The Great Weight Debate

So they say size doesn't matter...

I like food. Eating is one of my favourite things to do. But I really hate what happens to me when I have too much of it. It's a problem. I am very much not alone.

Women are so very concerned about how heavy we are. Who hasn't wanted to punch someone when they heard the hateful adage 'A moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips'? But then put the cake down all the same.

It's a cruel twist of fate that as women get older they find it harder to keep off the pounds. Having children doesn't help - both the biological changes, but also the exhaustion of chasing and placating energetic little people, which makes us comfort eat, or polish off the remainder of their fish fingers on top of our own.

Tired, angry and hungry

I basically want the body of Britney Spears, circa 2000. She was 19. She's had no children. She could spend her days training to look fabulous while I spend mine at a computer. It's insane. But look how lovely she is. Who wouldn't want abs like that?

Britney Spears at the NFL Kickoff Live 2003 Concert.
Photo by Chief Warrant Officer Seth Rossman for US Navy, via Wikimedia Commons

It makes me shudder now to think of the tiny amounts I allowed myself to eat, at one stage of my life. People offered me biscuits and cake and I self-righteously refused even the smallest slice. I did get thin. But I also often felt exhausted, angry and hungry. And I doubt I'm unusual. I would bet that the majority of women, by the time they reach 40, have been through something like this at some point in their lives, had these feelings. How many of us have 'fat clothes' and 'thin clothes'?

My personal obsession with weight has ebbed and flowed for well over a decade now. When people say 'you look well' I translate that as a little bit chubbier (and I should take steps). When I lose weight people tell me. And I love it. I show a couple of extra pounds very easily, so people notice the difference, and comment on it, very quickly. I love it a little bit too much, and I know it fuels the problem, but I don't want it to stop.

Health warning: if this has never happened to you, I totally accept that you think I'm a few chocolates short of the full box. I would have thought that once too. But it's pretty normal (except the bit about Britney Spears, I think that's just me).

My friend at work and I have a weird calorie pact - if someone brings something tasty in for us all to share then either she or I will try it and determine whether it's nice enough to be worth the calories. She recently mentioned the weight loss benefits of getting a sickness bug. Obviously I looked at her like she was a lunatic, but I secretly thought she had a point. I mean, you wouldn't choose to be struck down by a horrible disease, but there's no harm in enjoying the benefits, is there?

Time waisting

The thing that annoys me most about my personal weight obsession is the time I have wasted worrying about how I wish I to be smaller and feeling sad or angry that the numbers on the scales are higher than I want them to be. And the time thinking about eating things I'd decided I 'shouldn't eat'. I wish I could think about something else, but I do really like cake. And cheese. And other food. Particularly cheesecake. I like cooking it and I like eating it. And I like it when other people cook it so that I can eat it.

Photo by Alan Cleaver, via Flickr Creative Commons

If you're not overweight, and you turn down a piece of cake, someone will look at you and say 'you don't need to worry' about all that. And you have to hold your tongue, or explain patiently that you do need to worry about all that. Because if you hadn't spent the past decade worrying about all that - going to the gym and running away from biscuits, you would be at least twice the size you are now. Fact.

Men, too can be concerned about their weight. But not in the epidemic proportions that women are. And I suspect (based on nothing whatsoever) that their worries about the issue are often less deep-routed than ours are.

Apparently, it's easier for men to lose weight than women. So if a man and a woman both start to diet, the weight will fall off him, while it will trickle, or dribble off her. I'm sure there are exceptions to this, on both sides. But our bodies are designed with an additional layer of fat to men's and it clings on to us, resisting attempts to remove it or convert it to muscle.

And of course we all know that women are judged on their appearance so much more than men - female politicians are singled out for comments on their clothes, shoes and general attractiveness, while for men it is an afterthought, usually only mentioned if a significant man is especially handsome or hideous.

