OPINION:
How was your weekend? Mine was great, thanks for asking. I spent it with approximately 50 women I had never met before, on the beach near Brighton, helping them all to take their clothes off.
Before you rush to conclusions, I should perhaps explain. Keen readers of this column – and not-so-keen readers, come to think about it – will know that I write a lot about body positivity, or rather the lack of it. I write as a plus-size person in recovery from various eating disorders, who likes to run marathons in my underwear. But I also write about it because women get in touch with me all the time, admitting the terror and shame they feel about their own bodies. They then feel embarrassed that these are their overwhelming emotions about themselves, when so many social media influencers seem to be embracing their curves and showing off their cellulite.
“Why, when I’m old enough to know better and have more important things to worry about, do I still spend a ridiculous amount of time obsessing over what I am going to look like in a bikini?” I get asked this question dozens of times a week. My answer is always the same: because decades of conditioning cannot be undone by a few brands using a size-16 model in a couple of their ad campaigns so that they don’t get cancelled by their more vociferous customers.
With each message I receive, I become more and more incensed that self-loathing seems to be the default setting for so many women. It really is just the most enormous waste of energy; energy that could otherwise be used to… I don’t know, take over the world. This is why there is not a single female among the top 10 richest people on the planet: it’s because the likes of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos did not spend their formative years being indoctrinated into a cult that told them they had to look like Gisele in a bikini. And if that sounds trivial to you, then you’re probably a bloke who wasn’t paying attention to the fact that their mother existed entirely on Diet Coke, Special K and thin air.