It's Messy

by Amanda de Cadenet

  Adolescence might have been the first time my body drastically changed, but it wasn’t the last. It happened again when I was thirty-five, after the birth of my twins. Prediabetes and thyroid issues were just two of the aftereffects of a twin pregnancy. So I did what so many postpartum mums do. I frantically dieted, hoping to drop the extra weight. But to no avail.

  It was a major struggle to lose a single pound. I tried everything, from the Atkins diet to “cleanses” to the keto diet, although instead of burning fat, I simply put on an additional ten pounds and got the worst breath ever. I tried the go-to diet: protein and veggies plus exercise. Nothing worked. And as time went on, I became more and more desperate, so desperate I tried a crazy diet called hCG, which claims to “reset your metabolism,” causing you to lose a pound a day without hunger. But you’re also not allowed to ingest any fats or do any exercise. Sounds easy, but it’s really not.

  On hCG I lost twenty pounds in a month and was able to enjoy about a week of fitting into my size 29 pretwins jeans before gaining it all back in half the amount of time it took me to lose it.

  It’s safe to say I learned from that experience. I am now committed to avoiding the D-word for good. It’s become a word that, to me, is more offensive than douchebag, dickhead, or dumbass. Diet. I hate that fucking word. I’ve banned that word from my house; no one can utter it in front of my kids or in my presence without getting shut down immediately.

  Accepting my body is an ongoing challenge. The truth is that I miss wearing the many awesome outfits gathering dust in my closet, and some days I’m just not ready to never see my “previous” body again. Even after all this, I was somehow waiting for my body to return to normal until one day a friend said, “What if this is just your new normal?”

  Maybe my friend is right. What if a healthy body looks like my body?

  I think about that whenever I’m really struggling with how my body has changed.

  The media rarely shows accurate representations of women, especially the messy parts and the bits that are unsexy and unglamorous. The overall message we’re given time and time again is that We Are Not Okay. We need to look like Her. We need to have a life like Her. We need to have Her marriage, Her pregnancy, and it all needs to unfold in a well-ordered, culturally approved sequence. As someone who did it in the wrong order for reasons no one approved of, I can tell you it doesn’t have to be that way. No one gets to tell anyone else how to look, how to feel about their body, or how to live. No one gets to write the script for us. If I believe in anything, it’s that we have the power to create our own lives.

  So how do we go forward, loving and living in our bodies if we are not the size the world insists we must be in order to be considered valuable or indeed viable?

  Let me remind you . . .

  Being valued for your beauty alone is not all it’s cracked up to be. The power and value of desirability notwithstanding, there comes a time when, even for the most beautiful, it just gets old. We are more than our asses and eyelashes, our teeth and hair.

  Ask any gorgeous woman and she will tell you that eventually her beauty overshadows her being seen for the multifaceted being she is. I’ve known many beautiful women who are smart, accomplished actors and have been mostly denied the opportunity to play complex women. Instead, their careers have been built on playing the hot girlfriend, the hot mistress, or the supermodel who gets murdered. Perhaps being complicated in addition to being beautiful is too much for our misogynistic culture to handle.

  In addition to being relentlessly judged for and ranked by our looks, we live in a time when women and girls are expected to look flawless 24/7. For people in the public eye, the paparazzi have always been out there, but now that we’re all madly snapping and posting pictures of each other, the pressure to look great at all times is exhausting and ultimately sets all women up for failure.

  Consider the joys of being low maintenance

  In some ways I feel fortunate to have grown up in the UK, where the obsession with beauty isn’t quite what it is in the States. We did not have blow-dry bars, eyebrow bars, and makeovers in the mall. Affordable nail salons are a fairly recent development, so if you found a way to get a manicure, you were lucky.

  If you see photos of me at events, most of the time my hair is in its natural state and my main effort at makeup is lipstick. And lots of mascara. Most likely applied in the car en route.

