. I've already posted about this whilst I was out there so I won't repeat myself, but as a trend I didn’t find the amorous attentions of the men I met out there anywhere near as obnoxious as those of some of the lowlifes I have to contend with back home.

There was one thing in particular that I wasn’t madly keen on about Central American men though: they seem to think that women are incapable of doing ANYTHING without their help. And I mean anything. It doesn’t offend my feminist sensibilities in the slightest if a man helps me carry something heavy, unscrews a jar for me or fetches me something off a high shelf, but insisting on taking my hand as I climb down a flight of steps? Or helping me with the massively demanding task of walking round a corner? I used to be a gymnast for heaven’s sake! At first, I found this mildly amusing. I didn’t really mind - they were just trying to be helpful, and it seemed rude and ungrateful to scowl and say that I was perfectly capable of doing it on my own, thank you. But after a few days, it began to wear extremely thin. It wasn’t the implication of female incompetence that got to me, but the constant unwanted physical contact. The guiding arms in the small of my back, the grasping hands, the complete strangers insisting on touching me, however innocent and non-sexual it was. I don’t enjoy being touched by strangers, and it set my nerves on edge trying to sidestep all of the outstretched “helping” hands. Alas, the men also seemed much more inclined to offer such chivalry to young, attractive women than to older ones. At one point as a few of us were getting onto a boat, I was behind a sixtysomething woman who was carrying a big rucksack and who would probably have been grateful of a helping hand. But it was me whose hand was taken as I walked onto the boat, not hers. I don’t know if this guy expected me to be impressed with his act of “chivalry”, or if holding some Gringa’s hand for five seconds was the nearest he’d come to getting his rocks off all year, but either way I wasn’t impressed.

Then there were just annoying little incidents that demonstrated perceived female inferiority. At one point I went on a riding excursion and despite telling the guide that I had been riding since I was a child and could easily handle a forward-going horse, I was assigned a geriatric pony who was apt to fall asleep every five minutes whilst a less experienced male companion struggled to rein in the equine equivalent of Speedy Gonzales. Whenever it came to negotiating with taxi drivers, they were only interested in speaking to the guys. The general feeling I got was that the men out there liked women and certainly didn’t wish them any harm, but didn’t believe them as intelligent or capable as men. As a woman, I was viewed as a sort of oversized child with delusions of adult competence. However, at no point did I feel like screaming or beating anybody over the head with a hardback copy of The Second Sex, so it can’t have been that bad.

Although all of the countries I visited were more inherently patriarchal than Britain, it didn’t seem that attitudes towards women in general were any worse overall than they are at home. It would be interesting to see if I still had that view after living there for a while, rather than simply visiting. To a visitor, gender disparity doesn’t stand out as a massive problem, and yet in countries (Nicaragua and El Salvador. Oh, and Chile too, but I’ve never been there so can’t comment) where women are denied abortions for ANY reason, it’s impossible to see how this could not be the case. And the fact that I have returned home with lots to say about Central American men but nothing to say about the women is significant. I simply didn’t meet any women at all, other than the ones who were trying to sell me handicrafts in the street with five kids in tow. Perhaps the reason that patriarchy doesn’t stand out as a massive problem over there is that the people oppressed by it don’t have a voice. Or perhaps they are genuinely happy - it's impossible to tell. It’s all very interesting and I wish I had more to say about it.

It's rude to stare

It's pretty well accepted that however a woman dresses and wherever she walks, sexual assault is wrong. Most people would agree that shouting lewd things also is wrong. But I go one further: I think staring is wrong. I'm not talking about just looking at an attractive woman, noticing her, appreciating her beauty, eyeing her up in a covert manner or entertaining lustful thoughts. There's clearly nothing wrong with that. What I'm talking about is the lascivious, aggressive stare of a man who wants you to know that he's staring at you. He wants you to know that it's his God-given right to look you up and down like that and there's nothing you can do about it. It's as much a display of dominance as telling a woman to get her tits out. It can make you feel just as violated as being groped.

It's also an unbelievably cowardly thing to do. If you grope a woman, you risk her hitting back. If you tell her what a nice arse she has, you risk her saying something cutting that could - shock horror! - undermine your masculinity. If you just stare, there's nothing she can do because you haven't technically done anything wrong.

When I was a little girl and my mother caught me staring at someone, because they were fat or thin or ugly or beautiful or disabled or disfigured, she told me it was rude to stare. When I was old enough to know better, she scolded me for it. Everybody knows it's rude to stare. It's not just quaint British etiquette, it's a deep-rooted anthropological phenomenon - even primates use it as a display of aggression. In some cultures it is considered rude to make eye contact at all. Even a non-aggressive stare can make the victim feel extremely uncomfortable. This is basic manners. Why do manners go out of the window when a sleazy man is faced with an attractive woman? Why is it considered acceptable to stare blatantly at her?

