At the end of 2015, I accidentally fell into a bit of a social media scandal. It all started when I put up a post on my Facebook, Instagram and Twitter at about 11pm on a Sunday night, not thinking anything would come of it.
By the next evening, the post had been seen by millions of people and was a nationally trending topic of conversation. Of course, that may have something to do with the fact that the post included a naked photo of me. A naked selfie, actually, because that’s how the kidz roll these days and I try to keep up with my hip contemporaries.
The reaction was completely unexpected, although many people have told me they don’t believe that (I’m honestly not that media savvy). It lasted about a week and put the time I spent as an online writer into a whole new perspective. When you become the topic other people are writing about, you really notice how pointless – and often pointlessly nasty – a lot of that opinion and critique can be.
Someone does something. Someone writes an opinion about what that person did. Someone writes an opinion about that opinion writer’s opinion. Someone on the radio says something about the opinion pieces. Someone else writes an opinion about the person on the radio’s opinion. The person on the radio writes a tweet, which online news sites then write entire articles about. Someone new jumps into the fray and writes an opinion about how we shouldn’t be so obsessed with the story in the first place. The morning shows debate about said thing on TV. More opinion is written about the debate that just happened on TV. A new person does a new thing, the whole cycle starts again . . .
I can’t believe I was part of that system for a few years – just churning out opinion after opinion, every day, in a news entertainment industry that relies on writers being willing and able to do that, because writing opinions about opinions about opinions helps to fill the desperate need for constant content. If you’re always writing about what everybody else is saying, you’ll never run out of anything to say. And if everybody else is doing the same thing, neither will they.
But I don’t think there’s anything wrong with making a living that way. Some people are incredibly skilled and intelligent opinion writers, who put an incredible amount of time and care into sharing something that is worth saying. There are considered opinions, though, and there are fast-food opinions. Because of tight deadlines caused by the insatiable need for news, a lot of writers are just throwing together some thoughts in an hour, based on a Twitter fight that erupted between two commentators the night before. Fast-Food Opinions. I know this because I did it. I made money churning out content without a lot of thought. It was just the nature of the job in the industry I worked in. I was happy to be paid to be a writer (I felt lucky to be, really), but after a while, my brain just became void of opinions. I was exhausted with having to write my thoughts about everything, every day, without really having the time to even figure out what my thoughts were. It all just started to feel pointless.
And then, when I myself became the subject of one of those fast-food opinion news cycles, I realised just how pointless it all really is.
I posted one photo, and it resulted in a week’s worth of content, across many media outlets. And while I was bewildered and thinking, ‘Really, guys? Me?’ I also knew one thing to be true – if someone else had been the one to put up that photo, I would have been writing opinion about it. I would have come into a morning editorial meeting, mentioned the photo, and have had something written before lunch, complete with hashtags that were trending on Twitter. Then someone else would have written about my opinion, someone else would have written about their opinion . . . And it all would have gone on as usual.
But when I was the one being written about, it allowed me to be outside the fast-food opinion cycle looking in. And that’s when I realised I was just so . . . over it.
(I know – how narcissistic to only realise the error of my ways after I was the subject of media scrutiny. Scrutiny that I had participated in countless times. But I got there in the end, at least? I’m ashamed to say that’s the best I’ve got: I did get there in the end. It reminds me of when someone told me my first book could be illegally downloaded on The Pirate Bay. I was so excited at first, because to me, it felt like the millennial version of making the New York Times bestseller list. My book was so popular that people were stealing it? Amazing! It took a few days for the excitement to wear off, and suddenly I found myself thinking, ‘That’s my money, YOU DICKS.’ I stopped illegally downloading that very day, but I hate myself that it took me being personally affected to realise that it was wrong. Those pirating ads just never did anything for me. You know, the ones that were at the start of DVDs – ‘YOU WOULDN’T STEAL A CAR. YOU WOULDN’T STEAL A HANDBAG. SO WHY WOULD YOU PIRATE A MOVIE?’ I always thought that was such a bizarre marketing idea. Putting those three things together made pirating look like much less of a big deal. I mean, no, I wouldn’t steal a car, I’m not a criminal, but that pirating girl was just sitting at her computer; that seemed way less bad.)
So, what exactly happened when the Fast-Food Opinion machine got a hold of a story about me? Well, settle in, my friends. Here is An Autopsy Of On An Online Scandal.
It actually started much earlier in 2015, when I wrote a piece about the likelihood of me ever posing naked, which at that point was zero. Ha. I wrote about the fact that my fat body meant if I ever did decide to pose naked, people would probably call me brave, rather than sexy.
