Dani Mathers And Why I'm SICK of Women Being Shamed

The now infamous picture model Dani Mathers posted on Snapchat (naked woman blanked out).

Hands up who had never heard of Dani Mathers, prior to the recent news story about her taking a picture of a naked woman in a gymnasium changing room, then body-shaming said woman to her Snapchat followers?

*raises hand*

Hands up who would be more than happy never to hear of her again?!

Okay, so if you've not heard about this story, here's a very quick recap: Dani Mathers, playboy model (2015 Playmate of The Year), was at a branch of LA Fitness, when she took a photo of a naked woman in the changing room and posted it on Snapchat, with the caption: "If I can't unsee this, then you can't either."  The model came under a barrage of entirely justified criticism for violating the poor woman's privacy and for shaming her figure and has since claimed that the picture/comment was part of a private conversation and was never supposed to be shared publicly.  She's apologised and claimed that she "loves" the female body and knows that body-shaming is wrong.  She has insisted that the negative opinion people have formed of her since all this came out "is not the type of person" she is.  But that hasn't stopped the police from looking into Mathers' actions and it hasn't placated her critics.  She could face criminal charges, she's been suspended from her Playboy duties and has been banned from all branches of LA Fitness.  With good reason.

Look, if you're a regular reader of this blog, you might remember that last year, I wrote about wanting to lose half a stone.  I reached my initial goal a fortnight or so ago (yes, it took me a year - I really like food...) and I would now like to lose another three or four pounds to reach a really healthy weight at which I'm happy in myself.  And for reference, I am a UK size 10.  I shouldn't be fretting over my size.  But I find myself noticing every spare pound of flesh more than is probably healthy.  So, it's fair to say that as someone who is very much aware of her own physical "imperfections," this story hit home.  Hard.

Because the poor, unsuspecting woman who became the butt of Dani Mathers' "joke" (no pun intended) was someone just like me.  A woman trying to get a little healthier by exercising more.  Perhaps someone who's noticed a few extra pounds and has decided to do something about it.  We live in a world in which women are expected to look a certain way.  Magazines are full of air-brushed models and if a female celebrity dares to be photographed on a beach with cellulite on display, the tabloids will plaster her across their pages, with red rings of shame around her thighs.  Surely, the take-home message women get from all that is that we're supposed to make more of an effort to conform to a societal standard of beauty?  We're supposed to be slim, toned and gorgeous, or we're somehow not good enough.

And yet, we find ourselves in a situation where a woman has gone to the gym - a place people go to get healthy, perhaps lose weight and tone up - and instead of being praised for it, a slimmer, apparently more conventionally "attractive" woman is tearing into her for it.  

How are women supposed to win?!

It's hard enough to be a woman in a world in which "beauty" has such strict meaning.  We almost come to expect - in a horrible way - the press to rip female celebrities to shreds, if they're not conforming to the standards imposed on them.  We don't like it (because it's gross, duh), but we're so used to it that it's reaching a point where it loses its shock value.  But when the shaming of women comes directly from other women, we really do have a massive problem.

What bothers me is that Dani Mathers, whilst in the hugely privileged position of supposedly having the standard of beauty women are apparently meant to aspire to, is in a career that is known for being ruthless.  Models are worked hard to stay in shape.  They can't afford to gain weight, or let their looks fade in any way.  So Dani Mathers should know better than most, how it is to feel pressure to look good.  Ridiculing someone who is only trying to better herself - whether for health or beauty reasons - is therefore all the more shameful.

When I write something serious, sometimes I need a gif that makes me giggle.

I have a problem.

Another thing I find particularly hard to swallow is the idea that Ms Mathers seemed to think that her actions were somehow forgivable if she claimed that the photo and the disgusting caption that went with it were supposed to be part of a private conversation that the rest of the world never saw?  How does that work?!  Is body-shaming another human acceptable if only your close friends know about it?!