Don't be greedy

I'm not advocating chucking out the quinoa and getting down to Mackie Dees. We shouldn't eat too much, or all the wrong things. We should eat well and exercise well. But we should be happy. We should love our bodies for what they are and not aspire to be something else (Britney). Yadda yadda yadda. We all know this.

Feminist, columnist and celeb-arse-licker Caitlin Moran (who annoys me as much as I admire her) was once upon a time much larger than she is now. She wrote something very sensible about the great weight debate: really all you need to do is be 'person-shaped'. We all know what that means, and if you're not too thin or too fat then you're OK and leave it at that. And think about something else.

I'm going to think about something else now.

Fear and feminism

I haven't been writing. Have you noticed?

My proverbial pen has been paralysed by fear. And feminism seemed about as much of a defence against it as it does against the spider in the bathroom. I'm a strong independent woman, but you're still massive and hairy and moving very fast in my direction and I don't know what the fuck I'm going to do about that.

So there didn't seem much point in writing about feminism. When people are dying, and running for their lives, and being maimed, and losing everything they have. Why talk about feminism? Why talk about anything, really, except how to save ourselves and stop it happening quite so much.

A year of tragedies

Lately I've felt weighed down by all the bad things that are happening around us,

A year ago today a hardworking MP, Jo Cox, was stabbed and left bleeding to death on the street. She left behind a husband and young children.

There are terrorist attacks in London and Manchester. People target concerts that eight-year-old girls go to see. My girl will be doing that in a few years. And I am scared. People I know have been just metres from bombs going off in European cities. I am worrying about my loved ones.

Feminism, and what it stands for, is one of the many mixed up things that our current crop of terrorists are upset about. Women being free to wander about freely with their faces uncovered and arms on show having jobs and driving and generally having their own business to go about. Democracy. Liberalism. The possibility of actually being happy. All bad things, apparently.

I sent my boyfriend across the world on a business trip with warnings to be careful, but it soon became clear that we were the ones who had to be careful. Our country is becoming one of those places that foreign governments and news outlets label as 'too dangerous' to visit. People are not sure they should come.

I grew up in London in the 1980s. Terrorist attacks were a fact of life, but no less terrifying. And now they're here again. This time with no warnings, and with everyday vehicles turned into dangerous weapons.

Then this week another tragedy, nothing to do with terrorism. Awful stories. It seems so disjointed that amid all these terrorism attacks another unrelated tragedy should occur. We were expecting people to try and blow us up, drive into us, not for something to just catch fire. I'm turning off the radio and looking away from the television news, but painfully tragic stories seep through in social media. I'm haunted by the small boy who lost hold of his mum's hand escaping from the tower block. She lived and he died and what parent doesn't feel for that poor woman who will never stop wondering what she should have done differently. It could have been any of us.

A sinking ship

And it's not just the tragedies. There's politics too.

A year ago we voted to leave Europe, pull up the drawbridge and fortify our little island against foreigners. We'll no longer be European citizens, but little Englanders. And we'll probably sink as a result. We're already too dangerous for people to visit. Will we become poor too?

With our legacy of the British Empire, the island that ruled the rest of the world, we forget that we are really very small now - just a little speck of dust in Donald Trump's eye. We may have an indomitable British spirit, but we are eminently squashable.

Working together with our neighbours, we can bring businesses and skills to the table. But out on our own we really are just a bunch of insurance salesmen and drug pushers (our biggest exports).

We had an election which seemed it would be a foregone conclusion to the Tories, who are steadily dismantling the National Health Service. A week is a long time in politics. In a week there was a sea-change. The left pulled their finger out and hey presto, a hung parliament. But the delight was short-lived, to get a majority the Tories teamed up with some ultra right wingers, anti-abortionists etc. Can this end well?

Exploiting a tragedy

I resent that the media and social media seems to want to use the Grenfell Tower tragedy as a chance to have a pop at our Prime Minister, Teresa May. I'm no fan of May, I'd quite like her gone. But not because she's rubbish at hugging people.