Pearl-clutching. Whenever Kim Kardashian gets naked for a photo, it inevitably leads to quite a bit of horrified pearl-clutching. Also a bit of indignant eye-rolling, a bunch of ‘put it away sweetie’ status updates, and a whole lot of opinion pieces about her ‘provocative’ and ‘overly sexual’ exhibitionism. When Kim Kardashian gets naked and poses for a photo, people get uncomfortable.
Do you want to know what would happen if I got naked and posed for a photo like that? There’d be no uptight women clutching at their pearls and no indignant eye-rolling. There’d certainly be no opinion pieces asking me to tone down the sexiness.
If I posed naked for a photo like Kim Kardashian, I wouldn’t be admonished for being overly sexual; I’d be celebrated for being ‘brave’.
Why? Because I’m fat. And if I dared to flaunt my sexuality as a fat woman, I’d be called brave. And that is such bullshit.
I don’t want to be called brave. I want someone to look at a naked photo of me and clutch their fucking pearls.
I cannot tell you how patronising it is to see a woman of my size being called brave, just for putting her body on display in a sexual fashion. It’s patronising because it implies that there is something so abnormal about a fat woman’s body that it would take bravery to show it to anybody. Looking at a fat woman posing for a sexy photo and calling her ‘brave’ (usually including a solemn head nod and some kind of #sobrave hashtag) is actually code for: ‘Wow. You’re obviously not sexy, so trying to be sexy makes you so, so brave.’
Um, thanks?
For a long time, I was one of the people who thought it was brave for a fat woman to insist she was sexy. ‘A fat girl got naked! What a legend! Good for her!’ are probably all things I’ve said in the past. I never understood that it could be patronising rather than empowering to label a woman as some kind of trailblazer just for taking her top off.
Then I got fat. After a lifetime in a slim body, I developed myself a nifty little eating disorder and ended up gaining a lot of weight in my mid-twenties, along with a whole new perspective on life.
Gaining weight as a woman is a little paradoxical; for every kilo that you gain, you actually lose something along with it. Respect. Visibility. Dignity. Stores willing to make clothes for you that don’t just include stretchy tights and T-shirts with cartoon cats on them. I could no longer walk down the street without being yelled at for having the audacity to go outside (the very creative, ‘FAT!’ was something I heard almost daily). I couldn’t eat in public without being sniggered at. Bouncers practically laughed in my face when I tried to get into bars with my friends. I felt like a ghost in the spotlight, invisible while being the centre of humiliating attention. But, despite having basically lost the ability to go outside and live a normal life, that wasn’t the most obvious thing I lost. When I got fat, the most obvious thing I lost was my sexuality. When I gained weight, my sexuality disappeared.
It happened without me even realising it. You see, as a fat woman, society no longer puts you in the ‘sexually desirable pile’. You are not playing by the rules, not providing the world with the aesthetic they expect and value in women, so you are no longer considered sexy. But not being considered sexually desirable by other people doesn’t mean you don’t still have sexual desires yourself. And that’s where I got confused. How could I not be a sexual being if I still had sexual urges? I still felt sexy. Still masturbated. Still wanted sex. But the overwhelming sense I got from the world around me was that I was no longer invited to the club.
And it wasn’t just that men didn’t want to date me. Stores didn’t want to dress me. Lingerie companies decided that I didn’t exist once I exceeded Size 16, like it was just assumed that a woman any bigger than that would never need sexy underwear. I couldn’t find myself in magazines, unless it was in a self-celebratory ‘Look! We’ve got a fat girl this month because #diversity!’ If I ever saw myself on screen, it was as the woman whose personality was great enough that a guy would be willing to ‘forgive’ her size. In porn, I was just a fetish, the ‘BBW’ (Big Beautiful Woman) who would put up with all kinds of degrading treatment because she was so desperate for any kind of sexual contact.
It was as if everybody on earth had collectively decided that I no longer had the right to be sexual. My vagina was closed for business. My body was not to be put on show. I should never look in the mirror and smile, I should just put on that cat T-shirt, forget about sex and apologise for not meeting the aesthetic standards expected of me. At twenty-six, my time as a sexy woman was done. That I still felt sexual was irrelevant. Too bad, too sad, fattie.
And that was when I realised I hated the word ‘brave’, because calling a woman brave for ‘daring’ to be sexual is just another condescending way of telling her that she isn’t.
Fat women are sexual, because they are women and women are sexual. Their sexuality doesn’t disappear because they don’t have bodies that are considered desirable by modern, conventional standards. Sexuality doesn’t work that way. Its existence can only be dictated by the person who has it. So when a fat woman considers herself a sexual being, decides to put that sexuality on display and is then called ‘brave’, it exasperates me. How can people not realise it’s just another way of telling a woman that she’s not actually sexy?
