Tag: features

May feature: Activist’s anxiety and duty of care

When deciding what topic to write this month’s feature on, I was horribly spoiled for choice. It feels as though so many massive issues and events have arisen in May, all of which I want to sit and dissect: the Alabama Abortion Ban; Theresa May’s resignation; the cancellation of Jeremy Kyle; growing criticisms over Love Island. There’s too much. The concept of having to “pick” one topic to write passionately about filled me with activist’s anxiety – a term I use to refer to my constant anxiety that I’m not doing enough, for enough issues, in the world. We are limited in our dispensable energy, so where should we direct it? (N.B. I do not consider myself an activist in the literal sense – I am using the word metaphorically to refer to anyone who fights for, talks publicly about, or tries to learn about current social issues).

When Emma Watson gave her famous UN speech when she was elected Goodwill Ambassador for Women in 2014, she declared the need to take action toward gender equality and make positive change. Concluding her speech, Watson encourages her audience to ask themselves two simple questions:

If not me, who? If not now, when?

With this, I felt an urgency and a need to do something. I didn’t know what, but I knew I wanted to do something. That same urgency is still with me now. When I rewatch that speech, I get the same single of excitement for the impact I can make on the world if I channel my energies in the right direction. But what is that direction?

Back to May 2019 – it’s been a mad one. There are a lot of issues I want to talk about, but anxiety is holding that back. (TW: Suicide). The main chip on my shouting-about-stuff-on-the-internet shoulder right now is television; namely, the recent tragedy of the late Jeremy Kyle guest, and subsequent discussions of duty of care in reality TV. Like most people, I am in full support of the show’s cancellation. Have I watched it before? Yeah, I have. But I’ve also learned a lot and come to realise the classist voyeurism that it really is. Despite the defense that “no one is forced to go on” and “they get paid and get put up in a nice hotel”, that’s not quite justification for faux help show in which guests are consistently and repetitively humiliated, shamed and ridiculed. Oh, and guests don’t actually get paid.

The fact that it took someone taking their life for this show to finally be cancelled is incomprehensible, and has rightly opened a massive discussion around duty of care. Now, as we enter the preface of summer, Love Island is on the horizon alongside the yearly analysis of its highly problematic production and orchestration, which still has had little impact on the show itself. In particular, criticism of Love Island has resurfaced given the tragic suicides of two former contestants – Sophie Gradon and Mike Thalassitis – within the past year. The extremely intense format of the show – basically Big Brother does dating – orchestrates romantic encounters and holds the participants captive on a ‘luxury’ holiday. Again, many argue the ethical issues with this are overruled by the participants’ consent. The issue there: many don’t fully know what they’re getting themselves into.

The internet right now is positing Love Island in a marmite situation, with half of people ready for weeks of binging the show, and the other half calling for its cancellation. ‘Jeremy Kyle was cancelled after one suicide – why hasn’t Love Island been cancelled after two?!’ A valid question, and one I keep asking myself.

Love Island and The Jeremy Kyle Show are fundamentally different, in that Jeremy Kyle positions the audience in power, able to laugh at and ridicule its contestants. The show even became its own descriptor for personality – ‘they’re the kind of person that would be on Jeremy Kyle’. Love Island, on the other hand, encourages us to idolise perfectly sculpted, socially adored people who fit beauty standards. However, that in no way undermines the factor of mental health in the show’s production, particularly given that the level of fame is much greater in this show, with contestants often facing piercing hatred online, clinging to them for years. Clearly, something needs to change, and this is something that the public are increasingly discussing – we now need producers to listen and act. We also, though, need to acknowledge our role in the Love Island dialogue, and cut the cruel judgements and criticisms thrown at contestants every year across social media. Omg, so-and-so is like really annoying and not even that attractive and needs to shut up?! Listen to what you’re saying. Remember the impact that could be having. And be quiet.

Besides this fatal issue, Love Island is not exactly well known for its diversity. One box-ticking POC each year and now one plus size model? That’s not enough, ITV. Whilst I’m anxious to denounce the show altogether when I don’t know all of the facts, I can’t help but feel my chest tighten at the thought of Sophie and Mike, and the undeniable influence the show had on their lives. It makes me uncomfortable at best. This, to me, feels not enough – to simply feel anxious and uncomfortable. At the end of the day, I’m not doing anything to help. This is when we need to give ourselves a bit of a break.

