Bodies in Winter
A newsletter issue all about how we feel about our bodies in winter, and how to make these feelings positive
Does the way we feel about our bodies change with the seasons? It doesn’t have to, but you can certainly see why it might. Maybe it’s a lifestyle change - more time spent indoors. Or perhaps a change in how we present our bodies to the outside world - more layers become a necessity as the days get colder. Maybe it’s more difficult to feel love for a body that spends most of its time shut away. Summer brings with it a host of different pressures, but winter insecurity can be a reclusive kind. We’re getting ever closer to the end of winter - the days are getting longer and walks in the park are getting less slippery. But there’s still a little bit to go. Hopefully this newsletter will offer a warm source of comfort in these chilly days.
In this newsletter we’ll be talking about all things bodies in winter. It includes three poems, a dermatitis confession, a reflection on winter clothing, a rejection of the summer vs. winter body, and as always a who to follow recommendation.
In our next newsletter we’ll be writing about and collating some resources on self-love in honour of Valentine’s Day. If you have any thoughts about loving yourself, email gufabpositivitysoc@gmail.com. (Spoiler: we might be concluding that all out loving yourself is a lot to ask).
Winter Sun
By Molly Fisk
How valuable it is in these short days,
threading through empty maple branches,
the lacy-needled sugar pines.
Its glint off sheets of ice tells the story
of Death’s brightness, her bitter cold.
We can make do with so little, just the hint
of warmth, the slanted light.
The way we stand there, soaking in it,
mittened fingers reaching.
And how carefully we gather what we can
to offer later, in darkness, one body to another.
Poem copyright ©2010 by Molly Fisk from her most recent book of poetry, The More Difficult Beauty, Hip Pocket Press, 2010.
Silver streamers dazzling winter
By Joshua Beckman
I let my body down slow which is
what they say to do, like a whale
with its breathing and floating
in the ocean.
Yesterday
was the half moon
and today was basically
the half moon too.
A glacier’s blue
and water
in the middle of a lake
is blue.
I only had one day
during which I could get myself
out into the middle of it
and I did,
kudos to me.
And to the resilient goose
who never feels cold
And to the talky crow
who has so many friends
And to the inspiring stealthy ducks
who fly together in clips above water.
It’s a silly betrayal
of my own thoughts
to invent or remember,
so maybe I’ll just close
with these tender lines
of Henry David Thoreau:
“An oak tree
in Hubbard’s Passage
stands absolutely
motionless
and dark
against the sky.”
Joshua Beckman, “Silver streamers dazzling winter” from The Inside of an Apple. Copyright © 2013 by Joshua Beckman.
Both of these poems were found on poetryfoundation.org - they both remind me in different ways of frozen but light and bright walks in Kelvingrove Park this January.
The poem ‘The Body is Not an Apology’ written and performed by Sonya Renee here is well worth a watch. Renee embraces the beauty in body diversity and how we can feel pressured to feel insufficient. She has also written a book of the same name, The Body Is Not An Apology: The Radical Power of Self Love, the second edition of which you can preorder here.
Winter Skin
My body seems to be rejecting winter. It has been for a few months now. Either my body is rejecting winter or I’m slowly transforming into a member of the lizard elite. Whatever the cause, patches of dry skin are cropping up on the most random places on my body. They’re not too sore, and they don’t bother me too much, but they can look a bit gnarly. A culture of body positivity has taught me a lot in the way of accepting body anomalies (even the not so abnormal ones). Hairy nipples, hip-dips, cellulite, stretchmarks, spots and many other minor body phenomena have been acknowledged and accepted at this point. Most of these things are consistent year round, which is arguably neither good nor bad. Dry skin is hardly the most marginalised of body conditions in need of being addressed. That said, without body positive messages about accepting ourselves and our bodies, I don’t know if it’d feel so unphased about my crunchy cocoon.
There are lots of things which come with living in a body but are generally a bit uncomfortable to talk about. Only in writing about my dry skin am I aware that this might be a little gross to some people. If you’re alarmed by descriptions of skin conditions: don’t worry, it’s not going to get any worse than the previous paragraph. But also it might get a little worse. Read at your own discretion.
My skin has gotten so bad that my brother got me dermatitis cream for Christmas. Unfortunately, all it’s done is make me smell like dermatitis cream. My roll neck jumpers in particular. Never before have I been so glad to be single, because I’m quite sure I’d taste like dermatitis cream too. The carnal moments in which I use my short nails to attack my skin have become common opportunities for chastisement from my flatmates: they are all too aware (due to my regular announcements) of the cycle of my skin healing, inflammation and healing again. And just when everyone (mainly me) is sure that it’s not going to flare up again, an itch ascends and I go ham. Until my skin looks like ham.
