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.

from - yes, she did. I was quite embarrassed at the time! But she was very matter-of-fact which helped massively. She probably could have done it from the other side of the bathroom door though. I remember her just saying 'now, you want to put one foot up and rest it on the edge of the bath, and remember your body is slanted diagonally upwards so you're aiming it at your lower back - not straight upwards' and that was pretty much it!

I remember the tampax leaflets (which may have got better) were rubbish, and as I was only 12 I had no idea that my vagina wasn't pointed straight upwards (becase we'd not really done anything in biology). She also got me the applicator ones which I think are much easier when you are young. I genuinely knew a lot of girls who had bought tampax, tried to use them, and found it too hard to work out so stopped. And looking back that is quite awful really, isn't it? If you're active and like to swim or whatever.

I expect my mum was quite embarrassed too, looking back, but she hid it well and it is one of the things that I was so grateful to her about, because most of my mates suffered on with pads for years - either because their mums didn't show/tell them how to use tampax or because they had peculiar ideas about tampax being 'inappropriate' (which I never understood, though I can see some teenagers will prefer pads and that's fine).

I have no idea about acutes either btw!

Btw (sorry to double-post, who knew there was so much to write about tampons eh?), no, she didn't show me on herself - she told me on me. She was standing there so could see I was trying to stick it straight upwards!

(Idiot that I was).

Good to think that we can do something to increase well-being for our DDs by talking over these things, as well as perhaps some healing ( if that's not too strong a word) and increased well-being for ourselves because I for one feel things around periods could have been better handled/ explained when I was growing up/ in our generation.
Hopefully when my daughter is discussing this in years to come she will be more confident and less euphemistic !

• So hopefully this won't be considered too much of a thread hijack ?

Useful to me and DD anyway, thanks all

< ponders changing name to something about hi-jack as do tend to make a habit of going off on tangents ... >

helvetica - i'm not sure which one it is... it's been on the stairs for three days and has now vanished and i can't see it in her bedroom. from memory it has a great double-page spread on tampons and how to use them with decent diagrams... i'll ask her where it is when she gets in from school. it covers all the bases so is probably the general one: braces, spots, breasts, pubic hair, friendships and relationships, periods... and i like it because it reinforces individuality, but recognises conformity. so i think it talks about being your own person, and the difficulties with peer group pressure etc.

it's a great series though. just sensible and not shrouded in crop tops and hot pants, but without being staid or old-fashioned. i don't think i've seen the boys one, i'll have to have a look. i suspect we're about to enter that issue as well!

juggling - I think healing is completely the right word.

It does matter, this stuff, doesn't it?. My mum was great in that respect but I do feel quite angry that I was in other ways made to feel as if periods were something to be hidden, or as if I should expect to faff around hiding tampax so men didn't feel revolted (grrr!).

I think we're actually conditioned to feel this stuff is too unimportant to talk about - look at me apologizing for long posts about tampons - when actually it's going to happen to every girl, and every woman is going to spend a huge number of days having a period.

I didn't think it was a hijack at all.

It does make me think more about wanting to reclaim things though. I think this is why I get so fed up with the 'happy period' adverts (and all period adverts). They make you think you're being told about happy-clappy, we-love-being-women kind of stuff, but actually the message is 'periods are massively debilitating to women and what you need is a magic, magic product to make them disappear so you don't have to be incapacitated and no one has to notice'. As if the aim were really to pretend such things as periods never happen. Not a great message really!

'Menstrual joy' sounds like a Farrow and Ball paint shade for Christmas, doesn't it?

I'm not sure I'm especially joyful about periods, having been a teenager in the 90s I find it fairly twee. It's more I actively dislike the 'joyful periods' thing being a cover for 'actually, be joyful because you can hide the disgusting debilitating effects of periods'.

I don't know if this is such a thing any more, but I wasn't mad keen on the insistence when I was a teenager that it was somehow letting the side down to be in pain from periods (or maybe that was just the PE teachers at my school, who were constantly pouring scorn on the idea you might be in some pain.)

oh yep, that sounds like it, helvetica. we bought it initially for the braces stuff, having no experience at all with said devices! but i'm glad we did as it covers all bases!

i'm going to paint my downstairs loo in 'menstrual joy' i think. and the chimney breast above the fireplace. he might be slightly baffled whn he gets to the paint store to order it though.

Sounds like a great colour - especially for the fireplace

< wonders if have perhaps drunk slightly too much pear cider whilst watching "Rick Stein tastes the blues" - great stuff >

Oh I hate "happy a happy period"!!!!!! FFFFFNNNAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRR!!!!

have a happy period

duh

I must have been reading too many Homes magazines. One of the things the Resisting Femininity threads did was make me stop buying glossy mags (more or less), because they just get me down with all the 'ooh, so-and-so is so thin/fat/unloved/loved up' crap. But the downside is I've replaced them with Homes and Gardens and so on, and that's why the paint colours come in.