We need to realise the importance in the ‘try’ and the ‘talk’. We place such emphasis on doing enough, to the extent that we live in our own self-destructive all or nothing binary (what is it with this society and binaries?!). Mostly vegan people are slammed for not being fully vegan. Someone who fights against the barriers women face in management positions is criticised for not focusing on more life-threatening issues like poverty. We are all fearful of not doing enough, that we forget that the world is made up of small things and different things. Yes, there is a time for lobbying and protesting and boycotting, but that isn’t everyday. If it was, we’d live in total anarchy. Those small efforts formulate the granular construction of our existence. Those fleeting conversations are what infuse our living rooms with a better, more progressive attitude.

I will angrily shout about issues that fill me with rage, and use my voice and ability as best I can to do something good, but I will try to quieten that internal voice that tells me I’m not doing enough, or that I’m doing it wrong. If we’re doing something, then it’s likely not wrong, because it means we’re either progressing or we’re learning. That fear I got from Emma Watson’s call to action was not the idea of doing something, but the idea of doing enough. In realising the power of our small contributions, that mantra takes on a more accessible light. I don’t know for certain, but I’d guess that most social progress started, at some point or other, with someone feeling uncomfortable.

April feature: Feeling triggered by other people’s mental health

It’s 2019, people are talking, and mental health is on the agenda – at least, more than it was on the past. We may be opening up more about the labours of anxiety and depression, but many less palatable disorders remain unmentioned. In the same respect, we are often more open to discussing the ‘prettier’ sides of anxiety and depression; the self-care, avant-garde poetry and confessional tweets. In contrast, the darker symptoms and implications are left just that – in the dark.

I saw a tweet relatively recently why no one discusses the fact that a consequence of depression can be not showering or maintaining general cleanliness. A ‘gross’ suggestion, and also indicative of the aesthetic lens through which many people view mental illness. In this way, self-harm (an infuriatingly glamorised act which undermines the very illness it represents) is viewed more pleasantly than a body that hasn’t showered for five days. Neither should hold more aesthetic weight than the other, because aesthetics is irrelevant and dangerous to perceptions of mental health. Rather, these are both signifiers of a potentially fatal illness. Viewing them in a judgmental and aesthetic way attributes morality to mental health symptoms and closes the discussion we’ve worked so hard to open.

In the same thought bubble, I want to discuss the idea of being triggered by other people’s mental illness. I have seen very little discussed on this topic, but it’s a huge intrusion upon my life. What makes this topic so relevant is that it is closely tied to multiple other key points of discussion around mental health – namely, setting boundaries, saying ‘no’, triggering/trigger warnings, and the importance of speaking out. As easy as it is to shout about ‘speak up!’, we don’t talk about the person that is being spoken to. We preach about the importance of ‘saying no’, but we don’t talk about the request that is being asked. These conceptualised ideas are part of a very real, messy, complex dialogue, in which both parties can be equally vulnerable. Let me put the situation to you: an incredibly vulnerable person reaches out to another incredibly vulnerable person for help; the first person feeling unable to speak to anyone else, and the second feeling unable to cope with the proposed issue. What do we do from there?

In this situation, I genuinely don’t know what I would do. This is the perfect example of where ‘speaking up’ doesn’t quite meet the cut as a one-stop solution to mental illness. The idea of speaking up as a one-stop solution can lead to the person in this scenario, having reached out and received no help, feeling truly hopeless – that there is no other way out. This is why diversifying the dialogue we have around mental health is so important. ‘Speaking out’ worked wonders as a start-up campaign to get mental health into a wider social narrative, but we need more.

However, I acknowledge that even this proposed situation in itself is more complicated how I’ve presented it. It depends who each person is – for example, when my friends are struggling, I’m always more than happy, able and willing to help. If I am feeling vulnerable or unwell at the time, I seem to instinctively use helping them as a distraction from my own pain, and I fully immerse myself in doing what I can do help. If someone who I’m not close with is struggling, then I usually can’t deal with it – then comes the panic and self-imposed responsibility and blame. That’s just me, though. Some people may feel unable to support their friends but more able to support others by being less close to the situation. In the words of another common trope from the mindful discussions going about – we are all different.

