‘I want to at least try to imagine myself effortless and glowing because my needs are met rather than because I don’t have any needs.’ This is a great sentence
I think this essay is productive and important, bc, to me currently, you are my idea of an Academic Woman—and just admitting that body image is something you struggle with opens up my mind to the possibility that big brained ladies have body image issues too. And that it doesn’t keep you from doing the big brain work, so it doesn’t have to keep me from it either. I guess what I’m saying is Thank You. For not trying to uphold the glamour of the lie that forgetting to eat makes you a Good Girl. Honest conversations like this—with the nuance and thoughtfulness that you have shown here—are how we choke the myth of the necessity of the starving academic/artist, instead of letting that myth keep us in a chokehold.
it’s astonishing to me that i could be anyone’s Academic Woman - thank you so much for thinking that for even a minute
the more i reflect on it, the more i realise how all of my academic career has been marinating in women i know, admire and compare myself to telling me about how they deny themselves and make their body suffer so their brain can be clever. it’s so easy to accept that uncritically and to join in with it - i’m sure i’ve said similar things in the past when i was 21 and trying hard to be like ‘omg i didn’t even eat dinner’. it’s sad that it has to be revolutionary in even a small way to be studying age 29 and say ‘actually i love dinner and i need it in order to be clever’
Exactly yes—I know I’ve uncritically joined in on that chorus too. And now that I’m 30 and my body has more things to say to me about how I treat it, it’s so refreshing to be able to say yeah, actually eating lunch is Good and doesn’t mean than I’m any less Dedicated to my Art. Is this just a realization every woman comes to when she nears 30?!
i’ve just got absolutely zero ideas about medieval texts if i haven’t eaten. my cleverness is entirely and only powered by leftovers heated up in the microwave.
And it’s so crazy that it feels like such a revelation to us! Science has been saying this for forever! But I guess we’re so bombarded with images of thinness and messaging of self-denial that it’s impossible to really assimilate the reality that Food is Good with the aspirational reality we’re faced with. Like feeling like Pigpen next to Naomi Campbell—how are we supposed to argue with that uncomfortable feeling?
reading this felt like reading my own thoughts & experiences. incredibly relatable and i think massively under talked about! especially how focussing obsessively on your body eats into the time you should be doing what you love, and tying to funding cuts/culture wars.
i heard someone once talking about studying/teaching at oxford, and they said it prioritises the body to the detriment of the body, you’re not even meant to think about the needs of your body because you’re constantly in service of your brain (hall food in limited timings; scout system). like the sort of joan didion image, you’re just meant to be a brain - though of course your brain just can’t function without your body.
anyway great essay, i’m glad i saw it this morning!
Did Mary Beard ever GAF about this? Possibly, in a time when academia was even harder for women. Nor does she now, the boys are saying she's not pretty enough for TV and she just laughs at them and continues on with her plump gray-haired self pottering around Rome and writing international best sellers.
Also, as a former skinny teen, let me tell you that menopause is going to be quite the shock for the scrawny bitches. You'll have the last laugh. They'll be going mental.
And those of us with what's considered extra pounds today are NOT descended from the scrawny ancestors. A little padding is important for disease resistance.
Turns out butter, in moderation, is better for you than fake butter, and tastes so much better. So butter up those scones and toast!
My ancestors didn't claw their way up the food chain to under-eat!
(really, what do they think brains are mostly made of?)
that’s such a good thought about menopause - the bodily experience no one (who’s doomed to get it by biology) is allowed to escape from. i intend to be well fed and clever before during and after it if i can manage it
I suppose they’ll take artificial hormones, get plastic surgery, and have even more disordered eating. Or completely fall apart if they can’t do all that.
Me, I just chunked up and DO NOT miss periods. I did eat too much junk food during lockdown and the months after, but buying fewer cookies, salty crunchy snacks, and chocolate solved that. I still have some because you’ve got to live. (After surviving cancer, my mother gave up giving up desserts for Lent; she figured God would just have to deal with it.)
Having a few extra (pounds/kilos/stone) is good for old people; so many get too skinny and have no resistance to anything.
I’ve a friend who did an Old English master’s (dissertation, oral defense, and everything) who has never been svelte. Yet somehow she got through all those years of academia in the 60s/70s, met another grad student of some avoirdupois who became a professor of Greek and Irish, had a baby, and were together for 40+ years till he died. She and I now go out for lunches and bookstores and potter around contentedly with our plumpness and gray hair.