As frustrating as the ‘brave’ label is though, I understand that it comes with the best of intentions. Being a fat woman in today’s society is not easy, and when I gained weight, I noticed that people often wanted me to know that they empathised with that fact. They wanted me to know that they understood how hard it must be for me. It’s like I was considered brave just for existing in the universe as a fat woman. I was often told I was brave for working in a job that required me to be in the public eye. Seriously – just working in a job, as a fat woman, was considered brave. No wonder sexuality for fat women with the absence of bravery is a mind-boggling concept for many.
And yeah, facing discrimination for being a fat woman isn’t easy. In fact, it can be fucking horrendous. But calling fat women ‘brave’ for putting up with that shit is not helpful. All the ‘brave’ label does is imply that fat women are achieving something in spite of who they are. And the ‘in spite of’ implies that who they are is wrong.
Insisting on existing in the universe and living life shouldn’t be considered brave. Insisting on working the job you want, wearing the clothes you want and being as sexual as you want shouldn’t be considered brave. It should be considered completely unremarkable. It should be considered as boring as when anyone else does it.
So please, please, if I ever decide to pose half naked in a Kardashian-style Instagram photo, messy hair falling to my nipples, bum glistening, each of its cheeks barely hiding the lacy string of my tacky G-banger, I don’t want you to say that I’m ‘brave’. I want you to clutch your pearls, head to your computer and write a furious op-ed about how inappropriate the whole thing is, because a naked photo of me would just be TOO DAMN SEXY.
Not fucking brave.
I filed that piece away in the back of my mind, not really thinking I would ever get the chance to find out what people would say if I posted a naked photo, because there was no way in hell I was ever going to post a naked photo.
Then I posted a naked photo. And everyone called me brave. Damn.
I’m not sure why I did it, to be honest. It was a very spur of the moment thing. I was up late one night, thinking a lot about body image, and getting sick of flawless Hollywood women complaining about their ‘fat’ bodies, so I took a photo of my body and posted it, along with the following text:
Alright. I can’t believe I did this but . . .
I’ve been reading/watching a lot lately about women in the public eye who are implicitly arguing that they’re ‘brave’ for being a few kilos heavier than the average fashion model. Like, not being thin automatically makes them flawed, and therefore ‘brave’ for daring to live their lives in the public eye. What frustrates me about these women is not that they’re way thinner than me (and thus sort of implying that if they think they’re some kind of fat yet successful miracle, then I must be a sea monster with no hope), but that despite their success, they still see weight as a major contributing factor to their value.
How sad. How sad, that after becoming admired trailblazers for women, they still feel the need to talk about their size, as if mentioning it is their responsibility to cancel out some kind of elephant in the room.
It shouldn’t even be an issue. When you are spectacularly intelligent and talented, your appearance and weight should not even be an issue. I know as a woman, it’s not easy to say that. As a woman, even if your appearance isn’t an issue to you, it is to everyone else. I get that. But, fuck everyone else. We need women in the entertainment industry willing to put their intelligence and talent ahead of their looks. It may not be easy, but if we want values to change, it’s necessary.
And how do we change those values? By being unfucking-apologetic. By refusing to explain. If you find that you’re successful and a woman and not ‘conventionally’ attractive, don’t give it a second freaking thought.
Your body is your history. It’s your battleground. It’s what makes you who you are, and you wouldn’t be as intelligent or as successful or as funny as you are without it.
I survived a childhood filled with abandonment and trauma. Then I survived mental-health struggles and eating disorders. I had weight-loss surgery and continue to question that decision. And in the end of all of that, this is me. This is my body. I have stretch marks. I have flabby skin. I have a belly. I have saggy boobs and I’m covered in freckles that made me cry when I was younger.
But I’m also a bestselling author. A famous writer. An admired and funny woman. I’m touring a live one-woman show this year. I’m attending writing festivals with my heroes. I’m writing and starring in my own TV show.
I don’t look the way I’m ‘supposed’ to look, according to a select group of people. But I just don’t give a fuck. Because I’ve achieved more than I’ve ever dreamed of in spite of people assuming I wasn’t pretty or thin enough. I don’t even think about being pretty or thin enough – I just think about writing the best, funniest shit I can write. My body has nothing to do with that.
So here it is. The body that was meant to hold me back. The body that I’m supposed to apologise for. The body that is meant to keep me off your screens and out of your minds. But my intelligence and my talent is more important than my appearance. And those qualities are what will force me onto your screens and into your minds. So there.