Back in the days when I drank alcohol I am sure I would have reassured you there's no such thing as too much pear cider - it is very tasty stuff.

Cross-post.

Yes, me too jacks. It makes me want to say 'fuck off' quite a lot.

If men had periods, there would be a solemn and serious recognition of the pain, perhaps entitlement to paid leave for the first few days, and mandatory hot water bottles built into sofas so you could reach them without moving.

what colours should i paint then, lrd? at the moment everything is tones of greige, which is making me feel veeeeery low. (and i don't care how trendy it is, it's depressing).

i'm thinking of a lineny colour mostly to brighten it all up, but i do think i need some colour somewhere. dh has vetoed green. and we have blue tiles throughout the kitchen/ dining room... and all the way down the stairs to the front door, and to the basement. and we def can't afford to replace the tiling. oh, and paleish goldeny hardwood in the living area, but it's all open plan.

someone said we should paint the external wall a darker colour so that the outdoors comes 'in' but i don't read enough decorating mags and this makes feck all sense to me... at the mo we have one wall painted really dark brown, but as all our furniture is dark brown wood it just disappears. oh and the chimney breast is the same very dark brown. it makes me want to scream.

all ideas welcomed. i'm about as interior designy as your average hoarder.

My Grandpa used to have a job going round Herefordshire selling the genuine "perry" back in the day (20s ?) when it actually was made of pears. I heard the other day that the pear cider nowadays doesn't actually have any pear in it, which is a bit disappointing
But I feel a bit of a trouble-maker talking to you about alcoholic beverages if you've given up the stuff LRD ?

mad - your house sounds gorgeous, I'm jealous. Having rented places for years, I can swear to it that having dirty magnolia paint on your walls can be very depressing.

I think the MN consensus on a Christmas thread was that duck egg blue, though very popular, is a total bugger to make 'go' with anything Christmassy, but that is the limit of my expertise.

I have to say, I get a bit conflicted about decorating stuff, as it never fails to remind me that though my mum and I did virtually all the DIY in our house for years, my dad still believes he is the 'main' doer of such things.

juggling - no, you're fine. I'm a recovering alcoholic, I've been sober for just over 9 months, but talking about it doesn't bother me. I know it tastes nice, I just know it's not a good idea for me!

I do know people who make their own perry, but it turns out incredibly fiercly alcoholic and is apparently quite tricky, so not something I plan to try any time soon, though DH does drink the stuff.

Hi LRD - Have I seen you on the autumn babes bus - I hopped on for a few stops recently mainly as it seemed a friendly place to hang out and I must say I enjoyed the ride

Started CBT last week. :) Unfortunately, been a bit on edge lately, but still... It's getting there.

Start Karate lessons soon, so that'll be a big confidence thingy.

Been taking lots of long walks recently, music on, drowning out the world, whilst DS is at nursery. Does a lot for the moods.

Ooh, and a big one for me, actually managed to strike up a bit of chit chat with one of the other mums at DS's nursery the other day. Usually, I stand there feeling nervous, but that kinda helped.

Sounds like lots of good stuff Dragon.
If you're taking up karate look out for my DS - he's just got his black belt

< good night all Mwah, mwah xxx >

dontcall - sounds good. I know what you mean about the chat - I have to steel myself to talk to people because I always think they might not chat back. I used to constantly go in with 'I really like your [item of clothing]' because I couldn't think what else to say. Luckily I generally do like clothes and can almost always find something to say nice things about.

juggling - yes, the brave babes are lovely. I don't post much so you won't have seen me on there, but about a year ago they were absolutely amazing and did as much as another person can do to help me onto the right track. I love knowing that they are there if I need them.

Actually, I don't think I'd consciously worked this one out, but one thing I hoped to do on this thread was be able to talk about things we're trying to do even though we know we're struggling - eg., for me I know I shouldn't care about my weight, but I do, because we live in a society that insists women must want to be thin. Going into the Feminism section and saying that may be a bit like going onto Brave Babes and saying 'I drink three bottles of wine a day' - you know no-one will tell you you're right, but you also know the people there are very well placed to tell you what would be better to do! Or that's what I hoped.

The Style and Beauty topic really does not seem the right place to me to talk about this stuff, even though in some ways it is similar. The alcoholic parallel is that it'd be like me going onto one of the Drunk threads and saying 'I drink shedloads, d'you reckon I have a problem' - they'd all probably say no, but I'd still feel awful.

Whew, I'm rambling again ... maybe that parallel made no sense to anyone but me!