Fraudulent Feminist no. 3: You're So Vain

Of all the dreadful things you could accuse me of, I never imagined that vanity would feature very highly on the list. To be vain flies in the face of the narrative I’ve weaved for myself.  At an early age I was cast as the funny, interesting but less attractive friend to some properly fit girl and that persona kinda stuck, if not always in reality then at least in my internal world. Of course I would always like to think of myself as above vanity; that I lived my life in a way that focused on more worthwhile concerns. And the not so worthy, like being able to down a pint faster than my husband.

But actually, recently, I wonder if I haven’t grown increasingly vain as I've lurched toward my thirties. My wedding started these musings, because, as I’ve said before, planning a wedding is a huge vanity project. This is something I struggled to keep under control in the twelve months that wedding bells dominated my life.  With a dose of red-faced self-examination, I began to assess the place of vanity in my life.

So here’s my litany of vain indulgences:

• I hardly ever leave the house without make up. Even on long walks trampling through country mud there’ll be a lick of mascara.
• I spend a lot of money on keeping my curly, frizzy, unruly hair under control
• I pay £17 a pop to have some nice ladies at Selfridges pull tiny hairs from my eyebrows.
• I always think about what to wear each day. It’s hardly ever left to chance.
• I’ve become obsessed with my nails -  I now pay to get them shaped and painted. I’ve been late to parties because I was sorting my nails out.
• I check my reflection in windows, just in case my make up has melted or my hair has gone big (it can go very big indeed.)

Here I am, a (marginally) successful, intelligent, confident independent woman and somehow along the way, I’ve fallen victim to the vanity of excessive female preening.  And the truth is, I know I won’t change because I can’t bear the thought of going about life less attractive than I could be.

It’s a total rejection of some of the founding principles of the feminist movement, where women were called upon to reject the pressures to shave, wax, thread and paint ourselves so that we conformed to conventional ideals of beauty.

But is all this plucking and preening really letting the side down? Does trying hard to conform to (male constructed) ideals of female attractiveness really detract from the more powerful choices I make in life? Would women really be in a stronger position if I went around looking a little less pretty? Well, of course not. But I’d like to feel a little more comfortable in my own skin, without effort, from time to time.

So, what image to include with this post? Let me introduce unwashed, unkempt Kate, having fun at a festival and not caring about the look.

Gosh, that was a lot of talking about myself, which is probably a vanity itself. Less of that next time. 

Fraudulent Feminist no. 2: A weighty issue

I was nearly persuaded to become a cavewoman last week. 

Oh, I was seduced. There she was, a slender, toned, gleaming specimen of flesh. She looked up at me, back arched, and drew me in. It might have been the streak of blonde in her hair, or the deep and earnest glance. It was almost certainly the sheen of her skin and the contours of her body. In any case I was won over.

The steps to emulating such perfection were easy. Eat like a cavewoman and that body was mine. Only consume food that could be picked from the ground. Ok, I’m cool with that. Don’t eat any sugary, fatty, mouth-wateringly divine treats. Ok, par for the course. Don’t eat any pulses or grains. Erm, hang on, that means giving up bread. And oats.  And rice. What WOULD I eat?  I saw through its contradictions (don’t oats and wheat and rice grow on the ground?) and its skewed view of the world and got on with my life and my fairly healthy diet. But I had been shaken all the same, knowing that I should do more.

It’s hard to avoid in January, this tyranny of weight loss. And it speaks to the very heart of darkness in women.  I’m not happy with my figure. I don’t know anyone who is. I know I’m not fat, but you know, I’m not thin, not really.

Three months ago, on my wedding day I was 9st 6lb (and ok, at 5ft 8in, that’s quite thin) and today I sit at my desk a slightly portlier 9st 12lb. Exposing my size in this way is excruciating for me. I find the extra weight disturbing and hateful. I’m uncomfortable with the weight gain; it signals a failure for me. There’s a deep seated drive and desire within me to be thinner. I  feel the need to move more and eat less and if I spend the weekend drinking beer and eating chips (because that what makes a good weekend) come Monday I feel disgusted with myself.

Uncomfortable reading, no?  I would do anything to be sixteen again, when I really didn’t care about the puppy fat I’d developed and I enjoyed food with relish.  It was a slow descent into my current love/hate relationship with food but by my early twenties the pattern had been firmly established. Where does this come from?

Well, the cliché to turn to is the fashion world and the general bombardment of images of stick-thin women in the media. But I don’t read those kinds of mags and genuinely have no desire to be thinner than a size 8 – those models look scrawny to me. I’m not so convinced by that argument.

No, it’s darker, deeper, something that lies in the great abyss of the psyche. People with real eating disorders are often said to be using food as a way of gaining control over their lives. I wonder if that is also part of the wider relationship of women and food. Are we trying to gain control of our own lives in a world that is set up to exert control over us?  I’m not absolutely convinced by that idea either. It sometimes feels that to be thin is to be successful. It suggests a certain self-control. It suggests a keen sense of knowing what’s attractive and how to keep yourself that way. Are thin women sending out signals that they are ‘good’ little women? We’ll keep ourselves nice for you,  we can be controlled, we won’t cause you any trouble.  I really hope that isn’t the case.  

Whatever the reasons, whatever cultural influences are bearing down on me, I’m disturbed by the link I seem to have established between my weight, the food I eat and self-loathing.  This is in no way a positive phenomenon.

Of course, beauty ‘ideals’ are mere fashions. I’m quite aware that I would have made a HOT Victorian: delicate fair skin, dark curly hair, slim but curvy where it matters. I just missed my time.