Listening to Women on the radio, in life, and via their many wonderful blogs - Katie Piper, Anna Chancellor and so many others.

Women in the West - uncomfortable in our own skin? 
I don't usually do diets these days, preferring to eat healthily and in moderation. I hate the commercialism of "Weightwatchers" and similar schemes that profess to help people(mainly women) lose weight.

I have however, in desperation, both in the past and just last week, joined in with the cult that is the the WW clan. I am now counting points and thinking about food all of the time! I really just wanted to spend some time with my sister, who is, and has been since her husband left her 25 years ago, very slender; but who still tends to obsess about her weight and is always dieting. She was 56 this year and has many beautiful qualities, she has spent most of her life feeling bad about her weight and appearance.

I sat in the WW meeting last week and heard "our leader", now a slender, blonde and tanned example to women everywhere, call a photograph of her own shining, happy and smiling face, "horrible". She shuddered as she told us about her weight problems then, and the amounts of food she used to eat. What a terrible person she must have been!

I've been a yoyo dieter for many years, my weight fluctuating between 14st 7lbs at my heaviest, to 10st 7lbs at my lightest. Needless to say my body finds it's own level when I am not dieting. I no longer comfort eat as I used to, though perhaps the last month has seen me regress a little; and I no longer eat too little as I did in young adulthood. I am yet another woman in the West who has always felt anxiety about her body image and appearance, and who has let this anxiety stop her from being the person she wants to be. Another statistic that makes up the "90% of women in the UK who feel body-image anxiety". This statistic is quoted from a report about body-image which is mentioned in an article from today's newspaper, entitled "Uncomfortable In Our Own Skin". I knew and have written before about little girls in this country starting to talk about dieting and being too fat at the age of five, but I didn't know how this anxiety can still affect some women as they get older, as this extract from the article suggests is the case:

Body image is a subjective experience of appearance. It's an accumulation of a lifetime's associations, neuroses and desires, projected on to our upper arms, our thighs. At five, children begin to understand other people's judgement of them. At seven they're beginning to show body dissatisfaction. As adults 90% of British women feel body-image anxiety. And it doesn't wane – many women in their 80s are still anxious about the way their bodies look which, Professor Rumsey explains, can even affect their treatment in hospital, when their health choices are influenced by aesthetics. Many young women say they are too self-aware to exercise; many say they drink to feel comfortable with the way they look; 50% of girls smoke to suppress their appetite – is it too strong to suggest that these things, these anxieties, are slowly killing them?

I do recognise the things young women say about how they manage, or don't manage the anxiety they feel about their body-image. I also think it can affect young men too. There is such a lot of pressure to be "perfect" in so many ways, these days.

 Anna Chancellor - Talking about her inner critic and love of acting
Anyway, as I am now "born-again" to Weightwatchers, I am obsessing with what I am eating and this morning I decided to make a zero points soup that will help me on my way. As I was cooking I decided to listen to the radio. Whereas I would normally put on Radio 4 or Radio 6, I was drawn instead to Radio 2 where Richard Madeley was talking about just this article, and about how he had never met a woman yet who was not dissatisfied with her appearance. He was also interviewing Anna Chancellor, an actress who is a familiar face from TV and Film, but whom I had never heard interviewed before. Though she didn't talk about body-image, she did state that both men and women in this country tended to be too self-critical. She talked about how we all give ourselves a hard time, then when you look back you recognise that the young person you were needed more encouragement and admiration for being the person they were at the time.

It was interesting to hear her talk about her childhood and journey into her acting career. I loved her view that acting offers some structure and discipline to someone with what she calls a "disorganised" thought process; and how for someone like her with "lots of thoughts" but highly disorganised, acting is a wonderful release. One thing she said that inspired me was her view that her acting talent was something that was not simply a "natural" gift, but something she had to work to develop; and how if she had given up on this, early on in adulthood, she would probably just have thought "oh I just wasn't very good at acting, I just wasn't cut out for it" and believed that thought. She says that given a bit of encouragement and experience, people who might start out with the idea that they are not very good, might just make it. That makes me wonder about writing, how I gave up on that dream so long ago and never really worked at it. The same with drawing and painting. Acting was something she loved and had always loved. I was interested to learn she was distantly descended from Jane Austin and Byron. I thank her for her reminder to read Jeannette Winterson's memoir, "Why be happy when you could be normal?"

Katie Piper's Beautiful Words Will Help Others
Before Anna came on Richard mentioned Katie Piper, who he is going to be interviewing next week and who I have written about before. I was pleased to find out she has written a book called "Things Get Better." Here are some words from the introduction to her book; her beauty and compassion just shine through her writing - just as they did when she made her Channel 4 documentaries. I know this book will help so many people and I can't wait to read it. Thank you Katie.

Sometimes in life the unthinkable happens. We can find ourselves in terrible situations where we feel there is no way out. Where life has thrown us a curved ball, tossing everything to chaos.You might have found out that your partner was cheating. Or been dumped, out of the blue. Lost your job. Lost a family member.Or even feel that you've lost your mind after suffering terrible stress.Whatever your story, I hope that by sharing mine, I'll help you to find hope, support and good advice.

You might already know my story. In 2008 my life changed forever. First I was raped by my boyfriend.The he asked another man to throw a cup of industrial-strength sulphuric acid into my face, destroying my looks and causing terrible damage to many parts of my body. i lost half of my face as my skin melted like wax down to the bone. The was the horrendous event that led to my painfully difficult journey of recovery.

Whatever your problem, please don't think it isn't big enough or important enough to warrant help. People often say to me, "But compared to your problems, it's nothing" but actually that couldn't be further than the truth. If you cannot stop thinking about something, if you're scared or holding yourself back from doing what you want in life, or if you just feel overburdened, then it's a problem and therefore it's important. 

What I find so humbling about Katie, is that despite the terrible experience she has had which robbed her of her carefree young life, caused unimaginable physical and emotional pain, marred her physical beauty and the identity she had grown into; she still has compassion for the young women and girls, and young men too who feel anxious and insecure with their appearance.

Precious Words and Treasures from Wonderful Women Bloggers
I found these quotes today (see below),and am listening to many other women's voices here at "the sacred life of rain". So thank you Teresa for showing me the way there today.

"The mind of compassion, knows no bitterness, no judgement, no good , no bad, no right, no wrong, no you, no me. Only the wish for all beings to be happy."

- Thich Nhat Hamh

"You have permission to be whatever body shape you like.
You have permission to choose, and choose again. And then choose again.
You have permission to not always be a perfect image of something.
You have permission to be a contradiction. ..."

- Leonie Dawson (found here)