It's not your body, it's this.

British Prime Minister Andy Burnham and his wife Marie-France Van Heel were photographed on the steps outside 10 Downing Street last week as he entered office.

Social media was ablaze with commentary about Van Heel’s dress and her body. Comments were dissecting her shape and size, pointing out the roundness of her stomach, suggesting the size of the dress was too small as well as various other cruel remarks about her appearance.

Almost 30 years prior, a 22 year old Kate Winslet attended the Golden Globe awards. An on air commentator on the red carpet declared that she was ‘a little melted and poured’ into the dress, adding that she should have worn one ‘two sizes larger’. It spread all over magazines and tabloid newspapers.

The current social media commentary surrounding Van Heel and the commentary that has plagued Winslet for most of her career, reveals the rules that women have spent a lifetime learning. 

It is a mirror held up to our culture. 

Media, advertising, consumer culture and social conditioning shape the way female bodies are perceived. They dictate which ones are valuable and which ones are not. This message is repeated over and over again, until it settles in your mind as the truth.

We are indoctrinated into beauty standards.

So when a woman body shames another woman she is expressing her internalised belief. This doesn’t start when we are women, it starts when we are girls.

I have worked with countless women in the fashion retail environment, and without doubt, the most consistent criticism they have about their body, is that their stomach is rounded. That it isn’t flat. But for 90% to 95% of women over the age of 25, a permanently flat stomach is not a possibility. Yet they still berate themselves for not having one. 

Indoctrination creates false deficiencies.

Put simply, beauty standards are marketing campaigns designed to make you feel deeply insecure about your body. Why? Because it makes you the perfect consumer. It puts you on a treadmill of consumption as you try to solve the ‘problem of your body’ with pills, products and procedures.

A body that was never broken.

The most devastating part about our indoctrination into beauty standards is that we no longer need policing, because we police ourselves. Then others.

The culture that produced the cruel commentary about Marie-France Van Heel and Kate Winslet, is the same one that has you standing in front of the mirror judging your stomach for being too big, too rounded, too visible.

The same one that has you dressing in black because it’s slimming, because it won’t make you stand out, because it will hide your ‘flaws’.

The same one that has you ashamed and embarrassed to wear a sleeveless top, a pair of shorts or a swimsuit.

The embodied style practice

This week I want you to notice the voice of judgement. Whether it is directed at yourself or others, notice when it arises. In the mirror, in the change room, on social media, whenever you catch yourself, just notice the thought. Do not shame yourself for having the thought, just gently notice it. It may help to say ‘I am having a judgemental thought’, to keep it neutral.

Whether the thought is directed at you or another person, try to connect with your/their humanity in this moment. Allow some space to form. Find some ease, some relief from the judgement. Then ask yourself, ‘How do I want to show up in this moment?’.

You can choose a different way.

The reaction to Marie-France Van Heel’s dress is a direct reflection of what western culture values. Women are judged on their appearance because we are taught that this is our highest value. 

This is a lie.

Your body doesn’t determine your worth, you do.

Deprogramming from a lifetime of indoctrination into beauty standards isn’t easy, but it is vital. Imagine yourself completely free of the burden of worrying how your body looks, of hating parts of your body, of feeling like you are never enough. 

Isn’t that the reality worth striving for?

Julie x