The hate you learn, the body you have

One of the things that I am most proud of, is my attitude to my body. I love it. I think it looks spectacular. I can spend hours lying on my bed, my legs in the air, tensing and untensing my muscles, marvelling at how good my thighs look. I regularly stand on tiptoes, my back to the mirror, admiring my calves. My clavicle is an honest-to-God work of art and every time I look at my collarbones, I think of two arches that transform the small hollow at the base of my throat into a place of worship. I think my lips are perfection and if I’m being completely honest, I feel slightly smug that women all over the world pay to have lips like mine.

I adore the arches of my feet. I was once told they were like wine glasses and I thought it was one of the most elegant compliments I’d ever received. It made me even more delighted by them, glad that someone else noticed how exquisite they were. My skin, above all things, I love the most. It’s smooth and unblemished; it just goes on and on, one creamy, brown wave after another. My mother used to call me her little hazelnut and when I have been out in the sun, I do in fact shine like a well-polished nut. I regularly tell my friends and anyone who will listen, that when I was in the cradle, I was sprinkled with fairy dust, and that’s why I’m so soft.

A couple of years ago, two of my girlfriends, women who have known me since the tiny age of two years old, were helping zip me into a dress and as one of my friend’s hands brushed my waist, she shook her head and looked at my other friend and said, ‘how is this bitch’s skin so soft.’ I was about to open my mouth when they both, simultaneously, said, ‘yes Salma, the fairy dust, we know.’

They rolled their eyes and teased me, but in truth, I was charmed by the entire episode. Smitten that my friends recognised something I loved about myself, and equally delighted that they indulged my silliness. It spoke to the enduring nature of my nonsense. How they’d been tolerating me all these years, but also how my message has been the same over all these years; I love my body, I have always loved my body.

At the same time, I have tried numerous diets. Calorie counting. Atkins. Cabbage soup diet. Liquid diets. Slim Fast. Weight Watchers. I didn’t try these diets because I thought I was fat or ugly or hideous and needed to lose weight. Nor did I try them because I wanted to look like Kate Moss or Naomi Campbell. I tried them because my mother was trying them. Or girls around me tried them. So I thought I too would do them. I never stuck at a single one of them, and looking back that’s because I didn’t care about the end result. But I was taught to diet, and so I did. Even when I didn’t need to.

Now this entire conversation is not to say that I am exceptionally beautiful or that I have a perfect figure, but rather what I’m trying to tell you is that whether it’s true or not, I have always believed I was beautiful.

As an adult, I have looked back on older pictures of myself and I can tell you plainly and clearly, I was absolutely not beautiful. I was a scruff. I didn’t care about fashion, makeup, or anything that young women so often do. I was a tomboy, and not in the cool way other tomboys manage to be. I was just unkempt. To prove this to you, please see the below picture:

This picture was taken when I was in university, so I was about nineteen/twenty and was still wearing my headscarf.

Now don’t bother even trying to argue that I looked nice. I look like a potato wrapped up in a scarf while also managing to look like a homeless drug addict getting a mugshot. I look AWFUL. But here’s the thing. At this time, nineteen/twenty, veiled and in university, I swear to you, I thought I was beautiful. I thought I looked great. Was the bee’s knees. Was cute and sexy. By any estimation, I was not. I was malnourished. I spent my days in a dark library and my evenings eating fried chicken and chips. I wasn’t exercising and I most definitely didn’t drink two litres of water a day and the only thing that resembled a skincare routine was Diprobase, an eczema cream that I’ve used since I was a baby to stop my face from getting scaly and falling off. I looked heinous.

When I dug these pictures out years later, I showed my two girlfriends and strongly admonished them for not telling me how bad I looked at the time. I think I actually yelled, ‘Why didn’t you tell me I looked so ugly,’ to which my darling friend turned and looked at me like I was mad, and very slowly said, ‘But you told us you were beautiful, why would we say anything?’

She’s right of course. I did think I was beautiful. Believed it to my core. The years went by and my style changed. And then changed again. I gave makeup a try. Discovered eyebrow pencil which really did wonders for me. I am not a hairy person. I find it very difficult to grow hair, which is great for the smooth, silky skin, less great for the eyebrows and the bald head I had until the age of three. I paid more attention to my clothes and accessories and grew up a bit. Stopped hanging around in baggy jeans and hoodies Wore the occasional dress. However, throughout each change, I’ve adored my body and the way I look.

Whenever that has wavered, faltered or trembled, it is because I have been surrounded by people who are consumed with their appearance or hate the way they look. It has never come from me.

My point is this; we are taught to hate our bodies. It is not natural, not innate and not something you would do if left entirely to your own devices.

I truly believe this, because I am the result of that experiment.

You see, I didn’t go to school. I was home-educated. I also didn’t have a television because my mother threw it out when I was five. She said it wasn’t teaching me and my brother anything and was a waste of time. We also weren’t allowed to listen to music. My mother was a convert to Islam and was taking her religion pretty seriously at the time. She’s calmed down now and loves a little bit of Janis Joplin, but she was different back then. I was never allowed teen/girl magazines but we did have a subscription to National Geographic that I was allowed to pursue at leisure. I wasn’t allowed to get my ears pierced until my period started. I was never, ever, allowed to wear heels. I begged my mother to let me have a pair but she said they would bend my spine and when my bones stopped growing and I earned my own money to buy them, I could wear heels.

So there I was, completely unaware of The Spice Girls and teen lipstick. Unaware of what was going on in Hollywood or the music industry. Home educated with my brother, Jane Austen and Virginia Woolf for company. Not to mention long rousing weeks of hiking in Scotland with my granny and regular trips to the museum.

Now my mother, a Doc Martin-wearing woman who does not own makeup, never once told me I was beautiful. She didn’t call me princess. Apart from hazelnut, there were no pet names or cute endearments. She never commented on my appearance. Barely said much about her own. I have never sat and watched her put on makeup or get ready for a party. I’ve never watched her try on dresses and outfits. To my recollection, my mother has never liked her body. For the whole of my life, she has wanted to lose weight. Being a veiled Muslim woman she covers her body up and it is entirely removed from her focus. All this to say there were no conversations about beauty, outfits or appearances in my house.

I was left entirely to my own devices.

The result was that I have spent the whole of my life feeling beautiful, because why wouldn’t I? No one suggested I wasn’t pretty. No one told me otherwise. I never saw images of long-legged women to make me want something else.

The way we hate our bodies is a learnt behaviour. Engrained at different stages of our lives, depending on our environment. Which then means, if we learn this behaviour, we can learn another one. We can teach ourselves to love the way we look. We can compliment ourselves every day and form a habit. We can study ourselves in the mirror, for hours on end if we must, and find the things we love about ourselves.

To this day, I still spend a lot of time staring at myself in the mirror. I take pictures of myself from different angles and never post them. I don’t send them to anyone either. They are not for the world but for me. I like the way I look, and I like to look at myself.

I have spent the weekend admiring my body. I took pictures of myself naked in the bathtub tht no one else will ever see, but I stare at them, zoom in, admire them.

It is a habit I practice and a muscle that I build every day. My loving the way I look started when I was young, and I have cultivated it the whole of my life. It would have been so easy to fall into hatred for my body. It would have been easier than doing the work of loving myself.

But the work has been done and the spoils of this particular war are beyond my wildest dreams. When you love your body and the way you look, it changes everything. Relationships, confidence, work-life, not to mention the way you hold yourself as you walk through the world.

There is another way to do womanhood, and it doesn’t involve you hating your body or your face. You don’t have to learn that lesson. There is more for us. The best is yet to come. The best is yet to come. Say it with me, the best is yet to come.