Sharing a picture like this should end my entertainment industry career. Fuck that. I can write for and play multi-faceted, complex and brilliant women because I am one. And I am one because of the life I’ve lived and the body that I’ve lived it in.
I am not flawed. I am brilliant. I am a survivor. And I make no apologies.
(And yes – I used a very flattering filter on my face in this photo. I’m posing nude, give me a freaking break.)
I put that post up, called Tony, who was in the US, to laugh about it, then went to bed. The next day, I noticed that the Fast-Food Opinion machine had started with a bang overnight. I was asked to go on TV and radio to explain myself. Countless articles and social media statuses, tweets and comments were throwing their two cents in. I freaked out, and felt like I needed to explain myself more clearly, so I put up another Facebook post.
Why write about how important it is not to focus on physical appearance, and then attach a naked photo of yourself?
Good question hahahaha.
So . . . This whole nudie pic thing became a much bigger deal than what I anticipated! Your reaction has been overwhelming. I will say this though:
I get that it may seem counterintuitive to post a status about how appearance shouldn’t matter, and then attach a naked photo of myself. I get that. I thought a lot about that before I posted it actually. I mean, if the physical really doesn’t matter and I don’t want it to be an issue, why did I put up a photo that very clearly made it an issue? Well, I had a message to get across I guess, and being a bigger woman, I felt like I was in a somewhat unique position to do so visually.
I have been seeing so many women, much thinner than me, constantly talking about how they’ve achieved things in life in spite of their flaws. The thing that bothers me about that discourse is that ‘flaws’ are even being talked about at all, and so damn often. Why is the physical always so important? So high on the agenda? There just seems to be this overarching attitude that the physical should always be top on the list of values and priorities and attention.
That’s why I posted the status and photo.
I highlighted my flaws to show how frustrated I am that we even obsess about flaws to begin with! A little counterintuitive, yes, but I just wanted to say, ‘Look. I’m not a thin woman. In fact, I have a body that a lot of women would consider their worst nightmare. I know there are things about me that are not conventionally attractive, but I’m happy with myself because my appearance isn’t what I value most about myself. So take a look at me. Take a look at this photo. Take a look at my “flawed”, chubby body, and know that if I can get on with life not constantly obsessing over my looks, then you can too.’
That’s why I refused all media requests today.
Because I really do believe that we should not be obsessing over appearance, so I didn’t want to feed that obsession by talking more about it. I just wanted to put the post up, vent my frustration and sadness at physical appearance being such an issue for so many women, and then go back to not letting physical appearance be an issue for me. I didn’t want to go on a bunch of chat shows to talk about it, because the whole point of my post is that I think people need to stop talking so much about it. There is so much more to each of us than our looks. I have reached a place in my life where understanding that has made me a lot happier as a person, and I would love to see other women reach that place too. I thought and hoped maybe a photo of me could help some women get there. I’m willing to let my appearance be a talking point for a couple of days, as long as the talking point is, ‘Actually, yeah – why are we so freaking obsessed with appearance anyway?’
I’ll leave the photo up as long as Facebook allows it, because I stand by the message and the way I chose to deliver it. But I don’t have anything else to say about my body, because my body is THE LEAST INTERESTING THING ABOUT ME! Soon, the status will be so far down my Newsfeed that it will be forgotten, and my naked body will no longer be a talking point.
Now, I’m going to go and watch some TV and hang out with my cat. xoxoxo
Not long after that status went up, Facebook deleted the photo and blocked my account for forty-eight hours. Instagram deleted the photo and threatened to deactivate my account if I ever did it again. Twitter deleted the photo, plus they put new restrictions on my account, so whenever I post a photo on Twitter now, it’s blurred with a warning telling people it may contain ‘offensive content’. So I’m pretty sure Twitter thinks I’m a sex criminal.
I stepped away from the whole thing and retreated into myself. I honestly had not expected to cause such a fuss with what I considered a pretty specific feminist message about body image that would only be relevant or interesting to a few people.
The Fast-Food Opinion machine had come after me, and it really made me doubt myself. I felt like shit, basically.
I stayed true to my promise not to talk to any media about it. I don’t know what I would have said if I had, because I really had no idea what I thought about anything anymore. I needed time to gather my thoughts, to spend more than an hour figuring out my opinion for a change.
