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.

My granny used to wash her hair with Fairy if she'd run out of Vosene She had a full head of (mostly) black, curly hair till the day she died.

Something I want to work on as part of my wellbeing is getting out of the guilty mother trap. I am currently a SAHM, not by choice, and I've struggled with the transition. As a consequence, I constantly second-guess myself and wonder if I'm 'doing enough', 'getting it right' etc., especially since DD came along and DS has had to adjust to having a sibling. Here's an example: on Friday afternoon I baked cakes AND did painting with DS while holding upset and overtired DD who was crying in my ear, and we even managed to have a nice time. Yet the minute I said he could watch some tv while I made his tea, I started feeling guilty that I wasn't spending enough one-to-one time with him, and was this going to make him feel pushed out now that he's not the only child in the family, bla bla bla. Everything good that we'd done that day was forgotten. WTF is that about?

I worry and fret so much when actually I should make time to step back and look at my children objectively: they are healthy, happy, beautiful (of course!) and well loved and cared for. We enjoy them and they seem to enjoy us. An important part of growing up functional is nurturing the individual, and that goes for parents as well as children. Basically, it does everyone good to have time for themselves Am I making any sense?

yes, you definitely need to tackle that astarin! and yes you are making sense. time to amuse yourself and tackle boredom is grand for character. i honestly worry about these kids who are stimulated 24hrs a day with activities and attention. mind i may just be trying to make myself feel better for the masses of time my son spends pottering about the house having sword fights with imaginary intruders and talking to himself and his cars and figures and creating elaborate stories about things he's seen and done. i like to believe he's developing imagination, self amusement, etc etc rather than he's actually going mental from lack of stimulation or active parenting.

but that's the thing, i think the same and my son is perfectly content being parented that way. that's the way my brother and i grew up and it's as it should be imo. i don't know why i let the other ideas in when i don't even believe them myself i think not working for the first time ever has been quite destabilising to my sense of self. which is bizarre since i didn't have a career, only a job. but i was brought up in a very 1980s feminist household and seem to have internalised the view that staying home with the kids is a lesser option. again, wtf?

it's a nightmare astar. balancing the rational 'now'/'me' brain with all the conditioned messages and their attached emotions (mostly guilt) is a blumming life long endeavour imho.

i do think there is something very unique about the time we live in whereby we're bombarded with so many messages and discourses about how to live, be, look, etc that are often in stark contradiction to one another and at total discord to the realities of the pressures of our lives etc etc that the human psyche is under such a strain in a new way. we are bombarded constantly with massively sophisticated symbols and messages... i'm in danger of waffling but there's something in it i think.

I agree.

And I think as well, there is a real problem that so many people think everything is immensely better than the very recent past. In some ways that's true - medicine has changed out of recognition in the last hundred and fifty years, even in the last fifty really. But it gives us this false sense that we ought to be deeply grateful and enthusiastic about everything - we've started to fictionalize the past to fit in with this idea that everything has changed dramatically. And this ignores the fact that lots of things are the same, or differently bad (and obviously ignores a lot about developing countries, or even the south of the US).

I think that frustrates attempts to say 'no, it's not actually all ok, there is still a need for feminism', and maybe that's why it's so difficult to react to all the bombarding messages you discuss?

I don't know, it just seems to me if you object to the way beauty advertising (I know it's wider than advertising but that's an example) works, someone will always say how lucky we are to live with luxuries like this, or isn't it great we don't have to live in the 1930s when everyone was rough as a badger's arse.

But I can be deeply grateful for indoor toilets and hot water, dentistry, contraception, washing machines etc. and still think that modern consumerism a. makes people more dissatisfied with their lives, and b. is contributing to us screwing up the planet.

I have more of a problem with people fetishising the past (subtext: when everyone Knew Their Place).

Anyway, as a result of this thread and the recent poetry one, I read a poetry book in the bath the other night and felt very pleased with myself.

Modern consumerism is actually starting to make me feel sick. I had another good wellness moment yesterday when my dad and I agreed that we're not buying Christmas presents for each other this year, only for my small DC. We both have more than enough stuff. DH and I end up charity-shopping so many gifts in January, everyone might as well just give the money straight to charity!

Aargh, Christmas presents! I'm rubbish to buy for because anything I actually want, I usually want to choose myself, so at least half the presents I receive go straight in a drawer. And (apart from my DH, whose taste I know pretty well) I can't help but assume a lot of what I give people is equally unwanted. Yet I can't just say "actually, don't bother giving me a present and I won't give you one" without sounding totally Scrooge-like.

that's exactly how dh and i are, ninja. fortunately the credit crunch is a great excuse to scrooge up

the New Ecomnics Foundation Five Ways to Well-being is good:

neweconomics.org/projects/five-ways-well-being

my favourite is 'Take notice' which i think of as 'Take delight in small things'

Stealing a idea from Blackcurrents

i am going to raise a finger to the patriachy everyday

(give the patriachy the middle finger)

i love the NEF five ways - i hadn't read that before but if i thought hard about what makes me feel good it would be those five things

Man I love this section. Where else would a wellbeing thread turn into the benefits/ills of civilisation? :o

Speaking of cheap beauty products the Oil Cleansing Method is much beloved by the MN S&Bers and cheap as chips.

I've done bugger all on my list but I'm dealing with my DDs sleep issues at the moment which are driving me maaaad.

tilly I love that link, thanks!

