Wellbeing Thread - who's in?

[AnonWasAWoman]

This is a sort of ?gap in the market? thread really, forgive the rotten title. I was thinking about women and wellbeing and a possible feminist slant on what I feel the beauty industry has colonised.

If I try to find a threads, or a magazine articles, about women?s wellbeing and health I can guarantee half of them will be written in what comes across to me as doublethink: ?you need to feel good about your body, so first you must wage war upon it for a woman?s body is naturally hideously ugly!?. This just makes me sad. So do diluted versions ? the kind of discussions or groups where participants begin with a focus on health, but gradually shift to ?what can you do to look good?, which ? well, just makes me feel ugly if I don?t do those things (And, ah, angry that some people think women should have to!).

It really worries me how, as women, health and beauty are constantly conflated, and there?s an ever-increasing list of treatments that begin as luxurious pampering, then quickly come to be essential ?maintenance? or even basic ?hygiene?. It?s taken that a sign of healthy self-confidence and body confidence is to buy into these ideas about what to do with our time and money and bodies. I?m sure there?s a spectrum of views among feminists as to what we feel is right for us and what?s not, and I don?t want to get into that because I think it?s the least interesting bit of the debate. So I?m not trying to start yet another ?do you wax your fanjo fur? thread ? interesting as they are ?!

I am sure there is a way to resist gendered body care/products without in any way denigrating or ignoring the female body. I bet some of you are brilliant at this and the Resisting Femininity threads were great for showing me the way. But I also want to replace the things I?m resisting, not just get rid of all focus on my body. My mum can as close as can be to this ? everything ?gendered? for women?s bodies, from women?s anti-perspirant, to shaving equipment, to perfume and cosmetics, came under the same heading of ?disgusting things?. In retrospect I find this quite disturbing and not remotely feminist. I am sure I would have been a happier and better-adjusted teenager if I?d not had to sneak off to buy deodorant and nick my dad?s used disposables (I didn?t know any better). If as an adult woman I want to do without any of this stuff, that?s fine ? but I certainly don?t want to feel it?s the only option, or that being a feminist has to mean focusing on the mind and forgetting about the body.

So what I would like to do is to try to hammer out a sense of what you do (if anything) to replace or contrast with what we?re offered by society in terms of caring for your body. So I thought maybe it?d be nice to have a sort of wellbeing thread on here, where we can do all the healthy stuff you hope for on a ?diet? thread (and don?t IME get), and we can do all the ?taking time for myself? stuff that the beauty industry has colonised and distorted, but we can also maybe chat about how to feel better about our bodies, instead of how to make them look better.

So, here?s my list (some, obviously, drawn from a certain S&B thread!). They?re what I?ll hope to do, not what I promise to do!

• I?m going to try to go for a walk at least twice a week, even if it?s just half an hour. And I?m going to take my camera so I don?t end up thinking about work the whole time!
• I?m going to try to eat two different kinds of fruit/veg (I get stuck on apples galore)
• I?ll try to cut my coffee intake
• I?ll try to take 15 minutes before I go to bed to think about something that is not work, or chatting on MN (!), or planning food shopping or whatever
• I?m going to try to make proper breakfast every day
• Go to bed early one night per week
• Ration my (awful) snickers habit! I have eaten three snickers ice-cream bars this morning and it is Not good.
• (You can laugh here) I?m going to do some pelvic floor exercises every week ? I always forget and I imagine I?ll be glad of them later on!

Please add in suggestions if you have them or say if you think I ought to change my mind about any of these.

Oh good!! :)
We can support each other in trying to keep up :)

This is exactly why I love the FWR section. So many interesting posts and wonderful women. :)

Thanks to TBL - I may not agree with everything you've posted but we've rediscussed the issue and confirmed what this thread is about which is great too.

Definitely the more the merrier IMO! Jacks & Girders it was almost exactly a year ago I would have described myself as "not a feminist" and now I suspect I'm like the born again Christian that everyone edges away from at parties :o

I also think it's ok to do traditionally feminine things. I wear heals, make up, do my hair, shave, wax etc but I do try to think about why I do these things and how they make me feel. I've become quite anti high heal wearing recently. I had a lightbulb moment on here from someone else's comment when I realised that I was doing something that was actively painful to make myself more attractive. It stuffs my feat, I get pins and needles down two toes for weeks afterwards and, frankly, fuck them. Fuck anyone who says I need to be in prolonged pain for beauty.

definitely with the more the merrier sentiment. it's good to be learning and thinking - that's what it's all about. please don't think anyone is saying thou must not do x but yes it's good to think about why one does x, what it costs you (in all senses) and what it gains you and whether you want to continue. the truth is there are gains to performing this stuff or women wouldn't bother. but there are costs too and whatever choices we make in life it's best to make them consciously and in informed way that means we have the agency in our life rather than being puppets of a system pulling our strings whilst we gaily believe ourselves to be totally free agents.

one thing i'll never permanantly give up is plucking my eyebrows. i inherited them from the male side of the family who sport denis healy like monobrows. i may pluck them less often and not care if they are sprawling all over for a while because i don't feel like doing them but if and when i want to i do them. if there was such a thing as an external governor of shoulds and shouldn'ts then i probably shouldn't pluck them but there isn't - i'm the governor and i decide and i can't help, despite analysing it, prefering them plucked even though the reasons are dubious.

i've got that india arie song, 'video' playing in my head now, "sometimes i shave my legs and sometimes i don't, sometimes i'll brush my hair and sometimes i won't, depending how the wind blows i might even paint my toes, it really just depends on whatever feels good to my soul". the trouble is when we delude ourselves that we do all these things just because they feel good without having examined them really and acknowledged the pressures we are conforming to. if you're doing things because you feel like you can't be seen in public without doing them as you're somehow not fit to be seen then that's facism internalised no?

