WHEN I read that British Vogue editor Alexandra Shulman had decided last week that thin models are not the way to go in magazines, I rejoiced.
Ms Shulman, reopening a debate on “size zero”models, recently wrote to designers asking them not to send clothes for photo shoots in tiny sizes.
That way, the magazine wouldn’t be forced to hire and feature bone-thin models – the only ones who can fit into those minuscule sizes.
Readers, she noted, don’t want to see models with those body types, and she often had to ask her design staff to retouch photographs to make the models in the pictures look “larger”.
The reason why I’m happy about this turn of events is that perhaps a younger generation of women may take the cue from Ms Shulman, and begin to realise that thin is not the only ideal of beauty.
It’s a hard road that I’ve had to travel myself, learning to be happy with what I’ve got. While I don’t blame the media for my view of beauty, you can’t avoid the fact that what we see shapes our view of what is desirable.
Many wish for flatter bellies, longer legs, slimmer waists and smaller thighs. In not having them, they can develop a poor relationship with themselves, hating themselves for what they don’t have. It’s self-imposed torture.
The unfortunate thing is that if that’s going on, you don’t get to love yourself for everything that you are, and also for everything that you are not.
This struck me one hot day at an outdoor music festival four years ago, when my good friend, E – who all her life has wanted to be taller with more defined, fleshed-out calves – pointed out some girls clothed in bikinis and tiny wraps, dancing in the sun.
“Look at them,” she said.
“They’re so comfortable and un-self-conscious about their bodies in ways that we’ll never be.”
I hated my large thighs and hips back then, and it hit me that I didn’t want to live my life not knowing what it was like to feel beautiful. And I knew then
that in order to do that, I would have to love myself better.
Over the years, I’d grown disempowered about the way I looked, thanks in part to secretly comparing myself with my peers and, yes, to the models on the covers of magazines.
On the day my friend uttered her envy of those dancing girls, I decided to take responsibility for my vision of beauty.
Part of that was starting to look for the beauty in people around me, instead of finding things to envy. In doing so, my relationship with people began to change. I also began to see the good in myself.
And, when I began seriously practising yoga two years ago, I stopped trying to resculpt my body in the gym and learnt the art of simply sitting with my body and with what I had.
That was the final piece of the puzzle. How can I hate any part of the body that carries me through life, and holds me up each day from sunrise to sunset?
The very body that cradles me as I sleep?
If I’m not going to cherish it, no one else will, I thought. And so I do. It’s a better life, is all I can tell you.
Perhaps you’ve already realised all this. If you haven’t thought of it this way, I hope it helps. Either way, dear reader, remember to be gentle with yourself.
They say your body is a temple, and it’s true. Treat it that way, and you’ll find the space to shine.
Still, in the meantime, it’ll be nice to see women who aren’t stick-thin in British Vogue from time to time.
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