What started as a fun morning moisturising routine has now lost its novelty. As the weather gets colder, I watch with knowing detachedness as my skin gets drier and cries out for moisture. I happily oblige for a while: feeling like the opening scene in an outdated film with an elegant woman getting ready. Sometimes I make funky patterns with the moisturiser before rubbing it in - thus transforming it into a ritual of indulgence. But soon enough, I’m tired of it. I’m not ashamed to admit that my personal hygiene has taken a bit of a hit in this round of lockdown. Actually, maybe I’m a bit ashamed to admit it. But it’s the truth! And so as daily showering has become a thing of the past, so has daily moisturising. Conveniently, the same reasons I don’t have to be clean anymore also mean that no one beyond my flatmates and my family group chat sees my crusty neck. In what seems to be the coldest, longest winter, it’s difficult to maintain the routines which keep us soft and supple (this is both literal and a metaphor - nice).
So what’s my point? Maybe I just want an excuse to overshare - something absolutely not unheard of from me. Keep your eyes peeled for in a few newsletters time when I’m going to reflect on my IBS and how it affects eating - nice. So: our bodies can change for many reasons and in many different ways. Usually they change for reasons beyond our control. Sometimes it’s a shift in moods and habits. Sometimes it’s hormonal. Sometimes it’s something internal we don’t know about. And sometimes it’s with the seasons. In this newsletter we’re trying to recognise the ways in which our environment affects our bodies and how we feel about them. Changes to our skin are one easily identified way in which this happens. Our bodies have a certain duality to them. They are something so personal, so our-own, so internal. But they’re also our point of interaction with the outside world. I think it’s too easy to forget that we are in the world not apart from it. Did this conclusion really come from me talking about my dermatitis? Yes! Shameless.
A Clothing Cocoon
This winter season I’ve leaned into layering like never before. I don’t know how I was dressing in previous cold seasons but I’m not sure how I made it through in only a t-shirt and jumper. I’m at the point where if I get dressed in the morning and there aren’t three visible layers to what I’m wearing, something seems off. And beyond the visible, several hidden garments lie in wait (in wait of what, I’m unsure). I need all of these layers - I’ve acclimatised to the warmth they preserve. There’s a necessity to winter clothing which removes an element of choice. Whether you feel like covering up or not: the decision is made for you by the chilly temperatures pervading inside and outside. So what does it mean for our body image to be so wrapped up in clothes?
In my mid-teens I was all about wearing tight-fitting clothes that I could wear to house parties (or as someone from a small town - to seshes ‘hosted’ next to the river) and look fit in. I feel like there’s a pun here about outfits to look fit in in order to fit-in (too wordy?). At some point I started to opt for looser clothes that obscured my body a little more. I would joke about how men didn’t bother me if I was wearing baggy clothes. My body was a secret that only I knew about (granted, a less predictable secret would’ve been not having a body at all or being a collection of squirrels wearing a mask and hands or whatever). This strategy seemed to work. Walking across the doctor’s car park (my town’s catcalling central) I was no longer bothered by the men that hung around there (to clarify, it’s not a gang of GPs just some randoms with nowhere better to be). I still sometimes feel as if dressing a certain way can shield me from the male gaze. Much like the winter cold that means we have to retreat into our layers, my teen self chose to cover up to avoid feeling vulnerable. Existing in the world means our bodies are affected by external factors, but is it bad when those things start to alter our internal views of ourselves?
My consistent base layer (definitely needs a wash someday soon) has become such a fixture of my everyday that I’m taken aback when I see myself without it. YouTuber Hannah Witton often talks about her main tip for increasing body confidence being to hang around the house naked. This just isn’t an option in winter. It’s far too cold to hover about in the nude getting used to your body or repeating affirmations in the mirror. So what does it mean when we finally emerge into March and can bare our arms to the world? I’m genuinely moved when I see my own shoulders these days. What about when I can start going out with bare legs (this is all sounding oddly Victorian)? I can’t tell if it’s harder to maintain a positive body-image when you’re unaware of what you look like, or when you’re confronted with it constantly. In a normal year, you have opportunities to dress up and (fingers crossed) feel good about yourself. Now we’re generally limited to the clothes that will keep us warm while we sit and do online uni.
I don’t really like people seeing my body. I don’t think this comes from an inherent self-dislike or a fear of being objectified, but I can’t shake the discomfort. Even on dates (throwback!), I’d rather keep clothed until we’re getting off. I don’t think it’s prudishness, perhaps just a desire to consent to being seen?
