Our relationship with our bodies can be complex. While the body positivity movement champions accepting the body we are in, finding acceptance can be easier said than done. Lisa Millard shapes up the conversation

Clare Chambers is Professor of Political Philosophy at the University of Cambridge. Her latest book ‘Intact: a defence of the unmodified body’ explores the pressure to change our bodies

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Did the process of writing about the body force you to reflect upon your own?

Absolutely. All of us have some parts of our bodies that cause us distress or dissatisfaction, and other parts that we’re happy with. While writing and researching INTACT I investigated many body modification practices that don’t have any appeal to me personally, and tried to understand what it would be like to seek them out. For example, I reflected on my own relationship to make-up, which is that I generally don’t wear it, and questioned whether the ‘natural’ make-up I feel more comfortable with is perhaps closer to feelings of shame than more overt make-up that uses bolder colours. I also thought very carefully about those body pressures that have directly affected me personally, including the demand on women to ‘get your body back’ after pregnancy, the widespread acceptance that fat is bad, and the idea that normal ageing processes should be resisted or concealed.

What is an ‘unmodified body’?

The unmodified body is a body that is allowed to be good enough, just as it is. Notice that I don’t say that an unmodified body is perfect, or wonderful: just good enough. This is such a simple idea – but at the same time it’s very difficult to do, and actually pretty radical. The unmodified body is a political principle, not a literal thing. We all modify our bodies all the time whenever we eat, exercise, rest, or wash, so it would be impossible to be unmodified in a simplistic sense.

The unmodified body needs defending because we’re all overwhelmed with the message that our bodies are not good enough as they are. It’s expected that we will experience our bodies as inadequate, as failing. All of us can readily state ways that our bodies could – and should – be improved. It’s rare for us to feel that our bodies need no improvement. In fact, that position almost seems suspect: arrogant or complacent, perhaps.

But this pressure to feel that our bodies are not good enough – that they could never be good enough – is damaging. It harms our mental health. Some attempts to change our bodies harm our physical health. And the pressures to modify undermine our equal status as human beings because they reinforce existing inequalities of gender, race, age, disability, and more.

Do you think pressure to conform to ideas of ’normal’ body shapes are at a height, or do you think they have always been present?

There are always ideas about what bodies should be like, what counts as normal and what counts as exceptional. But the current moment is quite distinctive in two ways. Firstly, the rise of social media, and the fact that we all have cameras with us wherever we go, means that our bodies are under display at all times. We can always photograph ourselves and instantly see the results; we submit our photos to social media and watch as friends and strangers rank them; we modify our images with filters until we’re satisfied with the results; we’re bombarded with a constant visual diet of other people’s bodies and faces that have gone through that same process. All of this means that our bodies feel constantly open to surveillance and judgment in an unprecedented way.

The second distinctive feature about the current moment is that there is an ever-increasing menu of modifications we can put our bodies through. Tattoos and piercings are mainstream; make-up involves contouring and multiple layers. We have a wide array of invasive cosmetic procedures offered on the high street, such as Botox and fillers. And cosmetic surgery has also become widespread, with new procedures constantly being developed to turn every body part into something that can be nipped and tucked, filled and implanted.

Does this pressure play out differently according to sex/gender/time and place?

One key argument of INTACT is that appearance anxiety affects almost all of us. But it certainly does play out differently according to what our bodies are like, and which groups we belong to. Appearance norms tend to differ by sex and gender, and are also often highly racialised, meaning that many beauty standards are both sexist and racist. In general, appearance standards tend to reflect and replicate existing hierarchies – as well as gender and race, they intersect with age, disability, class, and profession. Very often, groups which are discriminated against also experience denigration of their bodies.

In your book you talk about us living in a society that is ever more visual and focused on how we look such that "our appearance becomes a measure of our value”. Do you think it is possible to ’step outside’ of this system?

The importance of appearance depends on context. Some professions focus very firmly on appearance, others do not; some social groups likewise. But the overarching message is that our appearance matters, and our bodies are also assumed to be an important indicator of our health and our identity. So it is very hard to step outside of that framework of judgment. We feel pressures to change our bodies every day, and devote a significant amount of time and attention to them. I use a new word to describe this: ‘shametenance’.

Shametenance is shame maintenance: all the things we do to keep our bodies shameful. We maintain shame by actively shaming others, or simply by keeping things private, silent, invisible, unsayable. It applies to all sorts of practices, including some that are more obvious, such as menstrual shame and dieting, and some that are more subtle, such as make-up and bodybuilding. So one way of resisting is to refuse to perform shametenance: to speak about our bodies and the pressures we face, to be open about our feelings of inadequacy, and to try to let our bodies be good enough just as they are.

Your book connects social pressures to modify our bodies to undermining equality and maintaining social hierarchies. Can you expand a little about the body as a site of political importance?

The body is a site of political importance for several reasons. First, it is treated as an indicator of identity. What I mean by “identity” is what we represent ourselves as, and how others see us. It’s about our image, our membership, our belonging. Some aspects of our identity are within our control, but many aren’t: other people, individually and collectively, decide which category to place us in. And this process is a political one, because it creates and reinforces hierarchies and divisions. For example, people generally make decisions about our gender based upon our appearance, and then our gender plays a very significant role in how others treat us.

The body is also political because many of the standards our bodies are held to are standards of inequality. The message that your body is never good enough is a message that affects all of us to some extent, but it’s one that is particularly strongly applied to groups such as women and girls, transgender people, adolescents, people with disabilities, and people with larger or heavier bodies. Standards of beauty also track ideals based on age and race. So the body is used as part of a general system of inequality, and this is a political issue.

With pressure of appearance being ever-present on social media and elsewhere, can we help our young people to value/accept themselves as they are?

