Self-Love, from Your Valentine (you)
A newsletter all about loving yourself (or not) this Valentine’s day
You may be beginning to get a sense that over at GUFAB we love a festively themed newsletter. Maybe it’s the sense that everyday is the same or a lack of non-holiday-related creativity, but this is the fourth newsletter related to a particular time of year. But I won’t apologise! Just be glad there’s no easter newsletter coming your way (I just double checked the schedule and there definitely isn’t), which is quite amazing considering my love of creme eggs. Anyhoo, without further ado, onto some self-love this Valentine’s.
This newsletter includes an event announcement, a reflection on why self-love might not be the one, some poetry, thoughts on the self and sex, some tips for a solo Valentine’s, and a recipe for self-romancing.
An event!
Putting this out there upfront just in case you get too swept up in the romance of this weekend and don’t have a chance to read on… GUFAB are ending our lengthy stoppage on live events to bring you a collaborative event with Successful Women At Glasgow - a ‘Body Monologues Open Mic’! The Vagina Monologues, as written by Eve Ensler, are often performed by students on Valentine’s Day (known in this context as V-Day) to raise money for charity. We’re having a pay what you feel zoom open mic with our own funky spin - you can monologue about any body part! Or, alternatively, if you’re a fan of a particular vagina monologue by Eve Ensler, you can perform that! It’s on Monday 15th from 7-8pm, and you can donate to SWAG’s JustGiving to support Glasgow and Clyde Rape Crisis. All of the details on the Facebook event page. If you want to sign up to perform in advance send us an email at gufabpositivitysoc@gmail.com or for the attention of Kate at s.w.a.glasgow@gmail.com. We look forward to hearing from you!
Self-love might not be the one
Perhaps this seems an odd take from the Glasgow University Food And Body Positivity Society, especially in the Valentine’s newsletter, but sometimes self-love isn’t what we need. But let’s be clear from the outset, where we might not want self-love, we definitely need self-acceptance. It might seem like there’s a marginal distinction between the two, but for a lot of people one seems like an impossible task and the other an important goal. Whatsmore, even if we make it to self-love, we might need to be doing more - just not for our individual selves.
Some objections to body positivity are that it’s asking too much, that it’s not representative, and that it’s brushing over the real issues. These are fair challenges, and over at GUFAB we try to practice a particular brand of radical, inclusive, political body positivity as best we can*. Body positivity is a varied movement with lots of different aims. Some of these are personal, and some are political. But actually everything is both because that’s a false dichotomy. Point being, there are different focuses which might be housed beneath the big broad roof of body positivity. We can all take what we need from body positivity and leave the bits that we don’t like. For me, the essence is in rejecting the idea that a wrong body exists, and using that to ground my own feelings about myself and to challenge the systems which disadvantage marginalised bodies.
Love is a big concept: love has been the inspiration for countless creative pursuits; people obsess over whether they’re in it or not; we have a whole commercialised day just to celebrate the ones we love. And love is a big ask: love takes time and attention; love requires a deep knowing; love means a certain amount of dedication. Love actually is… all around (see, I’m self aware). If we characterise love in this way, it might not be something we want to feel about our bodies. We might be more inclined to simply accept our bodies and be done with it. Enter body neutrality. Body neutrality accepts whatever feelings you may have about your body day-to-day but respects it always. This means the onus is not on us to be self-loving, but simply to accept the feelings which come.
Body positivity is a response to the widespread circumstances that mean many many people have a difficult relationship with their body. To reduce the aims of this movement to securing self-love for every individual is to overlook the more radical actions which are necessary to challenge that environment. To call for self-love for all is also to erase the experiences of people in marginalised bodies, who have to deal with toxic discourses about their bodies far more regularly. Fatphobia is something that needs to be addressed, broken-down and challenged.
So where does self-love come in? In palatable body positivity that is marketed to us in order to market other (more concrete and economic) things, that’s where! We might be made to feel bad that we don’t ‘love’ ourselves, even though this is a perfectly understandable response to the way we may be made to feel about our bodies. Reducing body positivity to loving yourself is both asking too much of the individual and asking too little of the society that needs to change.
*If you have any thoughts on this get in touch at gufabpositivitysoc@gmail.com
Love Poem
By Dora Malech
If by truth you mean hand then yes
I hold to be self-evident and hold you in the highest—
KO to my OT and bait to my switch, I crown
you one-trick pony to my one-horse town,
dub you my one-stop shopping, my space heater,
juke joint, tourist trap, my peep show, my meter reader,
you best batteries-not-included baring all or
nothing. Let me begin by saying if he hollers,
end with goes the weasel. In between,
cream filling. Get over it, meaning, the moon.
