Giving Nemo a golden shower while hating your body
Why is getting a "bikini body" so hard?
When you’re at the beach and need a wee, do you find the nearest loo or skulk into the sea under the guise of wanting to cool off? You can always spot a sea-pisser. It’s a delicate balancing act with water depth on one axis and time spent in the water on the other. Too short a dip and it’s brutally evident you’ve essentially given Nemo a golden shower, too long and you look slightly bizarre as you’ve been treading water for 20 minutes, in the exact same location, with a grimace on your face because it’s surprisingly challenging to relax your body into urinating when you shouldn’t be.
Considering that the average human body is 60% water, frolicking in and around the sea should fill us with the utmost joy. Granted, sand can be a pest and no matter how hard you’ve given everything a good shake, some rogue sand migrants will end up in your suitcase and then at home (presumably to steal jobs and illustrate how demoniacal Priti Patel is if the current vile narrative is anything to go by). But no, the thing that people often hate most about the beach is themselves; their body. The only vessel that truly matters.
Our body image isn’t even ours. It’s based on the perception of others, which one would imagine is inextricably rooted within the patriarchal ideals of what a woman should look like. Publications may finally be reeling in articles on how we can embark on the annual quest for a ‘bikini body’ but as Timbaland said in Cry Me A River, “the damage is done.” There are 2-week juice diets, aggressive dry body brushing and a plethora of beauty products that seemingly coax people into believing that a body oil will give them an arse like Kim Kardashian. Lest we forget Rodial’s “Super Fit” body care range, now thankfully discontinued, that had products called “Size Zero” and “Tummy Tuck”. And that’s from a female founder.
If you’re unhappy with any aspect of your life, be it your bum or your boyfriend (which in some cases are merely synonyms) — then, by all means, do something about it, providing it’s because you want to rather than as a result of being both implicitly and explicitly brainwashed by society’s pervasive rhetoric to look a certain way.
It’s ironic that the subtle dimples of a sandy beach become our screensavers and lock screens but we often hate the same gentle divots on our thighs. We take boomerangs for IG stories of waves rippling along the shore but despise when the skin on our stomachs mirrors the same pliability. Perhaps if we saw our bodies as natural wonders too, we’d learn to love ourselves just that little bit more.