I ended up taking a couple of months. I had been asked to give a talk at the All About Women Festival at the Sydney Opera House, and I decided to use that time onstage to describe exactly what had happened to me in the days and weeks after putting up a naked photo. I’d had the time to think about how the whole situation had shaped me as a woman and forced me to look at my identity, even if I didn’t always like what I saw. Here’s what I said that day:
I have been panicking, for months, that this talk is going to reveal to everyone that I’m a complete fraud. I mean, when they came to me and asked if I wanted to give a talk at the Opera House for All About Women, I was like, ‘Are you kidding? Absolutely. Let me just call anyone in my life who’s ever wronged me and shove it in their faces.’ And just as I was in the middle of that revenge fantasy, they told me that the topic they’d assigned me was ‘How to be yourself’ and I instantly felt sick. Because I realised ‘Oh, they think I know!’ And when I get up to give a bunch of paying audience members a definitive guide on ‘how to be themselves’, everyone is going to realise that I have no fucking idea.
Now, this is a problem for me, since just a few months ago I published a memoir called The Anti-Cool Girl, which basically outlines my journey to self-acceptance and yes – figuring out how to be myself. I wrote about being born to addicted and mentally ill parents who forced my sisters and me into a childhood filled with neglect and abuse and trauma. I wrote about how that affected my sense of self and belonging and how I became convinced that if I just managed to sneak my way into the cool crowd, I’d finally feel love and acceptance. And the final chapter of my book explored my mid-twenties awakening, in which I realised that I was enough, and I just needed to care less and do what felt right for me, fist pump nailing it, etc etc etc! Follow my example and be an anti-cool girl! Be yourself! Huzzah!
And now, I’m terrified to have to stand here and admit to you that sometimes I read that chapter and think it’s full of crap.
The thing is, I do know that to be yourself, you have to know who you are. But I change my mind about who I am on a daily basis. I mean, some days, I read the chapter of self-discovery in my book, and I think: ‘God, Rosie, you are so fricking wise, man, well done on having your shit together and never compromising who you are.’ Other days, I read that chapter, and I think: ‘God, Rosie, you suck, you don’t even follow your own advice. You say it’s liberating to stop caring what people think? You care what everybody thinks. You cried when you were reading your Twitter notifications yesterday. You’re such a fraud.’
And now, standing here talking to you, I’m terrified you’re all going to realise I’m a fraud now too, because, if you came here, based on my book, or even the topic of this talk, expecting a magic formula on how to be yourself, I have to tell you right now that I’m not going to be able to give that to you.
But, if I am going to admit that I have no idea what I’m doing and possibly ruin my career in the process, I might as well do it at the Opera House, in a flower crown and a tutu, I mean, what a way to go, am I right?
Here’s what I do know: Having a clear sense of self and sticking to it is easy, in theory. But maintaining that sense of self in the face of, well, life, and reality, can often feel almost impossible. I mean, it’s one thing to try and follow the philosophies of ‘leaning in’ or ‘not giving a fuck’ or ‘being an anti-cool girl’, but what about the days where you just can’t? The days where ‘leaning in’ feels exhausting, and the days where you actually do kind of give a fuck and the days where rather than being an unaffected anti-cool girl, you sort of want the cool kids to like you.
I have days like that all the time, days where I just can’t live up to the person I’m supposed to be, to the person that I wish I was, and it often makes me feel like a failure.
Let me give you an example of a time recently where I got completely confused about who I was, and basically had an existential identity crisis/brain fart.
So, a couple of months ago, I put a naked photo of myself on the internet. I actually haven’t spoken about it since, so saying that just now makes me think ‘you crazy bitch’.
Which is actually what a lot of other people thought about it too. My mum asked me if I was drunk, since the Facebook post went up quite late, and that offended me, because I hadn’t just put up the photo, I had written what I considered a really articulate and well-thought-out piece explaining why I was doing it. And I said that to my mum, I said: ‘Mum, I wasn’t drunk! How could I be drunk and write like that, didn’t you read what I wrote?’ And she was like, ‘Oh, no, I just saw the photo and thought you must’ve been pissed.’ Thanks, Mum.
She wasn’t the only one. A LOT of people wanted me to know what they thought about that photo. And when I say people, I mean women. There were a few men who told me to put my saggy tits away, but mostly it was women who felt like they needed to tell me why what I had done was brilliant, or why what I had done was an eye-roll-inducing embarrassment.
I was shocked at the level of reaction, which a lot of people considered a disingenuous response from me. I do have a large online following, sure, but I honestly thought when I put up the post that it was kind of a boring rant about feminism and body image, and maybe a few hundred people on my page would like it, and Facebook would probably take the photo down anyway because apparently women’s nipples are more offensive than hate groups, so I just put it up and went to bed.