Tell me you’ll dismember this night forever,
you my punch-drunking bag, tar to my feather.
More than the sum of our private parts, we are some
peekaboo, some peak and valley, some
bright equation (if and then but, if er then uh).
My fruit bat, my gewgaw. You had me at no duh.
Okay so maybe this poem isn’t strictly on theme but the line ‘Tell me you’ll dismember this night forever’ really got me and I wanted everyone to see it. What sort of mixed-up love letters could we write ourselves? Mine would probably be like you’re pretentious and do yoga when you’re drunk (not unrelated) but you really try your best xx.
For a subtly (or maybe not - judge for yourself) brutal take on Valentine’s, listen to the poem Valentine’s by Talvikki Ansel here
Solo on Valentine’s
Disclaimer - this section is just the teeniest bit personal and crude so if you’d prefer to avoid that, just skip it - I don’t mind!
Single people are supposed to hate Valentine’s Day. It’s the epitome of everything we don’t have: romance, gifted chocolate, and a relationship to be exploited by the commercialisation of love. Does that make it sound like I hate Valentine’s Day? I actually quite like it, single or not. I’m a sucker for any holiday, so this doesn’t really come as a surprise. All the same, I wanted to take the opportunity of this romantic time of year to reflect on single people’s relationships with their bodies in the time of corona. Really I’m just reflecting on the complex relationship I have with how people I’m sleeping with talk about my body. Whoops.
As a single person in a pandemic, I’m a little bit touch-starved. Literally as I write this I’m trying not to glance at the people who live in the flat over the road as they appear to be engaged in a romantic embrace… I’m not a voyeur (but even having to clarify that might be cause for alarm), I’m just socially awkward. Anyway! The only physical touch currently endorsed by the government is between those you live with or people you’re in an established relationship with. Check out Franki Cookney’s guide to fucking in every tier of lockdown if you want to question whether or not it’s normal to be dating right now. I was feeling very secure in my eternally single position until I read this and realised that that might be a minority attitude. Read at your own risk. Point being: our bodies need certain physical things. Whether it’s a cuddle, a shag, or a snog, we have needs. Navigating this while single in a pandemic poses a problem for lots of us, even if that problem is just that we’re insatiably horny (not necessarily talking about myself here, just For The Record).
Sex with other people, as opposed to the solo sex many of us are technically limited to right now, can be both a source of and an antidote to body anxieties. For me personally, I place a lot of emphasis on what the people I’m sleeping with have to say about my body. I think it can be difficult to make objective observations about our bodies (not that this is something we need to/should be doing) and so, for me, an external view can provide validation I can’t source solo. To be clear, I seek objective views on my body from people I am right about to sleep with. Infallible. This source of validation, biased as it may be, has dried up (along with some other things) in the past year. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing?
My desire for dating (and the cycle of my downloading and deleting Hinge) is often directly tied to my self-esteem. I have a down, lonely day and I decide that finding my match on Hinge will fix it all. Putting together a profile is also a fun activity in self-reflection. This pic of me biting my flatmate’s toe is funny, but will people think I have a foot fetish etc. - the usual concerns. Pre-pandemic, shagging a guy off tinder would be the esteem boost I needed every little while. And it’s not that I hated doing that, it just doesn’t exactly imply a positive relationship with myself. Consistent singlehood and a general wish to avoid the coronavirus have put this unhelpful behaviour on the backburner, but my dating app habits remain a sanitized substitute.
And here’s the crux of the problem: whether gaining validation from apps or faps, if it comes from an external source, it can fluctuate. It’s not sustainable to base our feelings about ourselves on the feedback we get from others: it might not always be there, what we should be hearing, or address the actual roots of our esteem crises. By the way, I use the term feedback broadly. Feedback can mean dating-app matches, a compliment, or an actual review. All are available on tinder if you’re looking for them. And feedback can be negative or positive. And feedback intended as positive can be negative too.
My boyfriend when I was 17 once told me in the middle of shagging that he thought I’d lost weight. I don’t take this as a compliment. Firstly, I had just recovered from a severe bout of tonsillitis and any weight-loss was not a permanent change (is it ever? And is it ever an objectively good thing?). Secondly, why the fuck are you thinking about how much my body weighs - is being literally inside of it not enough? Thirdly, I already get emotional during sex so now I’m absolutely going to have a big cry. I think he meant it as more of a neutral observation than a compliment, which is why he wasn’t broken up with on the spot. Either way, this highlights a further issue with drawing confidence from relationships with partners. As somebody working on improving their relationship with their body, I still spend quite a lot of time wishing I was a formless gas. Like a fart but maybe I could still wear earrings and being able to communicate would also be great. Having somebody I’m seeing acknowledge my body makes this an obviously false fantasy.