Jeremy Corbyn met the victims and the Queen did, but May didn't. Corbyn is brilliant at empathising with people. He throws his big, cuddly arms around them, he listens to what they say and knows what to say back. And the Queen is our figurehead. It's her job to visit her subjects when they're in trouble.

May's job is different. She's clearly no good at this public compassion stuff. But I don't care that May's not cuddly. I'd far rather my Prime Minister locked herself in a room with some clever people and worked out what to do about this disaster and how to prevent it from happening again, It comes on the heels of a lot of other things, but it leaves a nasty taste to use the tragedy in this manner.

And now

We're in the midst of a lot of sadness, and there's no knowing if or when it will end. This is not new. Things like these happened every day, all over the world, but it's close now.

Stay safe, tell your loved ones you love them, hug your children and enjoy the flowers.

Guilty mums and memes

There's an epidemic of guilt among mothers, and it's spreading. By sharing ideas we misguidedly think are inspiring, we're just making each other feel crap. Stop this right now, people. 

Where the sisterhood should be about support and compassion, all too often we're telling other mothers about our choices, in misguided attempts to help them do the right thing. But really, we're not helping them do the right thing, because they either had the same choice as us and deliberately chose a different route, or their life is different ours and they couldn't choose what we did. 

And the form this unhelpful advice so often takes? Memes. Soppy looking pictures with badly chosen fonts overlaid, employing questionable grammar to express patronising sentiment. Here's one that makes me want to vomit up my Pinot after a hard evening's mothering.

It's typical. On top of the usual responsibilities to feed, clothe, educate and keep our children safe, we're supposed to infuse their every moment with joy. Screw that.

Here's another delight for you. It made me so angry I almost missed the absent apostrophe in the first line. AND THAT'S PRETTY ANGRY. But that's typical, You can't even write a fucking sentence and you're trying to tell me how to bring up my child. I can't even write about this without including an expletive in every sentence. I'm sorry about that, I really am, but they make my blood boil. My child may have a leaky self-esteem bucket, but at least she will be able to take pride in her excellent grammar.

Rules from the other mothers

Here are the messages (paraphrased) that I've have come across, usually on Facebook via other mothers:

• Co-sleeping makes children cleverer
• Breastfeeding makes them stronger
• Nursery makes them more immune to illness in later life
• Nursery makes them grow up too fast
• Things you’re supposed to tell your child to build their self esteem
• Be there for your child when they’re small
• Be a good role model – go out to work
• Don’t rush your child – enjoy every moment with them

All of these things can be wonderful. But you can’t do everything. Some of them contradict each other. I get a better night’s sleep if I don’t share a bed with my daughter, and I’m definitely a better mum when I’m firing on all cylinders from a decent night’s sleep. My daughter wasn’t able to breastfeed. We tried, really hard. I was sad about it. I got over it. I wish the internet would.

The perfect way to bring up a child

Sometimes you have to hurry your toddler, because otherwise you'll be late for work and will lose your job and won't be able to pay the bills and buy food. Life isn't an unadulterated explosion of joy. They should probably learn that from an early age.

There’s one meme on the internet that I didn't scream at. It says the important thing is not how you feed you kids and where they sleep, but that you do feed them, and they have somewhere safe to sleep. I mean, I still hate it, because it's a fucking meme. I'm not going soft. See how they make me swear? Those things are evil. 

Because surely the point is to do our best. Even those of us that think we’re the best mums in the world will have days when we’re rubbish. And even those who think we’re the worst mums will have moments when we think, ‘yeah, I’m great at this.’ There is no perfect way to bring up a child, just many, many imperfect ways.

Most of the mums I know love their children to distraction, and would do anything for them. But won’t hesitate to admit that looking after them is hard work and half the time they just want to get through the day, put the kids to bed, check Facebook and have a glass of wine.

My advice: think before you share. Reach for the wine, not the mouse.