  I also don’t subscribe to the expectation that I’ll buy something new for every event I attend. A few years ago, I did an experiment: I wore the same dress multiple times over a six-month period to red carpet and other events. I just switched up the bag, shoes, and jewelry. Guess what? No one noticed, or gave a shit. Whether it’s a fancy event or just going to work, the same pressure exists for women to have a perfect mani-pedi, perfect hairless body parts, dyed and straightened and shiny hair. I find it exhausting and will never wind up on anyone’s “best dressed” list because I just don’t care enough to compete. I will not participate in competition culture. Which woman wore what gown best? Can’t we just say they both wore it great and there is room for everyone to kill it in their chosen outfit?

  Unless your body type is naturally thin, being skinny isn’t all it’s cracked up to be

  As someone who’s been thin and miserable, I can tell you that the whole “nothing tastes as good as skinny” line is a bullshit myth, along with these gems:

  1. Being skinny guarantees your life will be successful and full of love.

  2. Being “not skinny” (everything from normal to curvy) means you’re lazy, undisciplined, and worthy of neither success nor love.

  3. It’s better to be skinny and mentally unstable than accepting of your imperfect human body and healthy.

  The truth is that when I’ve been at my thinnest I’ve also been my unhappiest. Once, after a particularly shitty breakup, I was so distressed that all I ate for two weeks were broccoli florets and soy milk. But I was thin and people would say, “You look AHMAZING. What are you doing?”

  What I wanted to say was, “I have a violent boyfriend who got arrested, and he’s in jail, and I am completely strung out because I’m obsessed with not being with him anymore, and I can’t eat.” But I just avoided answering because the truth was too hard to share.

  As a photographer I’ve been known to not photograph girls who are obviously underweight. Sadly, the same courtesy has not been extended to me regarding my curves.

  I was photographed for a major fashion campaign not long ago, and it was obvious that my boobs and ass weren’t going to fit in any of their sample clothing. I eventually squeezed myself into a dress that fit me like a second skin. When I saw the finished pictures, my boobs and butt had all but disappeared. I politely asked that they put my T&A back where they belonged. I was told it was the first time a subject had ever asked to be “made bigger.”

  “I didn’t ask to be made ‘bigger,’ ” I replied. “But could you please just put my body back the way it is? We will all be embarrassed if you don’t make me look like me.”

  After many years navigating my shape and the “problems” my body has caused other people, I’ve committed to never allowing anyone, including myself, to make me feel bad about ME.

  Refuse to be body shamed

  My boobs, which have breastfed three children for a total of three years, are healthy and thankfully free of any conspicuous lumps. My husband is mildly obsessed with them, as are my cats, who like to lie on them at night.

  And yet, if I wear something low cut or tight, they still cause some chaos.

  I’ve gotten used to people talking about my boobs as if I’m not attached to them. At lunch recently, a girlfriend looked at my boobs and said, “Wow, your boobs are massive.”

  “Up, up. My eyes are up here.” Talk to my face, not my tits, please.

  But here’s the deal with the boobs.

  Finding an attractive, comfortable 38E bra is all but impossible.

  My back aches most of the time.r />
  Big boobs size me out of most of the clothes I want to wear.

  They’ve made finding clothes that fit my figure a full-time job.

  I’ve been told by more than one saleswoman to just give up and go shop in the maternity department. (Uh, no thank you, I’ve shopped in that department before, and I’m not going back.)

  Now I mostly shop online. I can try things on in the privacy of my own home without shame, or needing to call for help when I get stuck inside a dress, which is a frequent occurrence when I shop in a store.

  I feel the worst about my boobs when I’m the subject of a photo shoot. On a typical shoot, to avoid confusion or embarrassment, I share my exact measurements with the stylists who are tasked with finding outfits. I reach out ahead of time and warn them that like most nonmodel women, I am not sample size—nowhere close, actually—and they will need to be creative with my wardrobe. I give them a list of designers whose clothes generally fit my body, as well as styles that have been successful in the past. I try to make all our lives easier, because I have a good idea of what’s coming.

