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Liz Jones
, Fashion Editor of The Daily Mail, wonders why women hate their bodies
One of the most popular shows on Channel 4 at the moment is How to Look Good Naked (closely followed by 10 Years Younger). A round, middle-aged woman is taken by her chubby hand and dragged, having made several pit stops in front of full-length mirrors along the way, towards the show’s denouement: the moment she appears naked in front of a camera and a live audience. This is the ultimate goal for women these days, you see. No matter what we do for a living, how nice we are, how patient as mothers, or how funny we can be, it all boils down to how we look, in harsh sunlight, without a shred of clothing. The premise of the show – and numerous others like it, not to mention all the get-the-celebrity-look features in women’s magazines, the missives on how to obtain Geri Halliwell’s abs
or Kelly Brook’s arse – is that if you are happy with your body, if you are not prepared to let nature take its course and instead opt to do the right, well-behaved, submissive thing instead, which is to pummel your body into submission, into behaving as if it hadn’t given birth or put on weight or aged by even one day, then you will be fulfilled. The rest – love, money, great sex – will automatically follow.
When my mum was in her forties and went to the beach – to the windswept sands of Frinton in Essex, to be precise – she wore a long tweed skirt, stockings, proper shoes and a sun hat
Except it doesn’t. I don’t think there has ever been a time when women have been so focused on how they look, but at the same time have been so desperately unhappy. Take a look in your local gym at lunchtime: there will be rows and rows of women, not pounding the treadmill in a bid to avoid a heart attack (oh happy release), but in an attempt to be beautiful. You see them avoiding making eye contact with themselves in the mirrors, so afraid are they of what they might see. Is it progress that women are no longer spending their lunch hours shopping for food, and rushing home straight after work to prepare it (a destiny that seems positively restful in the context of what we put ourselves through today), but are instead devoting themselves to an exercise regime that is only really useful if you are an Olympic pentathlete, not to mention spending a great deal of time and money adhering to a beauty routine – Brazilian bikini wax, all-over airbrush tan, botox injections, teeth whitening, laser facial hair removal, laser brown spot zapping, eyebrow sugaring, obligatory weekend ‘break’ in a ‘spa’, blah, blah, blah – that is surely only necessary if you are about to pose naked for the cover of FHM.
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