Jacksmania - I am trying to find work and establish myself in a new community. Presenting myself, so I look attractive (or at least not unattractive) to others is part of that. So I've been paying more attention to skin care, make up, clothes, hair etc.

I think that resisting femininity makes a statement of power - that you don't need to seek approval from others in conventional ways. That you don't need to look like a "face that fits". I would love to resist femininity, and I hope to some day be in a position to do that. For now, bills need paying and my toddler needs friends to play with. Knowing I look the part makes life easier for me, helps me feel more confident when meeting people.

It is like last week's poppy debate. The men who took a stand against it, choosing not to wear one, were all in powerful positions - Robert Fisk, Jon Snow, that man from Goldman Sachs. I never saw a woman, or an unknown on television without a poppy. Whatever their views on the pressure to wear one, they still conformed.

I'm going to read Beauty and Misogyny, which will inform my views, and I hope that when I am old I will wear purple, as in the Jenny Joseph poem linked above.

sorry I should add after reading SAFs post that I really don't judge anyone who does wear heals or the like. That's just how I feel for me.

I do also like feeling attractive and I do like other people finding me attractive.

I'm just catching up with this slowly after being away for a weekend.

I just want to say again what I was hoping to do with this thread (I'm AnonWasAWoman). I wanted not just to resist femininity (though I loved those threads) - I also wanted to set up a space where we could discuss how to find feminist ways to reclaim the group that the patriarchy in general and the beauty industry in particular, have taken away from us and made into what I find to be nasty, restrictive, hurtful ideas about what women should want to do with their bodies and minds.

Personally, I sometimes find it hard to discuss the positive aspects of being a woman with feminists - not because feminists aren't lovely and positive (because you are), but because I don't have the language for it. So I think a lot of this thread has great suggestions - like people saying how good it is to get out for a walk with the dog, or how nice it feels to do yoga, or how they've been enjoying spiced hot chocolate of an evening. I think it matters that we do celebrate all the positive-but-simple things we can do in our daily lives - not just that narrow ideal of 'pampering' we're told we can enjoy, but a proper, rounded set of experiences.

I hope that makes sense ... I probably will post again because I fail at single posts and because I am catching up a lot since I've been away, but I wanted to get that out.

As promised ... second post.

The weight/diet aspect seems to be an issue.

I agree it's quite scary how any threads about health seem to turn to diet threads rather fast. That's why I said it was a bit scary early on in the thread. And I do myself have issues with weight which I am not happy about, and which I do blame squarely on the patriarchy. Again, as I said. I sort of assumed that saying these things was a way of making a feminist critique of patriarchical standards, but maybe not. It just seems to me that the alternative - saying 'no, I never think about my weight because I am awesome as I am' - while absolutely wonderful and inspirational, would also be dishonest coming from me. I don't need to introduce cognitive dissonance into my feminism - and for me, saying that I don't have any issues would be doing that.

I may want to be utterly happy in my mind and body - but I'm not. Reading this thread and sharing tips about what to do to make myself happy is helping. But there are still a lot of battles to fight IMO: we still are under a lot of pressure to conform.

On that note - I'm exhausted today having done all the driving over the weekend (and it was a lot of driving), and I have just lit a christmas scented candle (early I know!). Thinking about it I completely agree with SaF about scent: it can be amazing, evocative, calming, energizing, and so on. Proper lavender oil is brilliant. It's worth knowing that allergies to perfume fixitives are quite common - my mum gets them badly. If you feel headachy, it's always worth giving the perfume a rest for a few days to see if that helps, especially if it's a new one.

That's not a deeply feminist observation, except I do find it a bit suspect that the industry hasn't really bothered about the fact that people have allergic reactions to their products - it does say very clearly that for the industries, perfume is not at all about wellbeing!

Helvetica - that's a really interesting point, thanks.

You're right about the erasing IMO - I can too easily see women being told 'ah, you can control your period so you should because it's dirty' - which it isn't. And I am cynical, but do you think it really works? I've been on the pill you're encouraged to take back-to-back and when I did, it was really uncomfortable. I also got a prescription to stop my period from coming one time, and was told 'oh, it is fine, just a slightly heavy bleed'. Sorry if TMI, but it fucking wasn't! I was really shocked at the time at the GP's very blase attitude.

I am a bit suspicious about chemical controlling of women's fertility. I know it is a wonderful advance and has freed up women hugely. But I am also a bit cynical - would men merrily stuff themselves with hormones like this? Would they be expected to?