So what’s the solution? How do we balance a world of speaking up whilst respecting the needs of people who feel triggered by other people’s mental illness? Well, there isn’t one. That’s very key to the discussion we create around mental health. To posit the issue of mental health as a problem/solution equation is to simplify it miles past its messy, congealed reality. There is no ‘solution’, but rather tools, support, opportunity, progress, comfort, aid, recovery. Recovery itself isn’t even a solution, because mental health isn’t that black and white.

I’m not here to slam on the growing discussions around mental health. I frigging adore it, and am all the way here for it. I just think we need to be mindful of how this discussion progresses. Rather than spreading the word until everyone knows it, we ought to spread the word and then spread the sentence, the paragraph, the book. That way, sufferers of mental illness may feel increasingly able to reach for and welcome support in a variety of ways, and in ways that respect both parties. We’ve gotta look after each other you know.

March feature: How social progress is hindered by prescriptive morality

In reflecting on my latest read, Deborah Frances-White’s The Guilty Feminist, I’ve come to realise that the increasingly woke, progressive society we live in is not all free love and acceptance. Ironically, in the bid to maintain absolute respect and correctness in the way we address contemporary topics of discussion results in it failing to resemble a discussion at all; rather, a prescriptive mindset is enabled in order to achieve absolute morality.

For the purposes of this post, I’m going to talk exclusively about those groups that concern themselves with social progress, fighting oppression and embracing fair and honest humanity. This cohort of individuals seems to occupy an undefined but simultaneously starkly recognisable sphere across social platforms; characterised by relentless inclusion, passionate advocation and, most problematically, fear-of-wrongness. By this, I mean the guilt-inducing force that renders many people silent on important issues, because they perhaps fear that their views are ‘wrong’, or do not yet hold a concrete view and therefore feel unqualified to speak. This feeling is damaging both to our intellectual confidence and the dynamic social environment needed to progress. Progress is not achieved by prescribed views and ideas; that is the means by which rigid, oppressive regimes are formed. Yet here I am, still afraid to say that I don’t quite know what my opinion is on zoos.*

Social media certainly seems to be a driving force in this increasingly confined dialogue. Heated arguments, ‘calling out’ and ‘cancelling’ culture have add fueled a system in which saying the wrong thing can result in very public and inescapable punishment. Naturally, this initiates fear of speaking at all. For the average person who just wants to think, say and do the right thing, the conclusion is drawn that ‘I’ll just keep quiet and listen to what the others are saying because they know what’s right’ – this is certainly an approach I have taken – as if those arbitrarily powerful voices are inherently more qualified than yourself to speak (rather than just confident and with a big following). Twitter is a particularly guilty platform for enabling this almost hierarchical discussion of what is write and wrong. Known by many as the ‘scary’ social media platform, even its format in being restricted by character limits puts pressure on the words that you do dare to contribute. When a viral tweet differentiates from your own opinion, you perhaps lean towards changing your views rather that examining the two standpoints and debating your thoughts.

Have you ever put your hand under a tap with water running so painfully hot that it almost feels cold? Perhaps a ridiculous metaphor, but this is how I see the culture of moral correctness. It’s incredibly important that as a society we work on our socially progressive values, but the aggression with which this is often wielded has entirely debilitated the very process of change. Pretty much everyone who has ever argued with someone holding problematic views knows that forceful lecturing is not the way to go. As inhumane as their views may be, it is near impossible to expect someone to become open-minded if we display the same furious rigidity with which they hold their (backward) views. I’m certainly not saying that, for example, we should tolerate extreme views such as racism. Absolutely not; rage has its place and time, but so does intellectual discussion. If I shout at my homophobic uncle he certainly won’t feel willing to engage with my views, instead becoming even more defensive and obstinate. However unpleasant it may be, debating calmly and respectfully can be far more productive.

This, understandably, can be a big ask when dealing with a very problematic individual. I know of many occasions when I have intensely resisted losing my cool when talking to someone about a social issue, because I knew that flying off the handle would do far more harm than good. I’m sure many people have had the same experience, and this makes complete sense, but makes me even more baffled by the fact that we fail to engage in this kind of interaction with people on the same damn side as us.

