Can creativity help improve our body image?
That’s the question I asked myself the other month. They say it’s good for your health, improves your moods etc, so can it help improve our opinions of our own bodies? I’m on a quest to find out in my own personal challenge.
The Mirror
Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?
The Queen, Snow White
We look in a mirror every day, and yet do we sit to pause to think what we say to ourselves when we look in it? Are we using it to observe or are we using it to find fault? This week, talks about mirrors have popped up everywhere for me, it’s been rather surreal. Firstly there’s the brilliant Molly Forbes in her book Body Happy Kids. In it she says;
The more mirrors became readily available, the more we could look in them and find fault with what we saw…now in the age of the smart phone, the selfie and the filter, the focus is on how we look more than ever…some academics say this could be bad news for body image because the more we look at ourselves the worse we end up feeling about our bodies. This is because we are objectifying ourselves through a hyper critical lens and comparing ourselves to the ideal.
Mirrors are dangerous stuff when we don’t use them correctly. It got me wondering, when I’m looking in the mirror am I being kind and respectful to myself, or am using it to only focus on my flaws, and then want to cover them up! Later in her book Molly goes on to say;
Learning to look through them [mirrors] in a different way, through our own eyes and not the lens of societies idealised tinted spectacles. If we can start to take back the power and look at our bodies through new, kinder, more accepting eyes.
And just like that, more mirror and kindness talk started flooding my way. Rachel Gardner in her book BeLoved, says “When you look in the mirror, look for yourself, not simply at yourself. Look for love, look for compassion, look for openness, trustworthiness, hope.” Lupita Nyong’o says that ‘What is fundamentally beautiful is compassion for yourself and those around you. That kind of beauty enflames the heart and enchants the soul.” In another of Rachel Gardner’s book, The Girl De-Constructed Project, she says that part of loving our bodies means looking in the mirror and choosing to see the truth, it is too easy to experience our bodies as unlovely and unloved but that simply isn’t true.
All incredibly powerful stuff.
In focus
I shy away from the camera, prefer to be behind than in front. After all this mirror talk it was time to put myself in front and to take a long hard, truthful, look. Not to draw mental red rings around all my flaws and shame, but to light a golden heart around the whole lot of it. We don’t earn our worth, we are born worthy, we are born naked and unashamed, and do you know what all these mirror words have in common? Love. Showing love and compassion to ourselves and to those around us. You see, improving our body image isn’t just on how we treat ourselves but how we treat others too. It’s more than my body, it’s more than your body, it’s a community supporting each other. Companioning each other on. This feels like what this blog is for me to you reading this. I’m championing you on, and I hope you’re companioning me on whilst I continue this journey.
As you look through the images created this week you will see that mirrors were the focus. I took on the mirror, I took on the way I view myself when I look in them, I stood in front of the camera, and I had a picture taken with no make up on, just me. You can read the journey below, but what I ended the week with was another message and another realisation to myself which maybe is also a message to you. That message…Let Go. Let go of society’s lies, let go of the horrible words you’ve been clinging onto, and begin to feel, feel that love, feel how strong you are, feel how incredible you are, feel wholly you.
Week Three
How it went
Week Three and I went to war with mirrors. I began by writing a message on my own mirror, the one I see every day. On there I wrote the words ‘Mirrors are dangerous’ in concealer, the one item of make up I could never leave the house without having on my face. It was a reminder to me that what I see might not be the truth, a reminder that a mirror wants me to find my flaws and my errors, and what I need to do is change the script.
The next day I ended up putting myself in front of the lens, I began taking pictures of myself and then drawing them. Little sketches, some simple illustrations. One night when I was make up free, my hair wrapped in a dressing gown robe to curl it, PJs on, chilling out against the sofa, the husband just declared out of the blue, “You’re so beautiful.” I asked him to take a picture. It was uncomfortable to look at, I wanted to delete it, but the husband see’s past the skin and bone level deepness of beauty, he sees me. Apparently he also loves how the skin and bone part looks too, but he doesn’t need me to wear make up, have my hair ‘perfect’ and all the other glamour and cover ups, he sees through to me and finds the whole of me beautiful. I wanted to try and see myself through his eyes, they’re much kinder to me than my own.
The following day I drew that picture, zooming in on all my skin and body to draw it properly, there was no where to hide. I had to look at it. And you know what, it was incredible. I was at peace, I was restful, I was calm and I looked at home. That was the beauty.
After that things got tricky again, my head repeatedly kept playing around with a particular image and I couldn’t work out what it was. Fragments of lines and memories merged into one. It took awhile but in time it came to me. I was picturing a woman, a particular woman, one of the mums from school. She loves it when it rains, the harder the better. One time, whilst I was huddling under my umbrella waiting for the school gates to open, I looked round to see her turning round the corner just as a fresh blast of wind blew more raindrops against us. To me these felt like brutal attacks against my skin and my clothes. To her, it was bliss. She pulled her hood down, lifted her face to the sky and smiled as she let the rain wash over her face, down her arms and eased into the moment.
Then, bizarrely, an hour later, I picked up a book and in it the writer talked about standing in the rain, and feeling the rain drops against you skin, they told us they imagine them as little drops of love showering them. How incredible is that?
That was it, I played around with this image that was so strongly shouting around my head. I drew several versions before settling on two which summed it all up. In the final one, an illustration, two words came to me.
Let Go.
An instruction or a promise? Either way, I need to let go of all I’ve been holding on to for so long and feel the love, feel my strength, feel every bit of who I am and who I am made to be. Stuff the ideals of women that get thrown about, stuff this construct of beauty which only gets us to hate ourselves, judge others, and strive for the impossible. Stuff all of that. Because it’s not true. It’s not worthy, it isn’t real, it isn’t substantial. And that’s not for me.
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