In a strange way, her insistence that the photo and comment were meant to be private almost makes this whole thing worse.  I mean, here we have a woman in a position of influence, who probably has a few female fans looking up to her and undoubtedly will therefore be spouting the kind of "everyone is beautiful" rhetoric that we all should be able to believe (because it's bloody true!), whilst in private, she's breaking the law and violating strangers in order to mock and shame them for not being slim or beautiful enough.  That's the kind of two-faced hostility towards women that we don't need in the world.

We need female role models who speak about the beauty of every other woman and actually mean it.  We need to celebrate women for their achievements, rather than merely reducing them to their physical attributes.  We need to make our minds up: are we trying to encourage women to exercise, or are we openly mocking them for it?!

And you know what?  We need to live in a world in which we openly admit to our mistakes.

So, Dani Mathers, on behalf of women over the world - especially women who maybe wish they could be a few pounds lighter, or who are more than a little aware of their "flaws" - don't mock us further with a casual "oops, nobody was meant to see that" excuse for an apology.  Admit to what you did.  Don't tell us that you're not the sort of person who body-shames women, when you've been caught doing exactly that.  Be strong enough to accept that you were utterly wrong.  Be brave enough to look and see the harm that actions like yours cause ordinary women every single day.  

And make the choice to no longer be a part of that harm.

We are all beautiful, regardless of what is on the outside.  The irony of this whole situation is that it's the professional model who's come out of it looking ugly.

Only time will tell if the world can "unsee" that side of Dani Mathers.

Greedy Guts

I was always skinny.  So skinny, in fact, that when I was a little girl, my dad would lightheartedly tease me, by calling me "Lucky Legs" ("they're so spindly, you're lucky they don't break").  I was that girl who, during my teens, could eat my body weight in pizza, chips, ice cream and anything else you care to mention, without putting on a single pound.  I was a UK size 8-10.  I was decidedly slim and as far as I was concerned, I was just lucky enough to stay that way.

Of course, age has this nasty little surprise up its sleeve.  "Middle age spread" is not a brand of margarine for people in their late 30s, unfortunately.  And as I progressed from my teens to my twenties and now into my thirties, there's absolutely no doubt that I can't eat whatever I like without gaining weight.

But damnit, it tasted goooooooood.

I'm still a UK size 10, just.  But I'm at that point where I own precisely no pairs of jeans in a size 10 that fit comfortably.  See, when I gain weight, it seems to go to just one place: right on my tummy.  I end up with a pot-belly that makes me look as though I'm about 5-6 months pregnant.  But there's no baby in there.  Just a heck of a lot of cake.

Now, granted, I'm normally the first person to moan about women who are only a size 10, but who insist on weeping and wailing about how "fat" they are.  But recently, I made the fatal mistake of googling what my ideal weight is for my height.  I'm only 5'0", so I knew in advance that it was probably going to be below my actual weight.  What I didn't expect - and what I was horrified to discover - was that I was not far off a whole stone overweight.

For the love of GOD woman, order a salad.

Annoyingly, my gut-reaction (pun only slightly intended) to feeling porky is to comfort eat.  Frankly, when Kate Moss said "nothing tastes as good as skinny feels," I just assume she's been going to the wrong restaurants her entire life.  

I'm a foodie.  I don't see food as just a fuel we need in order to live; I see it as a joy of life.  Something to savour.  My grandfather was a pastry chef and cooking is in my blood.  I love experimenting with flavours, trying things I've never eaten before and using food as a social experience with friends and family.  I also have one heck of a sweet tooth.

Doughnuts the size of my HEAD.  That's how much of a sweet tooth I have.

But I also love clothes.  I love pretty dresses and skirts.  And when I try things on and discover that they're not fitting correctly anymore - or aren't fitting at all - that makes me feel lousy.  I can't afford to entirely update my wardrobe with clothes a size up, so that leaves me with only one option.  And that brings me to the point of writing this blog.