Not to pin all issues in life on social media – but this is kind of social media’s fault. Or, rather, the blame lies in how we use social media. What could have been a bridge-building, all-welcoming platform for rallying support in our progressive communities has instead become a battleground of opinions. In the digital whirlwind, it is often necessary to take a step back and consider how this culture transmits into the ‘real’ world. For example, people are much more likely to send an angry message on Twitter than they are to shout in someone’s face in real life. In a way, we’re all just keyboard warriors, because I for one know I’d happily shut down problematic views online yet feel crippling fear when asking someone to move their bag on the train. Logical.

It would be too simplistic to say we just need to be a bit nicer to each other online, but that’s certainly not far off the mark. When you’re protected by a screen and potentially thousands of miles it can be difficult to conceptualise the actual effect of what you’re doing. In a way, we need to become more mindful of our digital language, as well as being far more respectful of others – especially those who are fighting for the same thing as us. By regaining perspective, and remembering how our own views have changed over the span of our life, we can increase the space for debate, because a hundred different views will always make a far more invigorating and enlightening discussion than just one.

*My views are unclear because it depends on the state of the purpose of their confinement (perhaps they are an endangered species, and the zoo is trying to maintain their existence/encourage breeding), their environment (where they live, how they’re treated, how this reflects their natural habitat), and how the zoo ensures that they maintain a positive role in the advocacy of animal rights, protection and safety.

February feature: Calling out #fitspo and modern diet culture

This post comes at the start of what will probably be several discussions about food, body image, diet culture, and intuitive eating. After reading Laura Thomas’ Just Eat It, I genuinely feel that my entire mindset around food, my body, and my priorities has dramatically altered. Until this point, I considered myself to be a body positive fighter against ‘slimming’ teas, body shaming and unrealistic, idealistic beauty standards. Whilst I may have argued these points in earnest, I couldn’t deny – and still can’t deny, although I’m working on it – the pointless hours I had spent worrying about my body, what I ate, and everything in-between.

Diet culture is a strange phenomenon, because most people seem aware that it exists, but very rarely do we truly acknowledge its dangerous depths. Beyond that, it is easy to forget the many forms that diet culture takes, especially in modern society. It is no longer just the print advertisements showing the same body types time and time again; diet culture is woven into just about every piece of content we consume. I have made many attempts to rid myself of this toxic influence, ironically by pursuing attitudes and trends that are just as embedded in diet culture as those early forms.

Through my recent journey of trying to unlearn these toxic doctrines, it’s becoming increasingly clear that diet culture operates above all in rigidity, restriction and regulation. Whilst we may label it under ‘diet’, the more important descriptor is ‘culture’, since even the D word has now been rejected by many. Whilst seemingly a significant improvement, the result is in fact the masquerading of diets and diet culture under new trends, lifestyles and regimes. This is where restriction and regulation becomes important, because the new diet trends of our society all maintain that common indicator of an unhealthy and restrictive diet. Examples include ‘healthism’, increasing rates of orthorexia, gym-culture, protein marketing, and evolving body trends which now embrace the toned, big-bummed, skinny waste yet still curvy (aka near impossible) figure. These are all components of modern diet culture.

The dangerous thing about modern diet culture is its denial of its true form. Diets have traditionally been very open in their intent; torch fat! lose weight! get that summer body! Sure, many people still embrace these attitudes, but the majority of dieters probably don’t even realise that they’re on a diet. I certainly didn’t. When I carefully calculated my macronutrient and calorie intake, maintaining prescribed ratios and *god forbid* never eating more fat or carbs that I was ‘supposed to’, I genuinely didn’t believe that I was on a diet. I was on a fitness journey; a quest to build muscle and feel strong. What I was doing felt like the absolute antithesis of dieting; after all, I wanted to gain (muscle) weight, and I justified the regulation by insisting that this would ensure I ate enough, at the risk of eating too little (as I previously had done). Perhaps this was a necessary part of my journey from severely disordered, restrictive eating to a healthy relationship with food and my body, but I doubt it.

