Having a Female Body and Not Hating Yourself Is a Political Act

When female insecurity is profitable, the most radical thing a woman can do is stop treating her body like a problem to solve.

At Cannes one year, Kristen Stewart said something I haven’t been able to stop thinking about. Since then, it has slowly engraved itself into my brain. She said:

“Having a female body is an overtly political act if you can get out of bed in the morning and not hate yourself.” 

To a man’s ear, it may sound overly dramatic. To a woman, it feels almost obvious. As so much of womanhood is spent learning to observe ourselves from the outside, as though we are both the person living in our body and the audience watching it.

Is my stomach flat enough? Do I look old? Is this dress flattering? Are my arms too big? Should I lose weight? Gain muscle? Age naturally? Get Botox? Wear less makeup? Wear more? Am I trying too hard? Have I let myself go?

The female body has never really been allowed to simply exist. It is photographed, legislated, sexualised, advertised with, monetised, ranked and endlessly discussed. Everyone seems to have an opinion about what a woman should do with her body, while women themselves are expected to somehow emerge from all of this completely secure in theirs.

And if we don’t? Conveniently, there is something available to buy. An anti-ageing serum. A gym membership. Ozempic. Collagen powder. Shapewear. Botox. A supplement promising to fix whatever we apparently discovered was wrong with ourselves this week.

This does not mean beauty, fashion, fitness or cosmetic procedures are inherently oppressive. Women are perfectly capable of altering their appearance because they enjoy it. The problem is an economy that becomes significantly more profitable when enjoying yourself turns into correcting yourself.

Because a woman who wakes up, looks in the mirror and thinks, I’m fine, is considerably harder to sell a solution to. Perhaps that is why female self-acceptance can feel strangely rebellious.

We Want to See Women. We Just Don’t Always Want to Hear Them.

Stewart’s wider statement makes the contradiction even more uncomfortable. She describes womanhood as an experience in which women are made visible while simultaneously being encouraged to remain quiet about what that visibility costs: essentially, we want to see you, but we don’t want to hear you.

And isn’t that the bizarre contradiction of the female body? We are culturally obsessed with looking at it.

But hearing about what actually happens inside it can still make people deeply uncomfortable.

Periods. Miscarriage. Birth. Infertility. Menopause. Sexual pain. Ageing. Desire. Not wanting children. Wanting them desperately. Loving pregnancy. Hating pregnancy.

The female body is apparently fascinating right up until the woman inhabiting it starts describing the experience herself. Everybody gets an opinion on the female body. Fewer people seem comfortable when the woman living inside it has one too.

Even Loving Yourself Became Work

For years, women were explicitly told what needed fixing. Then came body positivity, carrying what should have been a liberating proposition: perhaps women did not need to spend their lives hating themselves.

But because apparently women cannot be given freedom without eventually receiving instructions for how to perform that correctly too, self-love developed its own expectations. Love your cellulite. Celebrate your stomach. Post the bikini picture. Call yourself beautiful. Feel empowered.

But what happens when you don’t?

There are mornings when I do not particularly love my body. There are also mornings when I don’t particularly love my hair, my personality or the fact that another email has arrived before I’ve had coffee.

None of these things necessarily require an ideological crisis. Maybe women do not need to find every inch of themselves beautiful. Maybe we need permission to stop thinking about it so much.

God knows, there is something exhausting about the idea that the relationship with our bodies must always be active. We are either improving them, accepting them, celebrating them, healing our relationship with them or learning to love them.

Even liberation somehow became another assignment. Perhaps female liberation isn’t loving your body. What if it’s finally being allowed to forget about it? Imagine that. A woman existing in a body without making it her full-time job.

To swim without wondering what your stomach looks like from the side. To have sex without mentally observing yourself having sex. To eat without immediately calculating what the meal means for your body. To get dressed based on what you like rather than what makes you look smallest. To appear in a photograph and notice the moment before inspecting your face.

Imagine how much mental space that would return to women. We could finally take up a hobby.

Your Body Is Not Your Life’s Work

There is no final body waiting for us. Even if you achieve the exact body you currently believe would make you happy, it will change. You will age, your skin will move, hormones will alter you, illness might alter you, pregnancy might alter you and life will alter you.

That is not your body failing. That is your body doing the deeply inconvenient thing bodies have always done: being alive. And perhaps that is what makes Stewart’s statement feel so powerful. In a culture that has found endless ways to make women feel inadequate, refusing to participate in your own self-hatred does begin to resemble resistance. Not because every woman must wake up, stand naked in front of the mirror and declare herself a goddess.

Please, take a beat. It’s 7 a.m.

But because indifference can be radical too. You do not have to worship your body to stop punishing it. You do not have to think you are beautiful every second to believe you deserve to occupy space. You do not have to turn yourself into your greatest love story.

However truth be told, your body can simply be your body. The thing that carries you into restaurants and oceans and bedrooms and airports. The thing that lets you hug your friends, dance badly, taste food, have orgasms, cry, sleep, run, create, give birth or never give birth at all.

The place from which you experience your life rather than the project that prevents you from living it. The most radical thing a woman can do with her body isn’t love every inch of it. It’s refuse to spend her entire life at war with it.

---

Photo ©  Kristen Stewart Photographed by Collier Schorr