Cut to the next day, and my naked body was a nationally trending topic of conversation. And the honest truth is: I was fucking mortified. I was approached by a lot of media asking me to explain myself, and I sort of crafted this dignified response where I said I wasn’t going to fuel the story, because my body isn’t the most interesting thing about me – and that was partly true, but what was also true was that I was just really freaking mortified that my naked body ended up everywhere, and no, I didn’t want to go on your TV show and be interviewed while my boobs are displayed on a ten-foot screen behind me. Are you kidding? This is so embarrassing!
But I am the first to admit that I had actively, yet naïvely and inadvertently, put myself in that position. And the vulnerability I was feeling that day was of my own making.
But, the vulnerability wasn’t just about my body, it was also about my thought process – it was about the fact that I had made a pretty definitive statement about who I was and something that I stood for, and then I started to question it. Despite having put what I insisted to my mum was an incredibly moving and articulate critique on our culture’s obsession with female appearance, a strange thing started happening where it didn’t matter what I had written, because women kept explaining to other women why I had done it. And I started reading all these women arguing about whether I was brave, or an insufferable idiot, and it was like: ‘Rosie meant to say this.’ ‘NO she didn’t, she’s a fool, she means this.’ And then I was just like: ‘Arrrghhhh I don’t even know what I meant anymore, I’m confused!’
Now initially, I posted the photo for the following reason: I’m a big girl. And my body has been through a lot. I was always quite thin, and then for a bunch of reasons I gained a lot of weight in my early to mid-twenties, and then I lost a lot of that weight, so my body has ended up in this kind of ‘looks like I’ve had a baby but I haven’t’ mode. Like, I’ve got really stretchy skin, and I’m covered in stretch marks and I have a belly that will always be there and I can basically pinch some skin on my boobs and pull it up to my chin. I say basically like I haven’t tried it but I’ve tried it, I know I can do it. I’d show you now but we’re in the Opera House, so let’s keep it classy.
So, you know, my body is, by conventional standards for a woman, considered seriously flawed. I am told by society a million different ways every day that I’m disgusting. And I’ve got to be honest with you, that paralysed me for a while. I, like a lot of women, had spent my life hinging my self-worth on my appearance without even realising it. But the incredibly dangerous thing about hinging your self-esteem on your appearance is you might as well be hinging your self-esteem on a house of cards. Because no matter what you inject into your face, no matter how obsessively you work out or how restrictive you are with what you put in your mouth, your appearance will change. You will age. Your face is ageing right now. Your body is ageing right now. Gravity is taking its toll right now. And if you have invested all of your self-worth on the house of cards that is your aesthetic appeal, that house of cards is eventually going to topple and you are going to feel worthless.
Now, gaining weight in my early twenties is when my house of cards came crashing down. When I gained weight, I felt like a worthless piece of shit. But that led to something incredible happening. I no longer had my appearance to fall back on to feel value, so I had to look for other things that I valued about myself. And building a new scaffolding of self-esteem not based around looks was incredibly liberating for me. I started to place more value on my intelligence. On my talent as a writer. On my ability to be a fierce and loyal friend. On my sense of humour. On the love I have for my sisters. On the fact that I survived a pretty horrific childhood filled with trauma, abuse and neglect.
And when I started valuing those things, I suddenly remembered that I had a right to be in the universe. In spite of my body, I had a right to not only exist, but to be successful and to kick arse. And I would never have realised that if I was still convinced my body and appearance were the most important things about me. Does that mean I don’t care about looks at all? Of course not. I get eyelash extensions every three weeks, for Christ’s sake. I love dressing up, I love make-up, I truly believe in the transformative power of fashion. But all those aesthetic-based values have just been pushed lower down my values list, because I spent a long time living with them at the top of my list, and I just ended up feeling worthless.
And so, having lived all of that, I started to get really sad that women, far thinner than me, far more conventionally attractive than me, seemed so hung up on their bodies. Eighteen-year-olds are getting lip fillers and Botox and breast implants, wellness warriors are posting photos on Instagram where they pinch a tiny roll of skin on their stomachs and hashtag it ‘working on my imperfections’. (Get back to me when your stomach’s so big you can’t see your vagina, then talk to me about what society considers imperfect.) My thirteen-year-old-niece looks up to Kendall Jenner, a girl who openly admits all she ever dreamed for herself was to be a Victoria’s Secret model. Cindy Crawford, one of the most physically genetically blessed people on the planet, announced that she was retiring from being professionally photographed at fifty, and was ‘passing the torch’ to her fourteen-year-old daughter.