In reality, this was a way for me to maintain the same control over what I ate and how I looked that fuelled my under-eating in the previous year. I may have kidded myself that I was now in the game of gaining weight, but there I was turning a blind eye to the hour of cardio I did every day after lifting weights, the careful regulation of my eating, and the obsessive desire for a flat stomach (as if I had no organs to house). I believe that this is the same journey that many other people, girls in particular, are susceptible to. In the boom of fitness influencers and Instagram #fitspo, the thin ideal has been reshaped – not only are we told to be thin, we are also told to be toned, and have natural curves in the ‘right’ places. I’d be lying if I said my fitness goals weren’t entirely driven by aesthetics; it may have felt good to reach a new personal best on squats, but only because it meant I’d be growing my ass a bit more.

My point here isn’t to shut down fitness influencers or say that they are perpetrating disordered eating behaviours and body confidence, but it’s not far off the mark. I believe that these ‘influencers’ hold a huge responsibility to deliver fitness content that does not encourage a prescribed body image, fat-shame, use problematic terms, or demonise vital parts of our body like fat. (FYI, there’s a reason that female lower belly fat is ‘stubborn’ – it’s goddam supposed to be there). No one is denying that many people pursue fitness for goals outside of aesthetics, but in the growing popularity of before and after pictures, it’s time to realise that #fitspo is the new #thinspo, and realise our own responsibility to others and ourselves to not appropriate fitness and exercise as another body-shaming diet tool.

This all ties in closely with disordered eating, because eating and exercise go hand in hand. As Laura Thomas says in Just Eat It; if it has rules, it’s a diet; and fitness culture is certainly filled with guilt-inducing, regimented rules. Heavy calorie restriction and over-doing the cardio is just as much disordered eating as tracking your protein intake in between gym sessions. One may be more physically dangerous than the other, but both nonetheless inhabit diet culture and disordered eating. Perhaps even more dangerously, the disordered eating behaviours among fitness culture are masqueraded by language that instigates a false sense of empowerment. Protein-rich snacks are literally everywhere; the new golden star in food marketing which immediately makes a food ‘good’. In the dichotomy of good and bad food, fitness culture has introduced a wider set of terms; rather than just ‘healthy’ and ‘unhealthy’, ‘portion control’ and ‘greedy’, we’re now bombarded with dozens of macronutrients, micronutrients, ‘superfoods’ and whatever else, giving that dichotomy even more ground. We live in the days of ‘cheat meals’ in which one chocolate chip cookie is both demonised as progress-inhibiting and sensationalised as the biggest, most exclusive treat of all time. How could such a conflicting, loaded and restrictive language of food ever be considered healthy? When pleasurable foods are limited to days labelled under a negative term like ‘cheat’, yet still loaded with the exclusivity of a wild indulgence, something so basic as a biscuit can become fitness culture’s drug. No wonder we end up knee deep in a tub of Ben & Jerry’s, wondering how the hell we got there.

Exactly a year on from my first introduction to weight lifting and fitness, my mindset couldn’t be more drastically altered. I exercise regularly because it makes me physically feel great, creates a satisfying tiredness that makes curling up with a book all the more fun, and most importantly because it boosts my mental health. Just as she encourages the benefits of intuitive eating, Laura Thomas also discusses the importance of intuitive movement, and how this can reconnect us with our body in a healthy, kind and genuine way. A month ago, a trip to the gym would feel worthless to me if I’d forgotten my Fitbit, because I wouldn’t know how many calories I’d burned and therefore how much food I’d earned (hint: food is not to be ‘earned’ – you’ve earned it by being alive). Now, I’ve sold my Fitbit (terrifyingly, a mentally difficult task), move in accordance with how my body and mind feel, take a lot less time staring at my stomach in the mirror, and feed my body exactly what it wants. No one can press the benefits of intuitive eating like Laura Thomas, so I’ll leave that to her, and say simply that having read her book has changed my entire outlook on my body, undoubtedly rippling into the contentment of my mind.

January feature: Finding your power

Happy New Year! – is a phrase I was getting sick of just days ago. New year resolutions, PSAs that resolutions aren’t necessary, not knowing what services are open and closed when, and falling under the misconception that the world is inherently ‘different’ just because the number we see on our calendars changed. It all bothered me.