A lot of people seem to think that this is the inevitable consequence of being a red-blooded testosterone-driven heterosexual male. I say this is bollocks. Noticing, appreciating and lusting after attractive women is the inevitable consequence of being a red-blooded testosterone-driven heterosexual male. Staring at them aggressively is NOT. If I see an attractive man, I will look at him, but if he catches me looking I will look away quickly, possibly with a friendly smile, firstly because I don't want the embarrassment of him knowing I was eyeing him up, but secondly because I don't want to make him feel uncomfortable. I see men doing this too. No man is incapable of manners, however rabidly heterosexual he is.

"But they're neanderthals!" I hear you cry. "They surely are incapable of not expressing their desire to stick their dick in every piece of skirt that walks past!" Poppycock. I have irrefutable evidence that these red-blooded testosterone-driven heterosexual males can behave when it suits them. I know for a fact that these neanderthals are perfectly capable of curbing their natural instincts. I know this because I have never, ever, EVER been so much as looked at by one of them when I'm in male company. There's a sort of code of honour amongst these sorts of men, that you don't harass another man's bird. How courteous of them.

I don't think it's even to do with physical dominance, from what I've observed. Last summer I had the experience of walking down the street to meet a male friend and receiving six cases of unwanted harrassment within ten minutes (oh yes, I counted). But when we met up and went for a long walk together, nobody even looked at me the whole time. Now, my best friend has lots of wonderful qualities, but brawn most definitely is not one of them. I on the other hand have biceps that could give an East-European weightlifter a run for their money. There's no way any of the men who chose not to harass me when I was with him made that decision because they thought he might defend his lady's honour by beating them to a bloody pulp. They left me alone because they thought that we were a couple, that I was his property, and that you don't steal another man's girl. If you're with a man you are immune to harassment. The man's assumed desire for you not to be sleazed on is automatically respected, but any protests you make when you're alone, whether in the form of fighting back or ignoring them and staring at the floor, fall on deaf ears. Doesn't that say so much about the inherent misogyny in this?

The way I see it, if they can leave me alone when I'm with a man, then they can bloody well leave me alone when I don't have "protection". The next time one of them blatantly eyes me up, I'm just going to say, "Didn't your mother ever teach you it's rude to stare?" I suggest you do the same.

Love the skin you're in

Dove have produced a new short film in conjunction with the Campaign for Real Beauty:



This is a great film and promotes a really important issue - that the cosmetics industry negatively affects young girls as well as grown women. However, these campaigns that try to persuade us to love our bodies, warts and all, really bug me sometimes. Basically, cosmetics companies seem to be using two types of women in their advertisements these days: Models, and Real Women.

The models, those leggy, perma-tanned, airbrushed gazelle-like creatures, have been around for a while. But the Real Woman is a relatively recent phenomenon. The Real Woman is voluptuous, relatively small-breasted and uses few cosmetics. She loves her body and she revels in her cycles and curves. She holds her head up high despite the fact that she is positively gargantuan by Hollywood standards, because she knows that she is beautiful and she loves her body. Well, I'm a size 6, I have E-cup breasts and I own so many sparkly eyeshadows I wouldn't be surprised if I am single-handedly keeping Barry M in business. Am I less "real" than the women in the Dove adverts? It's just another representation of female beauty to which few of us conform, even if the "message" behind it is rather more positive than that of traditional advertisements despite being just a sugar coating for selling us stuff.

There seems to be this assumption that women hate their bodies because of the constant bombardment of unrealistic images thrust at us by Hollywood and the cosmetics industry, and so we all need to learn to love our bodies in order to compensate for it. Fine. But why should I love my body? It's just a body. Men aren't expected to love their bodies. Loving your body makes as little sense as hating it. What we really need, in my opinion, is just to quit being so obsessed with our bodies in the first place.

The reason that loving your body is considered so important is that women's bodies are considered so disproportionately crucial to their worth as human beings. From childhood, women are taught that their self esteem should be tied up in their looks. There's this idea that you can't walk down the street with your head held high if you don't adore every inch of your body. This is bullshit. You don't have to love your body in order to be confident, because you are much more than just your body. I may have the shortest legs in the known universe, but I also have sharp wit, an optimistic disposition, kindness and intelligence. I may have big jugs, but I am also uptight, pedantic and socially inept. I am more than my physical appearance and I refuse to let my self image revolve solely around it.

There's also the uncomfortable truth that it's much easier for some people to love their bodies than others, whether from genuine attractiveness or the extent to which they fit some sort of media 'ideal'. If I do love my body, it's probably because it happens to be relatively close to the 'ideal' plastered all over billboards rather than because I actually have sky-high self esteem. And I realise that in an image-obsessed society in which women are regarded primarily as decoration with their worth measured by how fuckable they are, this makes me extremely lucky.

This pressure to love your body is just that: more pressure, on top of the pressure that women already feel with regards to the way they look. Loving your lardy arse is just as self-absorbed as punishing it with cellulite cream. You are only truly free of the beauty industry and the airbrushed standards it promotes if your lardy arse is not an issue in the first place.

The Campaign for Real Beauty, whilst coming up with some great films, totally skirts the issue. Although 'Love Your Body' is a big step up from 'You Need Cellulite Cream' the issue that would really be helpful for them to push is, 'Your Body Isn't Actually That Important'. But then, that won't help them sell any body lotion.