So, I posted a naked photo of myself. Just to say: you know what, I have a body that society tells me is disgusting – here’s a photo, just to prove it. Society tells me that as a woman, this body should make me feel worthless. But I don’t – not because I unequivocally love my body, because I don’t – I have struggles with my body image like everyone else – but because I value other things about myself, and I really encourage you to try it, because it’s been so liberating for me.
That’s what I meant to say.
That, however, was not what a lot of people took from the post. And that’s when I started to have a 24-hour-long brain fart.
So, first of all, a lot of women were complimenting me for being ‘so brave’. I understand the intention behind that, but nobody says Miranda Kerr is brave for posting a naked photo. Calling me brave was basically saying, ‘Your body is not attractive, so it is really brave that you’re putting it all out there.’ And I was just like, ‘Ah, thanks. I would have really preferred if you had told me to put it away for being too sexy, but okay.’
Then a lot of women were congratulating me on being a bigger woman who was proud of her body, and who was not afraid to flaunt it. And that also wasn’t right, because I have incredibly ambivalent feelings about my body, and I wasn’t comfortable being labelled as a body-image crusader. Some days I feel sexy, other days I cry about the size of my fupa. But, the point is, that on the days where I cry, I don’t feel worthless because I’ve learned to value other things, right? Is that what I meant?
Then other women were angry that I’d shown my body at all. ‘A post about how our bodies shouldn’t be important is ruined by including a photo of your body,’ a lot of them said. And then I sort of thought: ‘Oh, it made sense at the time. I dunno, does it? Maybe you’re right.’
Some women were angry that I’d said looks don’t matter yet I was wearing make-up in the photo and we can tell there’s a filter on it, you idiot. Well, first of all, I wasn’t wearing make-up, it was just the eyelash extensions, so that critique just made me feel pretty. And as for the filter thing – of course I put a freaking filter on! I was posting a naked photo, give me a break, sheesh. And I didn’t say looks don’t matter, I just said they’re not the most important thing. Didn’t I? I DON’T EVEN KNOW ANYMORE.
Then there were just a lot of women online eye-rolling at me. The worst was a tweet from a female comedian I really like, who, and I’m paraphrasing here, tweeted something like, ‘I’m finally feeling brave enough to reveal this private part of myself,’ and below it was an X-ray picture of a uterus. And I was like, ‘Arrrghhh that really hurts my feelings but damn it, that’s a funny joke. What a solid burn.’
So, at the end of that very bizarre twenty-four hours in which my naked body had gone viral because of a photo I’d posted myself, I was so confused about why I had done it. The Daily Mail even wrote an article about me having posted the photo because I was inspired by some blogger I’ve never heard of, and then I started to think, ‘Oh god, maybe I have heard of her, I DON’T KNOW WHAT’S GOING ON, WAAAHHH.’ And then I tried to write a follow-up explaining what I had meant to explain the first time but by that point my brain was just checking out. I mean, the women who loved it, loved it for a million different reasons, and the women who hated it, hated it for a million different reasons.
And as I was taking all of those opinions on board it was overwhelming what had been such a clear message in my mind initially. What didn’t help was that, apparently, even though people were reporting the naked photo to Facebook, it wasn’t taken down for more than a day. Facebook said it was because of a glitch in the system but I like to think there was some feminist staffer that day who was just like, ‘Oh, I’m trying to delete it. I don’t know why it’s not working.’
But the photo was up long enough that the comment thread kind of reached this critical mass.
And I was feeling incredibly vulnerable, not just because a naked photo of me had reached over six million people, but because I was so overwhelmed by the response to it that I wasn’t even confident about why I had put the photo up in the first place. And that’s when I started to feel like a fraud. You know, I’m meant to be ‘The Anti-Cool’, I’m meant to know who I am and to never question it because I don’t care what people think, and after putting up that photo, I was questioning everything.
I mean, I spent a long time with a body-image specialist figuring out all that stuff I just told you and feeling really solid about it, and then all it took was a bunch of comments to make my brain explode into an identity crisis. I was just like, ‘Why the hell am I going on about fragile card houses and self-worth? Stephanie Williams from Brisbane is right – YOU KNOW NOTHING, YOU INSUFFERABLE FOOL. And if you really meant it you would have taken the photo from a less flattering angle.’
Having a clear sense of self is easy in theory, but maintaining it when things get tough is hard. And I fail at it ALL THE TIME. Even in important moments when I shouldn’t – like when I decide to make a statement by putting a naked photo of myself on the internet. Or when I agree to do a talk on how to be yourself, forgetting that I don’t really know how.
So, what do we do? If I’m meant to be the expert and I’m standing here telling you I’m a massive fraud and I don’t have a clue, then what do we do?