I would rather see better sanpro. It's not like it'd be beyond the capacities of the human race to design something better - look at all the effort that's put into viagra .... or men's razors!

Going off on a slight tangent here but anyone else with DD's here ? Mine is 12 and I'm a bit nervous about her starting her periods - whether I've talked with her enough about it, what I will say, and what sanpro she will use especially at first.
I guess I should try to be more relaxed about it as I took it fairly much in my stride, and always have done. I was much happier with "the whole thing" once I discovered tampons (via a friend at 17). Any thoughts friends ? Can't help hoping she can continue without the hassle and discomfort for as long as poss.

Secondly, - inspired by your talk of candles and scents LRD I've just lit my lavender and geranium calender which I'm finding good company on a quiet November afternoon. Walk in the park earlier was lovely too. Had a coffee in the cafe and picked up "Is that it?" - autobiography by Bob Geldof written just after Live Aid I think which was quite inspiring. Park was looking lovely too & nice and bright again after yesterdays dull effort !

notjust - good point, yes!

juggling - I don't have children, but I was grateful to my mum that the first time I had a period, she calmly showed me how to use a tampon (the pink ones). So much better than struggling with towels!

That sounds like a really lovely afternoon btw - I was just sitting reading about Fem 11 and being sad I missed it, and now you've reminded me to stop moping and get out for a walk while there's still a bit of sun.

I liked whoever said that feminism conferences and meets are essential wellbeing, btw, forgot to post that before. I'm so much looking forward to London Reclaim the Night in a fortnight.

Thanks LRD - Hope you do fit in a nice walk this arfo' Sounds like a good way to go with DD - thanks for the suggestion. (Think I might start a thread on that to discuss more widely, and might help others too ?)

I haven't heard of Fem 11 or any other Feminist conferences. I think meeting up with other Feminists/ women would be great !

Ooh, thanks Helvetica, I like the look of the porn culture one. Shame it's in Leeds though!

I like the idea of interesting fabric pads btw.

Something I think is nice (for women in general) is having tampax or whatever in a pretty jar by the loo, so they're right there and you don't have to hunt through the medicine cupboard. It always slightly annoys me when they're hidden away as if the very sight of unused tampax/pads is just too revolting for men to see - when sockets for electric razors are absolutely normal.

Besides which I think pretty jars for tampax are a damn sign nicer than a ripped cardboard box that (if you're me and useless) always ends up empty just when you needed it. It's another one of those really little things that makes a cumulative difference to how you feel about yourself (or does for me). At my parents' house I was expected to keep tampax in a drawer in my cupboard in my bedroom, and to throw them away in my bedroom bin (yeuch) or the dustbin outside, because the sight of them in the bathroom or in a bathroom bin would be just too much for my brothers and dad. And it's a little thing but it gets me so down, in retrospect, because they are perfectly normal and really, no man I've ever had in my home has ever fainted with shock when he realized what I keep sitting on the shelf by the loo.

Whew ... that was an absurdly long post for such a little issue!

Ooh! Fantastic! Sorry, I can't read.

Yes, I will go then. Thanks so much for linking to this - it is exactly what I need right now, I've been struggling to be articulate about porn for a while and it's something I would really appreciate learning more about. The programme looks wonderful too.

I'd love to go to Leeds RTN, it's just that I keep having to commute up that way at the moment, and it's over 50 quid each time, and we're not very well off especially before Christmas, so I would feel nervous about committing to it. London is much more affordable from where I am.

Thank you!

Hi Helvetica - Thanks for all the links - I think something like "reclaim the night" would be the sort of thing I might go to. I like the way they've really gone to town (!) on welcoming all women on the website. Very encouraging !
They say "bring your daughters"- From what age would you bring yours (those that have DDs) ?

Thanks too for the tips around periods Hel and LRD - some of those little things you mentioned are a great idea. Sometimes little things can make a big difference. Think I need to do some more thinking around this for DDs benefit

dd1 is nearly 12 and has hairy armpits andher breasts are just starting to grow - no sign of periods yet but tbh can't be far away. she has a very sensible 'american girl' book which gives sanpro info, and just the other week i bought a few different types for her to get familiar with and ponder (before she needs to use them, and also so that i'm not caught out by having nothing pre-teen sized!)

tbh she dances several times a week (garage tap amongst other things) so i suspect she will move swiftly to tampons out of practicality.

her pathfinders group is also in the middle of a 'hot topics for youth' series, so she is being bombarded with lots of 'growing up as a young woman' stuff at the mo.

am loving the pretty jar idea. that would really help her too, i think, in terms of understanding it isn't a dirty little secret that needs hiding away...

Glad I mentioned it madwoman - It's good to share thoughts ...

Can I ask a (probably very obvious) question? When you talk about "your mum calmly showing you how to use a tampon" (sorry, can't remember who said that) do you mean she took you into the loo and actually showed you on herself?

Don't think I ever even saw her naked. My dd sees me naked all the time though, and we share a bath from time to time. Hopefully I might still be blas'e enough to show her when the time comes.