I’m sure you’ll do brilliantly! Your slightly older age will help; your brain doesn’t settle down till at least 25 and I don’t know if that ever fully happens to men. ;)
I never encountered my thoughts like this. When I think of my academic self, it is not really me I am thinking about but the "ideal woman in academia". As you said, it seems strange that the topic of body image and academia should intersect but as for you, for me it makes painful sense. I am currently working on my bachelors thesis about disordered eating of medieval religious women and the research has been quite reflective and almost attacking. I too have been reading Holy Feast and Holy Fast and obsessing over my food patterns. Thank you for creating a text of relatability and solidarity.
I’m so glad you wrote this! I’ve always had body image issues, and I’ve always been super embarrassed about them. Reading admittances about judging your reflection in shop windows is such a relief, because, although I wish no one ever scrutinised their body while it walked down the street, it makes me feel less alone to know that it’s not just me. I grew up believing that I had to a) be beautiful, b) not know it, and c) never ever think about my body ever because I should be so clever that I accidentally skip every other meal because I’m too busy reading.
I’ve been having the same thoughts about writing an essay on body image, I both want to and I don’t because I’m afraid of not handling it properly, but knowing that this one has made a positive difference to so many I’m definitely going to write that essay!
It’s too bad that people have such a tough time when they’re young - I’d love to have back the body I hated when I was in my 20s! It’s just an endless rollercoaster of weight, and age-related changes. Part of what makes aging so hard mentally is that most people don’t like to change, and aging makes change continual. It does give you the perspective that can help, though. I’ve been bald from chemo, and so now I know that I can look fine when I’m bald. And I know that nobody my age has firm skin without surgery, so I forgive myself when I’m baggy. But none of this is easy.
Love this passage: “women in the twenty-first century in all situations are encouraged to hate their appearances, and to want to divert time and resources into achieving being smaller rather than anything more meaningful.” It makes me wonder if there is a connection between social pressure not only to appear small, but also to act small. The patriarchy prefers that, if we have to be allowed to participate in public life, we must strive for 27-inch waists and tiny brains so we don’t get in their way. To counter this bullshit standard, I’m proudly perimenopausal, gaining weight, and generally being a lot everywhere I go. I also love butter.
‘I want to at least try to imagine myself effortless and glowing because my needs are met rather than because I don’t have any needs.’ This is a great sentence
thank you so much - i’m pretty happy with that one
I think this essay is productive and important, bc, to me currently, you are my idea of an Academic Woman—and just admitting that body image is something you struggle with opens up my mind to the possibility that big brained ladies have body image issues too. And that it doesn’t keep you from doing the big brain work, so it doesn’t have to keep me from it either. I guess what I’m saying is Thank You. For not trying to uphold the glamour of the lie that forgetting to eat makes you a Good Girl. Honest conversations like this—with the nuance and thoughtfulness that you have shown here—are how we choke the myth of the necessity of the starving academic/artist, instead of letting that myth keep us in a chokehold.
it’s astonishing to me that i could be anyone’s Academic Woman - thank you so much for thinking that for even a minute
the more i reflect on it, the more i realise how all of my academic career has been marinating in women i know, admire and compare myself to telling me about how they deny themselves and make their body suffer so their brain can be clever. it’s so easy to accept that uncritically and to join in with it - i’m sure i’ve said similar things in the past when i was 21 and trying hard to be like ‘omg i didn’t even eat dinner’. it’s sad that it has to be revolutionary in even a small way to be studying age 29 and say ‘actually i love dinner and i need it in order to be clever’
Exactly yes—I know I’ve uncritically joined in on that chorus too. And now that I’m 30 and my body has more things to say to me about how I treat it, it’s so refreshing to be able to say yeah, actually eating lunch is Good and doesn’t mean than I’m any less Dedicated to my Art. Is this just a realization every woman comes to when she nears 30?!
i’ve just got absolutely zero ideas about medieval texts if i haven’t eaten. my cleverness is entirely and only powered by leftovers heated up in the microwave.
And it’s so crazy that it feels like such a revelation to us! Science has been saying this for forever! But I guess we’re so bombarded with images of thinness and messaging of self-denial that it’s impossible to really assimilate the reality that Food is Good with the aspirational reality we’re faced with. Like feeling like Pigpen next to Naomi Campbell—how are we supposed to argue with that uncomfortable feeling?
reading this felt like reading my own thoughts & experiences. incredibly relatable and i think massively under talked about! especially how focussing obsessively on your body eats into the time you should be doing what you love, and tying to funding cuts/culture wars.
i heard someone once talking about studying/teaching at oxford, and they said it prioritises the body to the detriment of the body, you’re not even meant to think about the needs of your body because you’re constantly in service of your brain (hall food in limited timings; scout system). like the sort of joan didion image, you’re just meant to be a brain - though of course your brain just can’t function without your body.
anyway great essay, i’m glad i saw it this morning!