How do we figure out who we are, and spend every day being ourselves, when life gives us so many conflicting rules to follow, particularly as women?
Waxing your pubes is relenting to the patriarchy.
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Waxing your pubes is a powerful example of the autonomy you have over your body.
Don’t read women’s magazines or you’ll be betraying the sisterhood. ‘24 steaming hot ways to keep him happy in bed’ is an embarrassment to us all.
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Women’s magazines provide a much needed and important platform for women. ‘24 steaming hot ways to keep him happy in bed’ allows women to talk openly about sex.
Don’t eat sugar or carbs. Take pride in your health. Sugar is DEATH and carbs are the devil.
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Eat whatever you want, because crazy diets are just a multi-billion dollar industry designed to keep women in a food prison.
Don’t put off having kids in case your junk goes bad and your eggs die. You aren’t a real woman unless you have kids. Every period is a wasted opportunity.
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Concentrate on your career instead of kids because that’s what a man would do. Every period just gets rid of another egg that would have ruined your life.
You’re only sexualising yourself because the patriarchy has forced you to.
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Celebrating your sexuality however you want is brave and empowering.
‘Bitch’ is an offensive word to women. Don’t use it.
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‘Bitch’ is an empowering word for women. Use it.
Free the nipple.
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Don’t free the nipple. That’s just admitting that your body is the most important thing about you. Don’t be such a slave to men’s visual expectations.
If we’re going to call ourselves feminists, women need to support other women.
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Men aren’t expected to support each other all the time. Women should be able to criticise each other without it being about feminism.
Don’t say ‘vagina’. Say ‘vulva’. Not understanding the correct terminology for your body is embarrassing to your gender.
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It’s your genitalia. Call that special place ‘beef curtains’ or ‘lady garden’ or ‘fish taco’ or ‘fanny’ or whatever the hell you want. Just make sure you say it all the time, because real women talk about their vaginas.
Oh, and speaking of ‘real women’, be a real woman. Just don’t be too fat, too skinny, too sexy, too prudish, too aggressive, too passive. Be a role model for all other women but be modest enough to never think you’re a role model. Have it all, but also admit that it’s impossible to have it all. Don’t screw any of this up.
Seriously. Where the fuck does that leave us? In the face of all of that conflicting noise, how are we supposed to figure out, not only who we are, but how to remain true to that at all times?
I don’t know. The best I can offer you is this: have an idea of who you’d like to be, and aim for that, but always embrace failure. Which I’m helpfully providing you with an example of right now, failing at giving you the advice you came here for.
I know who I want to be, and sometimes I’m great at it. Other times, I’m not even close. I want to not care what other people think. I want to not be heartbroken that I haven’t found lasting love yet. I want to be confident in my opinions and never waver. I want to not be sad that Sportsgirl doesn’t make clothes that fit me. I want to give zero fucks that the cool kids think I’m lame because I don’t know any of the bands on Triple J. I want to not care that I was meant to be on the cover of Spectrum this weekend and I got bumped for the almost perfect woman that is supermodel/PhD candidate that is Tara Moss. I want to eternally embrace that I’m scruffy and shy and like drinking vodka on my couch in my underpants, but I even question that sometimes too.
I want to always be the Anti-Cool Girl that people think I am, but I don’t always get there.
We’re often told that having a strong sense of self will keep us on solid ground when life gets difficult. But I think that accepting that your sense of self is bound to falter when life gets difficult is the real advice we need to learn. Because it will happen, and we need to not be drowned by feelings of failure every time it does.
So, embrace the failure. Know who you want to be, but also be okay with not knowing how to do it all the damn time. Nobody is going to be perfect at being themselves – not even the people who have written books about it and are asked to give fancy talks at the Opera House.
Let’s all embrace failure. Let’s all accept that we can only be perfect at being imperfect. That’s about as close to being ourselves as we’re ever going to get.
So that’s it. That was my final opinion on the online scandal that saw me get sucked into the Fast-Food Opinion machine. A machine that I had spent a long time being a part of. I don’t begrudge that machine now though, I really don’t. I spend a lot of time hate-reading the Daily Mail Sidebar of Shame, and I will admit to still looking up Fast-Food Opinions about the scandal of the day. So I know people want to read that stuff, because sometimes I do. And I don’t begrudge the people writing it, because I know that paid writing jobs are hard to come by. Somebody has to write that stuff. It’s just that, after a couple of years, I was done writing it.
Posting a naked photo was the thing that made me realise that.
I still can’t believe people called me ‘brave’, though. THAT PHOTO WAS SEXY, DAMN IT. Clutch your goddamn pearls.