It's out there, now.  Short of taking a photo of my ever-increasing pot-belly and plastering it all over the Internet, this is as close as I can get to baring myself online and saying I need to do something about it.  Let's not forget that I also suffer from chronic asthma and any weight gain is bad news for my breathing.  So, I have more than simply aesthetic reasons for wanting to slim down a little and get back into shape.  By writing this blog, I've now made a promise to myself to stop eating like a pig (at least all the time - I'm sure as hell not denying myself forever!) and to try to exercise a bit more (a feat not made any easier by the aforementioned asthma...).  I don't think I need to lose the whole stone.  I don't believe everything I read online and nor do I have any desire to become super-skinny again.  But I do want to be healthier and to be able to fit into my clothes without having to lie down and breathe in, just to do up a zip.

I'm aiming for around 7lbs.  If I can shave that off, I'll be pretty pleased.  I might post updates as to how I'm getting along, now and then, but not too frequently, because let's face it, that would be dull.  Nobody tunes in to read about my wobbly bits.  Not as far as I know, anyway...

So, here I am - a greedy foodie trying to lose half a stone.  Wish me luck!

REAL Women Don't Tell Others What REAL Women Are.

Citizens of Internet Land,  I have a problem.  Well, actually, I have several: My hair rarely behaves and I'm not married to Matt Smith, to name but two.  But currently, I have a problem with pictures like these:

Here's the thing.  I'm a UK size 10.  I have curvy hips, wobbly thighs and, frankly, something of a pot belly at times. Being only five feet tall means that any excess weight I gain is noticeable pretty quickly and I won't lie; I've struggled with my body image.  That's in no small part due to walking past shops with magazines filled with pictures of celebrities no bigger than I am, with captions like: "Celebrity's shocking weight gain" and "Supermodel displays not-so-super cellulite."  These women, some of whose bodies are not that dissimilar to mine, are then subjected to the "red circle of doom," highlighting their physical flaws.  It's humiliating and it's depressing.  Why?  Because that person is more than just a body.  She's a woman with feelings, ideas and aspirations and who are we to reduce her to nothing more than her looks?  Not only is it depressing for the person in question to be so publicly criticised for the most trivial of reasons, but it's dangerous, too.  Young girls read glossy magazines.  There's already far too much pressure on youngsters to look a certain way in order to feel that they fit in.  I went through a phase when I was in my late teens where I would barely eat a full meal because I was so convinced I'd be fat and disgusting if I did.  I got over it, thankfully and now I'm back to my usual, greedy self, but too many girls don't.

So, you'd think that perhaps, given all of that, I might approve of the "real women have curves" movement and the "motivational" (if it's possible to type a word with sarcasm, I just did) images popping up online, telling us that real women are curvy, rather than all skin and bones.

I don't.

The implication in those images is one I'm uncomfortable with.  It suggests that a thin woman - a girl who perhaps has a flatter chest than others - is somehow not real.  It also subtly tells us that there is a specific way that we're supposed to look, in order for us to be considered attractive.  How is that any better than what the magazines are doing?  The fact is, it isn't any better.  It's no healthier for a naturally slim girl with a slightly boyish figure to be desperately munching on crisps in order to try to make herself curvy than it is for a curvier girl to be starving herself in order to be thin.

Here's a question:  Do you identify as female?  If the answer to that is yes, then congratulations!  You're a woman.  Your body shape has utterly no bearing on that, whatsoever.  I could go up or down a dress size and I'd still be just as much of a real woman as I am now.

Most of my curves are doughnut-related.  Go to Prague, everyone; they have doughnuts as big as your HEAD.

There is, of course, something to be said for encouraging healthy attitudes to our body shape.  It's right that we try to encourage young girls to look after their bodies by eating relatively healthily and being active (yeah, I know - the irony of me saying that after posting a photo of myself with a MASSIVE doughnut is not lost on me).  But it's also vital that we teach them to love themselves.  AS THEY ARE. 

It's time we stopped judging others for not fitting into some warped societal idea of what a woman should look like.  It's time to stop suggesting that a girl won't find herself a partner if she's too skinny, because "real men like curves" one minute, then making her paranoid by telling her that "men don't like fat girls" the next!  Beauty comes in all shapes and sizes. 

So do women.