Hi everyone. Great idea for a thread.

I am definitely going to try out that oil cleansing method. It 'speaks' to me, in the same way that once I decided to stop using skin make-up I found that my skin no longer needed it after about a month.

I don't have too many issues about well-being as I went through a similar process to Anon about a year ago. I'd allowed myself to get quit run down, put on a bit of weight and generally felt crap. My life was stable, but ultimately unfulfilling. I wanted to get back into shape without feeling that I was giving in to rubbishy messages about how women should look, and I wanted to try something new and challenging that made me feel good about me.

My baseline fitness was fairly good anyway (I have a dog so have always had two good walks a day regardless) so it didn't take too much. I just started running again (something I used to do regularly but let slide) and I stopped eating crap without denying myself the odd bag of crisps/bar of chocolate. Ironically, now the focus is more on how I feel rather than how I look, I am probably in the best shape of my life (though I'm never going to be a supermodel ).

Mentally, I am in an even better place. I have discovered that for me there is a direct link between my physical health and my state of mind, something I am going to be much more mindful of in the future. I have recently renewed an old hobby and have also started doing some challenging community work, so although I am still powerless to create a new and exciting career because of child commitments and retraining costs, I really feel like I've taken control over my life again, which is the next best thing.

I now make time, twice a week, for an hour-long bath involving a glass of red wine and a good book. This is more recharging for me than any expensive spa treatment and is probably the one thing I would never give up for anyone.

Goals for the future are to drink more water and to eat more protein/zinc-rich foods to encourage skin healing, as I notice these days I take far longer to heal than I used to.

Hi sunshine.

Sounds like you are the person I need to keep my eye on for motivation!

I've just realized btw that I've been merrily posting under two names on this thread - I started as AnonWasAWoman which was a temporary namechange.

I am currently trying to work out whether the lack of coffee is good - did you (or has anyone else) given it up long term? I feel a lot better for it but I'm so, so sleepy all the time!

On the plus side, it's so nice reading everyone's lists or resolutions and keeping my mind on mine. Thanks for making the thread work - I was cringing at the idea it might be a one-post wonder.

Coffee, yes.

I've gone from about 8-12 cups a day to 2 max (sometimes just one).

I have replaced it with green tea and less of it (so about 4 cups of tea a day). I didn't like it at first, but stuck with it and after about 3 weeks I really started to get into it. Now I love the stuff. I found trying the 'flavoured' varieties (e.g. green tea with lemon) was a good way to get into it at first.

I won't give up that first cup of coffee in the morning for anything, but now I find that I actually want a green tea rather than a coffee at any other time of day. And I crave hot drinks less anyway.

If anyone had told me I would be doing this 2 years ago, I'd have been to say the least.

I didn't get the sleepiness thing though. Maybe that's the tea? Or are you not getting enough sleep with all the studying etc? Come to think of it, how on earth have you been doing a thesis without coffee?

Cheers for clearing up the namechange confusion as well. A couple of things have slipped into place now.

The 'thesis without coffee' is a thing I ask myself! It's just I was getting such bad headaches and was jittery, and I did know it wasn't great. I will see if it goes away.

I have to say, I can't stand green tea ... yuck! But each to their own!

(sorry about the NC .... I just forgot. I was Ella Dee as well, but can't get comfortable with a new name.)

i like jasmine tea - as long as you don't leave it in too long i find it's a much nicer flavour than what gets sold as green tea here - it's confusing because jasmine tea is 'a' green tea

i can't drink normal black tea as i don't think i'm good with tanin and tea seems really heavy with it along with red wine.

random spewings sorry.

like the sound of the oil cleansing method - i rarely use any soap like products on my face and usually just wash with water or at most an unscented wet wipe. i've been using a plant oil based serum on my skin for a long time that seems to really agree with it so not scared of oil. going to see if my chemist has caster oil on the way to pick ds up from school.

dog here too sunshine - definitely very good for well being imo exercise and the opportunity to observe total joy - the minute i take her lead off in the fields she is bounding, exhuberant, joy in movement. it's inspiring i find. the other thing i have noticed is that i keep the poo bags and the treats in the same drawer - if i go to that drawer she gets massively excited and actually couldn't care if it was the poo bags or the treats coming out of there - she loves exercise and treats the same. lessons to be learned there i reckon

Just a quick post as I'm off to bed. Make sure you don't use boiling water on your green tea or it will be horrible and bitter. Between about 60 - 85C is right iirc. :)

Ahhh, maybe that is what I have done wrong, CJ, it has tasted bitter.

I do like jasmine tea, to be fair, I just assumed it was the nice taste of jasmine covering the bitterness of the green tea. But maybe not. I shall experiment ...

I ought to try this oil-based cleansing thing too.

(I feel we should be disagreeing violently or something, just to keep to the sterotype of evil shouty feminists ...)

I love the idea of this thread. I have just come in from a long walk (happy dog asleep at my feet) and noticed beautiful beautiful colours everywhere. I feel amazing!

Am going to find a yoga class this week, because it's something else that makes me feel amazing. I've been meaning to do it since I moved here in July -it's really time now!

It is gorgeous out, isn't it?

I was out earlier today and breathing in that smell ... mmmm!

I've been going for walks for the last couple of weeks and I've noticed I'm walking faster now - DH had to ask me to stop striding out and it's usually the other way around, so I am very smug.