This is the attitude I took on because I find this whole time of year pretty overwhelming – but now I’ve changed my mind. An English Literature grad, passionate about words and ideas and thoughts and philosophy, shouldn’t be the one to side with the hyper-rationality of numbers. I think most of us are aware that the concept of the new year is deeply psychological. If this weren’t true, we wouldn’t feel an inherent need to change, restart or generally improve. Even if we’re the happiest we could possibly be with ourselves, the new year appears to be the glimmering possibility to get even better. It is the shiny new toy in the shop window, full of excitement and novelty. It’s only after a few plays with it – probably by mid January – that the novelty swiftly wears off and suddenly we’re back to same sh*t different year.

That may be the general, realistic line of progress, but in my circle of thought about the politics of the new year (maybe I have too much time), I’ve come to the conclusion that its motivational potential is something we should harness. No, I don’t mean the motivation to hit the gym, start ten new hobbies, reshape our existence; I mean the motivation to seek out the possibility to support positive change. Find your power. Our current perception of the new year is too heavily weighted in binaries. We are either suffocatingly pressured into reforming ourselves, or outrageously insisting that we must all stay the same and not succumb to society’s demands. Maybe the solution instead is to recognise the potential for a new year in a way that is mentally healthy, enhances perspective, and reinforces our sense of power, ability and potential. Let’s make the new year represent the voluntary opportunity to improve our wider surroundings, rather than a prescribed need to improve our individual selves. Redirect your motivation to change that is significantly more deserving than a magazine’s perspective on the state of your abs. And if, like me, you want to work on improving your mental state of mind, I’ve found that working on the external can naturally lead to an improved inner psyche (also a trend I learned from the Headspace app – thanks, elusive Headspace voiceover man).

That’s not to say that we should forget the importance of our individual selves – quite the opposite. In the most recent episode of podcast The Guilty Feminist, titled ‘The Great Debate’, Deborah Frances White and her co-hosts orchestrated a debate on the proposition that ‘comedy can change the world’. A seemingly simple allegation was quickly deconstructed into the components of comedy and the agents behind comedy, whether it be the comedian, the producers, or the audiences. So, the part of me that initially thought ‘of course comedy changes the world!’ suddenly realised that I was jumping too far ahead, objectifying the point of change when really it lies in us. The agents. Comedy, journalism, petitioning, protesting – all undeniably world-changing – are made significant only by the people who make them.

So I urge you to find your own power this year before jumping straight to the action. Rather than deciding first on some appealing objective (e.g. to lose some weight) based on a shallow understanding of and desire for this change (the influence of the media), take a step back and consider the individual agent (yourself) and subsequently what action would be most appropriate, healthy and productive. Your desire to lose weight may well just be a desire to have a better relationship with your body, or possibly a desire to reap the endorphin-induced pleasures of frequent exercise. The media can change the world, but that change is far more dangerous and disingenuous when it excludes the very agents it affects.

Now the 6th January, normality seems to have resumed, but indicators of change are all around. The clothes sales that sell us the latest essential ‘look’, the fitness programmes for those wanting to get ‘on track’ in the new year – even the change in attitudes through many people firmly opposing the need for change. Change, visual and commercial and intellectual, is all around. This is not a bad thing. I passionately support the movements that discourage a guilt-fed need to improve upon ourselves and abstain from radical change, but I realise now that change itself is not to be feared. If we are the agents of our change, it can be a positive action.

As agents, we can dismantle and disempower the networks that rob us of our agency and distort our desires in order to fit prescribed ideas. As agents, it is up to us what kind of change we choose to support. Whether it’s in your own life, your family, your city, your country or your world, I encourage you to harness your ability to support change on whatever scale you see fit. Abandon the pressure of resolutions and the staleness of refuting change; recognise your potential and consider the actions that may help to improve your world just a little.

December feature: A love letter to my body

Post-Christmas, or post-mince pie indulgence, I’m reminded of the importance of loving my body. My up-down relationship with this little ecosystem of existence is generally on the up, yet the usurpation of normality at Christmas rocks the boat. I was excited for homemade mince pies and the yearly chocolate orange in my stocking, knowing the whole time that a feeling of guilt would eventually arise.

I wrote about the topic of obsessions with food at Christmas in a recent post. This, a love letter to my body, is the afterthought to this post. Christmas is over and we can return to our normal lives (or have to return, for those more begrudging). After the big event, this is the debrief.