Did Mary Beard ever GAF about this? Possibly, in a time when academia was even harder for women. Nor does she now, the boys are saying she's not pretty enough for TV and she just laughs at them and continues on with her plump gray-haired self pottering around Rome and writing international best sellers.
Also, as a former skinny teen, let me tell you that menopause is going to be quite the shock for the scrawny bitches. You'll have the last laugh. They'll be going mental.
And those of us with what's considered extra pounds today are NOT descended from the scrawny ancestors. A little padding is important for disease resistance.
Turns out butter, in moderation, is better for you than fake butter, and tastes so much better. So butter up those scones and toast!
My ancestors didn't claw their way up the food chain to under-eat!
(really, what do they think brains are mostly made of?)
that’s such a good thought about menopause - the bodily experience no one (who’s doomed to get it by biology) is allowed to escape from. i intend to be well fed and clever before during and after it if i can manage it
I suppose they’ll take artificial hormones, get plastic surgery, and have even more disordered eating. Or completely fall apart if they can’t do all that.
Me, I just chunked up and DO NOT miss periods. I did eat too much junk food during lockdown and the months after, but buying fewer cookies, salty crunchy snacks, and chocolate solved that. I still have some because you’ve got to live. (After surviving cancer, my mother gave up giving up desserts for Lent; she figured God would just have to deal with it.)
Having a few extra (pounds/kilos/stone) is good for old people; so many get too skinny and have no resistance to anything.
I’ve a friend who did an Old English master’s (dissertation, oral defense, and everything) who has never been svelte. Yet somehow she got through all those years of academia in the 60s/70s, met another grad student of some avoirdupois who became a professor of Greek and Irish, had a baby, and were together for 40+ years till he died. She and I now go out for lunches and bookstores and potter around contentedly with our plumpness and gray hair.
I’m sure you’ll do brilliantly! Your slightly older age will help; your brain doesn’t settle down till at least 25 and I don’t know if that ever fully happens to men. ;)
I never encountered my thoughts like this. When I think of my academic self, it is not really me I am thinking about but the "ideal woman in academia". As you said, it seems strange that the topic of body image and academia should intersect but as for you, for me it makes painful sense. I am currently working on my bachelors thesis about disordered eating of medieval religious women and the research has been quite reflective and almost attacking. I too have been reading Holy Feast and Holy Fast and obsessing over my food patterns. Thank you for creating a text of relatability and solidarity.
I’m so glad you wrote this! I’ve always had body image issues, and I’ve always been super embarrassed about them. Reading admittances about judging your reflection in shop windows is such a relief, because, although I wish no one ever scrutinised their body while it walked down the street, it makes me feel less alone to know that it’s not just me. I grew up believing that I had to a) be beautiful, b) not know it, and c) never ever think about my body ever because I should be so clever that I accidentally skip every other meal because I’m too busy reading.
I’ve been having the same thoughts about writing an essay on body image, I both want to and I don’t because I’m afraid of not handling it properly, but knowing that this one has made a positive difference to so many I’m definitely going to write that essay!
It’s too bad that people have such a tough time when they’re young - I’d love to have back the body I hated when I was in my 20s! It’s just an endless rollercoaster of weight, and age-related changes. Part of what makes aging so hard mentally is that most people don’t like to change, and aging makes change continual. It does give you the perspective that can help, though. I’ve been bald from chemo, and so now I know that I can look fine when I’m bald. And I know that nobody my age has firm skin without surgery, so I forgive myself when I’m baggy. But none of this is easy.
Love this passage: “women in the twenty-first century in all situations are encouraged to hate their appearances, and to want to divert time and resources into achieving being smaller rather than anything more meaningful.” It makes me wonder if there is a connection between social pressure not only to appear small, but also to act small. The patriarchy prefers that, if we have to be allowed to participate in public life, we must strive for 27-inch waists and tiny brains so we don’t get in their way. To counter this bullshit standard, I’m proudly perimenopausal, gaining weight, and generally being a lot everywhere I go. I also love butter.
i relate a lot to what you are saying. so thank you for putting this into words and letting strangers read it <3