  One particular shoot, I showed up to find that the majority of outfits were at least two sizes too small. There was one mumu that I refused to even touch. There may have been a few good bottom halves but the tops were a disaster. Thin-strapped tank tops, crop tops, and men’s baggy white blouses. All terrible. What did fit was a fluffy white oversized sweater.

  I politely asked the stylist if she received my email with my measurements.

  She said she had seen my email, but instead of acknowledging that she hoped if she ignored the numbers they would go away, she said, “Let’s just try a few things on.” To which I said, “Please, there is nothing to be gained from me trying on things that are two sizes too small, except that I will feel upset.”

  So she suggested I just wear the fluffy Marshmallow Man white cardigan. With no pants. No pants is always the go-to idea. In fact, if you see a woman on a magazine cover wearing no pants and it looks as if her top is meant to conceal larger-than-acceptable boobs, it’s either me or someone like me.

  I put on the cardigan, looked in the mirror, and saw that I looked exactly like a giant snowball about to get rolled downhill.

  And then it happened. I started to feel bad about my body. The stylist might have had other ideas, but now it was too late. The negative voices in my head were getting louder, drowning out suggestions. “You are causing a problem with your big boobs, Amanda, they are messing up this shoot, everyone is frustrated with you because nothing fits you, you should really lose some weight, make your body smaller, shrink those boobs, get a breast reduction, go on a diet, take some pills so you aren’t hungry, get a Lap-Band, anything, hide yourself away so that your body doesn’t cause any more problems.”

  That was when my more evolved self took over, as it does most of the time these days.

  I repeated my self-love mantra: I am not my boobs. I am more than a body. I am more than a dress size. I do not have to wear the only thing that fits me to keep a stranger happy. This is not my problem.

  I breathed deeply. And then I spoke up.

  “I’m sorry you didn’t take me seriously when I said I was a size 16, with 38E boobs. But it’s true, and it means I don’t fit into the things you chose for me except that lovely white snowball cardigan, or that hot mumu, which would have been wonderful when I was pregnant with my twins.”

  She looked at me somewhat confused and maybe embarrassed that she’d ignored my email, but now I was put in the position of feeling bad for her, and for a moment I regretted having been so direct. But seriously, why didn’t she just do her job? Why didn’t she read the email, google me, for God’s sakes, see what she was dealing with and find me some appropriate clothes?

  I had to fight hard within myself to not go down the rabbit hole of shame over something that was not my fault and should not be a reason to feel bad about myself. Maybe the next time I do a shoot, I’ll just bring my own clothing with me. That way no one will feel bad, and most important I won’t have to feel bad about my glorious, healthy boobs.

  Body acceptance

  It’s better to accept yourself and your body than to beat yourself up. It’s better to feel good and healthy at a heavier weight than to feel like shit despite being ten pounds lighter. It’s better to be body positive than body negative.

  Body acceptance isn’t something that comes easily or naturally for many of us. You get there one small step at a time. Telling women to love their bodies is a high bar to set right out of the gate. Show me a woman who can one day wake up and decide to love every part of herself, after an entire life of receiving the subtle and not so subtle message that however she looks is just not good enough—“Sure, I’m down with those stretch marks across my belly and the saggy skin on my upper arms!”—and I’ll show you a woman who’s either drunk or lying.

  A good first question to ask is, Why are you unhappy with your body?

  Is it because you want to be your optimal physical self?

  Or is it because looking at a bunch of bikini selfies on Instagram makes you feel like shit?

  Defining and getting honest about the root of your body shame is crucial.

  You’ve got to get real about your genetics, about the pros and cons of what you were born with. I have what some consider an “enviable” hourglass figure. Big boobs, smallish waist, decent-sized bum. But I’ve also had to come to grips with the fact that my arm bones are as big as some girls’ leg bones.