We live in a society that encourages us to be additive with the external and subtractive with the internal. By that, I mean that our consumeristic, capitalist culture instils within us a desire for more and better. A longing to keep up with the latest fashion, the fastest technology, the newest trends. Our feeble assets are transient and part of a throw-away culture, yet we continue to want more. Why do we not have a desire for more towards our bodies?

Sure, there are some things people want more of on their bodies, but the general consensus is that of subtraction. I have wished for less spots, less fat, less body hair, less stretch marks, less cellulite; only recently have I started to wish for more. More strength, more capability, more comfortability. This idea of more and less is not about tangible wants, but the idea of worth. As Matt Haig states in Notes on a Nervous Planet, ‘If we are feeling bad about our looks, sometimes the thing we need to address is the feeling, not our actual physical appearance’. When I desire to take away from my body, this usually derives from some shallow beauty standard that objectifies my feeling of self-worth as no more than some physical trait.

Here’s a mantra for 2019. Instead of desiring less tangible assets (fat, spots, cellulite), desire less harmful attitudes towards your body. Instead of desiring more shallow signifiers of beauty (clear skin, hourglass figure, toned physique), desire more contentment, comfort and confidence in your body.

It has taken me years to come to this realisation. I have my days, like recently, when those toxic thoughts encourage restriction and guilt; when I reflect on my Christmas with thoughts of what I ate rather than the fun I had. I have always been a lover of food, and even more so since turning vegetarian, but I know the difference between love and obsession. There are many stances that we are encouraged to take when considering our food. Food is solely fuel; food is fattening; food dictates our health; food is a moral standpoint. I have channeled my obsession down every one of these paths, and none of them have benefited me or my mental health. This is a love letter to my body to say I’m sorry that I thought food was the star of its own show.

When I fretted over what macronutrients I was consuming, I forgot to listen to my body yearning for chocolate because I’d had a bad day. When I insisted to myself that recovery meant eating lots of cake to prove I could, I forgot to listen to my cold, sniffly body craving warm vegetable soup. I forgot to listen to the entity that all of this food is destined for. I’m not a big fan of New Year resolutions, or the idea of needing to ‘fix’ yourself. However, in 2019 I plan to listen to my body a whole lot more. I want to eat and move and strengthen in ways that my body needs and wants. I want to treat my body like the cosy, thatched-roof-cottage home it is, and I urge you to do the same.

November feature: Confrontations with social media

It’s 2018. Social media is everywhere. It is the slipstream through which every part of our life gets filtered, and we’re becoming increasingly unconscious, robotic players in its game.

That may sounds slightly demonic – after all, it’s just a few apps and a platform of communication, right? Yeah. It’s both. Social media is both friend and foe. One thing I have noticed is that the use and abuse of social media has recently become a much more self-aware discussion brought right into the realm of media platforms. This, I think, is the best thing we can do in order to ensure social media stays as a constructive tool. Talk about what it means to us.

I started to think more about the way I consume social media earlier this year when I was having counselling for my anxiety disorder. I realised, primarily, that I felt pressure to maintain completely inauthentic ‘friendships’ with people, via being friends on social media, and made the great decision to cut off toxic friendships and take control over who I connect with. My 13 year old self clinging onto my two-hundred-and-something Facebook friends finally realised that less is more. This was step 1 in taking back control of my social media consumption.

Now, I think that was a fairly delayed lesson for me. I probably should have realised that ‘deleting’ people isn’t a crime years ago. 2018 is filled with much more affecting problems within social media use.  For me personally, as well as for the people I come across on all platforms. For ordinary people and celebrities alike.

A positive trend that I’ve started to notice amongst social media influencers and celebrities, is the circulating message that we should spend more time away from our phones. Some of my favourite influencers have started to put this message out there, particularly tied to the importance of maintaining good mental health. This led me to think ‘well if someone whose entire job is social media is telling me to put my phone down, they really must mean it’. Venetia Falconer, eco-fashion guru and my ultimate vegan inspo, has done several posts with about this. One of her Instagram posts, shown below, caught me on a day when I was sat scrolling for literally no reason. I felt like I had been caught out, like I suddenly couldn’t justify sat on my phone for twenty minutes when I could have been doing something else. I couldn’t remember why I had even gone on my phone in the first place, so I put it away.