I feel a lot of security in my clothes; particularly in my winter wardrobe (this is my summer wardrobe but worn all at once). I now worry that I’ve come to rely too heavily on the clothes which keep me warm. I predict that instead of emerging from my winter clothing cocoon as anything aesthetic or elegant, I’m going to feel confused about only wearing one layer. It’s perfectly fine to want to keep your body under wraps, but I can’t help wondering about where this impulse comes from. Am I afraid of the cold or am I afraid to expose myself to the world and be rejected?
I don’t know the answers to these questions! If you do, email gufabpositivitysoc@gmail.com and 1) therapize me and 2) write something for an upcoming newsletter! ;)
The ‘Summer’ vs ‘Winter’ Body - and the problems it creates!
By Ruth Johns-Bishop
I often notice that during winter - particularly in January and February, the months following Christmas - people begin talking about how they have now acquired a ‘winter’ body. It’s talked about in depth how over the coming months you must instead become ‘summer’ ready, for some much-anticipated display of ourselves in fewer clothes. This creates many problems. Firstly, it implies that because it is mid-winter, our bodies simply can’t be at their best - apparently a more indoor lifestyle and warmer food must mean that your body can’t be fabulous? It suggests that after Christmas we must attack ourselves, because, according to the diet industry, we all look wrong at this time of year. This image of the dreaded January body can make us feel self-conscious and less confident, even if we’re perfectly content with our appearances. If we’re told that we must feel dissatisfied with ourselves at this time of year, then it rubs off. Secondly, it puts our eating habits under intense scrutiny. As the diet industry suggests that we all need to ‘detox’, ‘juice’ or ‘cleanse’ our way to a better-looking body, it can make us feel like everything we eat (and how we eat it) is wrong. Coming with the scrutiny of our January bodies is an influx of advertisements for crazy fad diets, like ‘keto’, ‘intermittent fasting’... even Veganuary has been used to promote weight loss. It can be easy to feel guilty for eating the foods that we’re used to eating, because we feel increased pressure to go on a health kick or a diet.
It seems the diet industry is determined to make us feel self-conscious over our appearances and food choices, just to make us buy ridiculous products under the promise that a more desirable body will be ready for parade in warmer weather. But this is simply a lie we’re being told, so companies can make money out of our insecurities. Our bodies can be beautiful any time of the year, no matter what festivities we’ve enjoyed recently, the weather, or the food we’re eating. We can still love and be happy with ourselves, even in the most scrutiny-heavy months.
While the image of a ‘winter body’ acknowledges the changes that happen to us physically, it portrays them negatively. It makes us believe that any changes many experience must be down to the fact that it’s winter and that we may have - god forbid - enjoyed eating over Christmas. Our bodies do change, but this can be embraced, appreciated and enjoyed. It is often also not entirely down to food and winter as the diet industry can suggest; there’s a whole range of factors affecting our bodies, from hormones, time of day and mood. If we do feel different around this time (for any reason), we shouldn’t blame what we did or didn’t eat, or the exercise we didn't do in the cold. In the darkest time of year, with pretty grim weather too, the last thing we need to feel is added insecurity about our appearances: our bodies are just as beautiful in winter as they are in the summer.
Who to follow
If you’re a newsletter sub from day one then perhaps you already took our recommendation in the very first newsletter to follow the wonderful charity which is:
@thelunaprojectuk - The LUNA Project. LUNA’s aim is to raise awareness about young people living with long term health conditions. And we have good reason in suggesting them again! They’re just coming to the end of a month where they focus on the theme of ‘Body’ specifically, so they have lots of great resources that you should check out! Plus - in the next few days they’re releasing a little collaborative resource which we did together, so keep your eyes peeled for that!
A final word on the cycle of the seasons. In ‘Eat Up!’, Ruby Tandoh writes ‘the thing about the seasons is that they are cyclical, and the ‘new you’ this January will be the same ‘new you’ of next January, and of every January until you die. You’ll drift from Creme Egg spring to Red Stripe summer and Pumpkin Spice autumn right back to the fugue state you started in, dizzy from all the brandy butter, nursing a hangover in a bed.’ She makes an excellent point, and one I always find comforting. The seasons are cyclical. Maybe you’re noticing that you don’t have to switch on your desk lamp to be seen in your 4pm zoom seminar anymore. The days are getting longer and we’re emerging into the time when we can embrace a whole different set of worries. And then, when we’ve had enough of those, we can hibernate again.
This newsletter was written and edited by Thalia Grou, with a contribution from Ruth Johns-Bishop. To get in touch, email gufabpositivitysoc@gmail.com - we’d love to hear from you!