  You can spend your entire life fighting that, or you can accept what’s going on. Go to your happy place, and ask yourself at what weight were you happiest. Can you get there with reasonable diet and exercise, by which I mean a regime that doesn’t consume you and become your primary obsession in life?

  Something else to remember: Our culture’s definition of beauty changes with the seasons. Women drive themselves crazy trying to fit into one very small bucket. I’ve always believed that I was born in the wrong era. At least curves have partly come back into style. Thank you, Kim Kardashian. (Love her or hate her, you cannot deny that she paved the way for the acceptance of the curvy girl.) By the time this is published, however, the “curves are in” phase may have passed. What does this tell us? That there’s no point in beating yourself up about how you look. Next year your exact body type might go from being undesirable to the physique everyone covets.

  I would like to propose something radical: Instead of being consumed with looking like someone else’s ideal of beauty, why not ask yourself, “What do I consider ‘beautiful?’” It’s been so ingrained in us to seek out some mass-produced standard of beauty that in truth you might not actually give a shit about what everyone else thinks is “beautiful” when you stop to consider your own standard.

  Although we’re still stuck inside a system that values our exterior much more than our interior, we can expand the notion of what is desirable. And that can begin today, with the conversation we’re having right now.

  12.

  It’s Never Okay

  * Trigger warning

  1. When I am five years old, a man flashes me whilst I’m eating breakfast in my family kitchen. Sticks his flaccid pink penis up against the kitchen window. Really puts me off my full English breakfast of eggs and bacon.

  2. When I am twelve years old, a man I called The Toad jerks off under the desk sitting across from me (see story on page 189).

  3. When I am thirteen years old, Tom, a boy five years older than me, pushes my mouth onto his dick.

  4. When I am fourteen years old, a guy sitting next to me on the Paris Metro silently jerks off onto my leg.

  5. When I am fifteen years old, I’m making out with a guy I’ll call Paul in his dormitory bed. I tell him I’ve changed my mind and I want him to stop. I am drunk, the room is spinning. I want to leave, and try to. But he forces his penis inside me anyway. The next thing I remember is regaining consciousness and the sun is coming up, then walking through a field with my cloth
es ripped and unexplained scratches. I drag myself to the railway station and take a train back to my mom’s house, where I never tell her what just happened but instead sneak into my bed and hope that when I wake up this will all be a bad dream. For many years I believed being raped was all my fault. For being drunk, for getting into bed with him, for changing my mind. It never occurred to me that when I told him no, he should have stopped. My shame was suffocating, insidious, and emotionally stalked me for the next twenty years.

  The Toad Man, aka Frank Wank, was my initiation into the way females are abused—sometimes overtly, but most often subtly, quietly, secretly, carefully, and repeatedly.

  In the midst of their shitty divorce, my parents would leave me with Lulu, a pretty young neighbor girl who also happened to be a heroin addict. There was no way my parents could’ve known; she hid it so well with her fancy English accent and expensive clothes.

  When she needed extra money to buy drugs, she would moonlight as my part-time babysitter, and I would have to tag along and do whatever she was doing.

  Some weekends were pretty standard kid activities, but other times Lulu would take me in a cab to a big, fancy apartment in Belgravia, where a busy lady assistant would give me a pink fizzy drink and tell me to sit outside a closed door in the hallway and wait. Lulu would then go into the room for a short time before reappearing, and we would take another black cab back to her house, whilst she counted the thick wad of cash in her grubby hands.

  One day, on our way to the fancy apartment in Belgravia, Lulu asked if I wanted to go into the room with her instead of waiting in the hall. I nodded my head okay, but had no idea what I was agreeing to. We arrived at the apartment building. As I had done many times before, I stepped into the still, vast entryway of the building. We took the elevator to the penthouse, and when the doors opened I smelled the usual smell of men’s cologne and cigars. The same lady handed me the customary pink fizzy drink, but suddenly I felt nervous and wanted to go home.