So, back to being single. On Valentine’s. The topic of this newsletter. Being single means that we have to draw our confidence and our cums from a self-sustaining source: ourselves. While this may mean a shift in our patterns, it also means that we are creating better relationships with the person that really matters: ourselves. This Valentine’s, why not be your own Valentine?
A Solo Valentine’s: Tips
For anyone who wants to pay a little attention to themselves this Valentine’s.
An excellent way to work out how to treat yourself this Valentine’s is to think about how you’d treat a special someone. Here are three ideas for what you can do for yourself this Valentine’s!
#1 - a token of love. I’m a nasty, greedy consumer and gifting is my love language, so for me this means a physical item. Play into a Valentine’s classic and get yourself some chocolate if that’s something you’d like to do. What about a little card? Maybe even just a kind note to your future self that you can slot into your diary?
#2 - make a nice meal. Take this special occasion as a reason to make something you might not usually bother with. Maybe it’s a complex recipe or something that requires a special ingredient. Why not pop in some headphones, listen to your favourite songs and cook up a storm? If it seems like something you’d enjoy, why not take your mealtime to sit with yourself at a nice candle lit table.
#3 - movie night. Give yourself the evening off any other commitments - you have a date! With yourself! Watch a favourite film or something new. I always go for the former because it’s too high stakes - you don’t want to watch something shit on a date for goodness sake! Snuggle up and enjoy!
A Recipe for Romancing... - Pineapple Pizza
...if by romancing you mean romancing yourself. By giving yourself exactly what you want. My love of pineapple pizza is something which characterises me. As does the fact that I’m proud that I eat pineapple pizza. Therefore, this is a recipe of self-love. Everytime I ‘make’ pineapple pizza, I am embracing who I truly am.
You will need:
A margherita oven pizza - whichever brand you fancy. Can’t go wrong with Lidl, but if I’m feeling fancy I’ll get the pizza express one if it’s on sale.
A tin of pineapple in juice, rings or chunks
Extra virgin olive oil - the fillipo berio one is my favourite for this recipe
Oregano
A ball of mozzarella (optional)
I usually have these things in stock at all times just in case the desire for pineapple pizza strikes. My natural propensity for hoarding food does have its perks. This means that when it’s time to begin, the first step is taking my oven pizza out of the freezer, where it has been lying in wait, and removing the packaging. I take a moment to thank myself for being so prepared, and pause as I mentally add pineapple and oven pizza to my next shopping list.
Open your can of pineapple. If you’re using pineapple in rings, tear it into smaller bits. If you’re using chunks, tear each chunk. The tearing means the pieces lay a little flatter on the pizza and are a bit less overwhelming, but suit yourself. I like to perform a precarious sort of ritual where I use a teaspoon to press the pineapple against the edge of the can so that some of the juice comes out. You will understand why I describe this as precarious when you try it for yourself, but don’t worry, the stakes are low. The squeezing ensures that your pizza won’t be too wet.
Place your pineapple on the top of your pizza. Add as little or as much as you’d like. I like to add enough to have some pineapple in every bite. Add some more mozzarella if you’d like to. Take a moment to thank yourself for taking these extra steps and not just whacking it in the oven. Enjoy the juxtaposition of buying a sorry excuse for a pizza (cardboard and plastic cheese) and then adorning it with the golden jewels of pineapple. For the record, oven pizza hits a spot that can’t be satisfied in any other way. Solo pleasure folks, solo pleasure.
Drizzle the olive oil over your pizza. Here you’re just trying to give the oregano something to stick to, and add a little extra richness. Sprinkle the oregano onto the pizza. I like to add a lot, but you can skip this step or add any other herb you’d prefer.
Add your pizza to the centre of the oven and cook for 10-15 minutes depending on packet instructions. Part the tea towel curtains hanging over the window into your oven, and take a glimpse inside. When the cheese starts to move and bubble, and maybe brown a little, the time has come.
Put the pineapple you didn’t use into a tupperware and into the fridge. When you get up tomorrow you can scamper into the kitchen and drink it from the tub like a feral creature lapping from a dirty pond. Sexy stuff.
Lots of love from GUFAB this Valentine’s xx
This newsletter was written and edited by Thalia Grou.
Our next newsletter is about overexercise. Email gufabpositivitysoc@gmail.com if you’d like to contribute something.