I could go back through time and tell myself, Stop this. None of this matters. Chill out.
I once hated a mole on my face so much that, as a teenager, I took a toothbrush to it and tried to scrub it off. But the problem was never the mole. The problem was that I was viewing my own face through the prism of my insecurity. I like that mole now. I have no idea why it used to trouble me so much, why I would stare at it in the mirror, wishing it into non-existence.
As Hamlet said to Rosencrantz, ‘there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so’. He was talking about Denmark. But it applies to our looks, too. People might be encouraged to feel inadequate, but they don’t have to, as soon as they realise that the feeling is separate from the thing they are worried about. So, while there is a lot of awareness about the dangers of obesity, there seems to be less awareness of the other kind of problems with our physical appearance. If we are feeling bad about our looks, sometimes the thing we need to address is the feeling, not our actual physical appearance.
Professor Pamela Keel of Florida State University has spent her career studying eating disorders and issues around female and male body image, and concludes that changing the way you look is never going to solve unhappiness about your looks. ‘What is really going to make you happier and healthier?’ she wondered at the start of 2018, presenting her latest research findings. ‘Losing ten pounds or losing harmful attitudes about your body?’ And when people feel less pressure about how their bodies look, it’s not just minds that benefit, but bodies too. ‘When people feel good about their bodies, they are more likely to take better care of themselves rather than treating their bodies like an enemy, or even worse, an object. That’s a powerful reason to rethink the kind of New Year’s resolutions we make.’
This might explain why rates of obesity are themselves dangerously rising. If we were happier with our bodies, we’d be kinder to them.
Just as being overly anxious about money can paradoxically result in compulsive spending, so worrying about our bodies is no guarantee we’ll have better bodies.
The pressure on people to worry about how they look, to eat ‘clean’, to consider things like thigh gaps, to have ‘beach ready’ bodies, has been traditionally very genderfocused, with advertisers putting much more pressure on women. And even now, as increasing numbers of men feel the pressure to look a way that is not how most men naturally look, to have gym-defined bodies, to be ashamed of their physical flaws, to look good in selfies, to worry about their hair going grey or falling out, the pressure on women to fret about their appearance has never been greater. Instead of trying to reduce women’s appearance-related anxiety, we are raising men’s appearance-related anxiety. In some areas, in some kind of distorted idea of equality, we seem to be trying to make everyone equally anxious, rather than equally free.
Just a moment ago, as I looked at Twitter, I saw someone retweet an article from the New York Post captioned ‘Male sex dolls with bionic penises will be here before 2019’. There is a picture of these sex dolls – hairless and impossibly toned bodies, complete with hair that will never fall out and penises that will never fail to be erect. Of course, inevitably, bionic female sex robots are being advanced, too, with even greater zeal. Now, wanting to look like a photoshopped model on the cover of a magazine is one thing. But will the next stage be wanting to look as blandly perfect as an android or robot? We might as well try to catch rainbows.
‘In nature,’ wrote Alice Walker, ‘nothing is perfect and everything is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways, and they’re still beautiful.’ Our bodies will never be as firm and symmetrical and ageless as those of bionic sex robots, so we need quite quickly to learn how to be happy with not having society’s unrealistic version of the ‘best’ body, and a bit happier with having our body, as it is, not least because being unhappy with our body doesn’t make us look any better. It just makes us feel a lot worse. We are infinitely better than the most perfect-looking bionic sex robots. We are humans. Let’s not be ashamed to look like them.
A note from the beach
Hello.
I am the beach.
I am created by waves and currents.
I am made of eroded rocks.
I exist next to the sea.
I have been around for millions of years.
I was around at the dawn of life itself.
And I have to tell you something.
I don’t care about your body.
I am a beach.
I literally don’t give a fuck.
I am entirely indifferent to your body mass index.
I am not impressed that your abdominal muscles are visible to the naked eye.
I am oblivious.
You are one of 200,000 generations of human beings.
I have seen them all.
I will see all the generations that come after you, too.
It won’t be as many. I’m sorry.
I hear the whispers the sea tells me.
(The sea hates you. The poisoners. That’s what it calls you. A bit melodramatic, I know. But that’s the sea for you. All drama.)
And I have to tell you something else.
Even the other people on the beach don’t care about your body.
They don’t.
They are staring at the sea, or they are obsessed with their own appearance.
And if they are thinking about you, why do you care? Why do you humans worry so much about a stranger’s opinion?
Why don’t you do what I do? Let it wash all over you. Allow yourself just to be as you are.
Just be.
Just beach.
How to stop worrying about ageing
1. Understand that old people aren’t actually that worried about old age, according to numerous surveys. The most recent one I can find was undertaken by American research firm NORC in 2016. It polled over 3,000 adults and found that old people are more optimistic about growing old than younger adults: 46 per cent of thirtysomethings said they were optimistic about ageing, compared to 66 per cent for the seventy pluses. It seems that worrying about growing old is a sign you are young. And the main reason to be optimistic about old age is that old people themselves are. Resilience seems to grow.
2. It happens. Ageing is something we can’t do much about. We can eat healthily, exercise and live sensibly but we will still age. Our 80th birthday will still be on the same date. Sure, we can make it more likely we will reach 80, but we can’t stop the wheels of time. And the certainty is actually quite reassuring. When there is nothing we can do about something, the point of worry begins to diminish. ‘Everybody dies,’ wrote Nora Ephron. ‘There’s nothing you can do about it. Whether or not you eat six almonds a day.’
3. The problems you associate with old age might not be the problems you have. You aren’t Nostradamus.