Other social media influencers are promoting the same self-aware narrative on their social media platforms. I would call it ironic, but I really don’t think it is. These people aren’t tell us to ditch social media altogether; they’re using their position as professional users of social media to encourage a healthy use of its recourse. I love that.

My newest favourite influencer, Florence Given, posted a piece of art to her Instagram account that had a similar effect. Her work often takes on this message of stepping up to your potential rather than wasting your time in a vacuum of comparison and damaged self-esteem. Whilst Venetia Falconer’s comforting reminders urge me to remember my mental health and put this first, Florence Given reminds me to wake up from my screen and seize the day. Both are essential and compelling voices.

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Social media is monitoring our behaviour, modifying it, tracking our insecurities via our google searches, showing us 3rd party adverts selling us products to FILL those insecurities, making us less empathetic, basing our value on numbers, flipping the ‘pack-mentality’ switch on in our brains which essentially brings out our inner troll to make us feel morally superior when we tear people down and…there’s a lot of insidious destruction that it’s causing so please be careful to MINDFULLY CONSUME if it’s part of your job/life and CURATE YOUR FEED! Sean Parker (co-founder of facebook) admitted that they designed these algorithms to be addictive. Addiction is not a byproduct of social media…its PART OF THE DESIGN! Protect your energy 💆🏼‍♀️✨💓#worldmentalhealthday

A post shared by FLOSS (@florencegiven) on

Finally, I want to mention Matt Haig and his recent book ‘Notes on a Nervous Planet’. When this book was first announced, I knew I needed it in my life. I think this is one of the few books that I will return to and read multiple times (I rarely ever reread books) because it taught me so much. From one anxious soul inside a tornado of social media to another, Matt Haig reminded me what social media is. It is a tool. It is something with which I can do good things. But like any tool, like money, power, or influence, it can be abused, and it seems that as consumers we are all being conditioned to abuse social media to the detriment of our own wellbeing. Like most people whose job relies heavily on social media, these three influential people all recognise its value – without it, I wouldn’t be talking about them at all – but they take on the social duty of keeping us aware of the depth at which social media dominates our lives.

After my worst year of anxiety in 2017, I have worked extremely hard this year to become conscious of everything I dedicate my time and emotion towards in order to make my environment less mentally damaging. I have been using my Instagram account for over a year to document my mental health journey, and in that time it has transitioned into a books/reading account (when I first started to regain my sense of self), then into a fitness account (when I discovered endorphins and confidence through exercise), and more recently into a more general mental health/feminist/bookish/general thinking account. I think by this point, my Instagram is no longer committed to the purpose of recovery or clinging onto single topics; it’s returned to just me being me. This is great, but I realised recently that I followed nearly a thousand people and, besides literally not having the time to consume all of their content, it gave a literally inexhaustible quota of lives to compare to my own. It became overwhelming.

So then came my most recent lesson in social media use – the importance of reminding ourselves of why we use it. I asked myself why I use Instagram, and concluded: to find new fitness routines, to learn recipes, to discover books, to follow a few influencers I love, to keep up to date on friends’ lives. That probably accounted for approximately 200 of the people I followed, so I (with a lot of guilt, but no regret) unfollowed any account that didn’t suit those purposes.

Much like an eye test or a routine doctors appointment, it’s so important that we periodically check ourselves on our social media use. Social media is both a blessing and a curse, and whilst we are conditioned to seek out its endless content, we have to take on the individual responsibility of ensuring this is not done to the detriment of our mental health. I plan on checking up on my social media use again in the near future, and I’m sure at that time I’ll unfollow a couple of new accounts who were triggering me or not serving my best interests, or even delete an app from my phone because it takes up too much of my time. Like an MOT, but far less expensive.

To fellow social media users, young and old, I encourage you to do the same. Have a routine check-up with your social media use. Ask, is this benefiting me? Is it adhering to the fundamental objectives of my social media consumption? Is it contributing to my life and happiness? If not, cut it.

Now close your browser and please, for the love of David Beckham, go and get some fresh air.

@foodgymbooks
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