I really hope so. I suggest two ways of doing this. One is to try to create spaces where young people can experience their bodies from the inside, as something they inhabit and live through, rather than from the outside as something that is observed and judged. In practice this is going to mean trying to stop ourselves from commenting or focusing on each other’s bodies, and certainly to try to leave behind practices of judgment and shame. But the other, really important thing to do is to have conversations with young people about body image and appearance anxiety. We need to let them know that it is totally normal – in the sense of common, not in the sense of right – to feel bad about their bodies. We’re all constantly being bombarded with images, adverts, and marketing techniques that are designed to make us feel bad. Lots of companies make money out of poor body image. But when we all feel bad about our bodies, it’s not our bodies that are the problem.

The idea of letting our bodies be themselves and intact is freeing – relieving us from feeling bad about our bodies. Sounds great – is there an action we can take to start this process?

Well, I hope that reading the book is a first step! INTACT is not a self-help book: I can’t promise that reading it will make you feel better about your body. But I do think that confronting these issues helps. Once we recognise how many different ways there are of denigrating our bodies, once we see how contradictory so many of our judgments are, and yet how no body is ever allowed to be good enough as it is – all of this can help us to understand the situation and work together to reject it. It’s time to say STOP.

Clare Chambers, INTACT: A Defence of the Unmodified Body (Allen Lane, 2022) is available HERE.

Jude Clarke is a feature writer, podcast host and communications professional

There are two moments in my journey towards body acceptance that I think about a lot. Snapshots in my mind.

In the first, I am trying to get back to work after four days in bed with the flu. You know: the *actual* flu that knocks you completely out of action and reminds you that it is so much more than just a bad cold. I sit at my desk, and within two minutes I'm sobbing. A minor, completely insignificant thing I'm trying to do has just completely stumped me. I return to bed, defeated, shaky, weak.

The other one is from last year. I'm in London, pinching myself that it's really happening, finally fulfilling a lifelong dream and running the marathon. I'm 13 miles in, half-way through, the sun is coming out and I'm feeling strong. I'm doing this, I've trained for it, I'm succeeding. But now consider this. That flu that left me feeling so shocking also left me half a stone lighter, while I ran that marathon last year at probably the heaviest I've ever been.

For years, I would mention that illness and joke that it had been worth it for the weight loss. But now, finally, in my 50s, I am coming to the realisation that if my "ideal" body shape and weight is only achievable by being that unwell then... it's clearly anything but ideal. I've never been stronger and fitter than when training for the marathon, so why was I so unhappy with my body at that time - unable to accept how it looked, despite it in fact being at the top of its game?

So I'm trying - and I'm not going to lie: it's hard! - to unpick a lifetime of hating my body, fearing weight gain and depriving myself of the food that I want. As I look in the mirror, try on clothes and observe my body changing I feel lots of things: fear, yes, but also pride in the progress I'm making and relief that I seem to be winning against those voices in my head.

What helps? Being more selective with my social media: following body acceptance and body positivity advocates and nutritionists and ruthlessly blocking (and blocking out) all talk of diets, "ideal" bodyweights and "thinspiration". I also think a lot about what I would say to another woman who might be caught in this kind of a spiral. How your body is one of the least interesting things about you. How your sense of humour, intelligence, kindness, strength of mind, and bravery are things to value so much more than your appearance. I remind myself too, that literally no-one, other than me, cares if I gain weight.

So now I'm slowly healing. I'm actually eating a proper lunch and dinner seven days a week, rather than "starving myself" (yes, I actually used to call it that, like it was some kind of badge of honour) all week and only letting go at the weekend. I'm dressing according to how the fancy takes me, not just to minimise and disguise parts of my body (bonus: I have a cleavage for the first time in my life). I'm running for enjoyment, not for weight loss, and loving it all the more for giving myself permission to only go out when I really feel like it.

There's now a third moment that will stay with me. Getting ready for a day out, in a new, cheerful, larger-sized yellow dress, I took a series of selfies. Not in the way I always used to (stomach sucked in, taken from above, the most flattering angle used), but as I now authentically am: curved belly, back folds, the beginnings of a double chin. I posted them on my Facebook page and you know what? The world didn't end. I didn't dissolve in self-hatred. I looked fine. I looked, at last, like me.

Listen to Jude on the Alex and Jude Talk... podcast, available on all the main platforms or at alexandjudetalk.buzzsprout.com. The Body Acceptance episode is out now.

David Brooks has turned his life around with exercise and nutrition

I'm 37 years old, I live in Alconbury Weald, near Huntingdon, and I’m an HGV driver. I decided to join The Unit Fitness (TUF) in Godmanchester, which runs coach-led training sessions, after trying other gyms and just not getting the results I needed. My biggest struggle was entering a gym and not feeling like I fitted in – feeling that I wasn’t the right shape or size. But I was really desperate to get my health back after becoming seriously ill and surviving a pulmonary embolism and DVT.

When I joined TUF three years ago, I was hoping to achieve the goal of being able to come off the continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machine I had to use to sleep with at night. I've not only achieved that goal, but I have lost five stone of weight in total, so far. Sure, I’ve completely changed my way of thinking in terms of nutrition thanks to the team at TUF who offered a nutrition seminar to members and it totally changed my way of thinking about the food I eat. Everyone who is training supports one another to achieve their goals and there is an online community too which really helps.

Nowadays I cycle where I can, jog and run regularly – I’m just more active and am loving it. The hardest challenge for me was pushing myself cardio wise especially as I had recovered from a pulmonary embolism and sometimes also my lungs stick to my rib wall which can be sore. But I took the time to slowly build myself up to running a half marathon which I never thought I’d be able to do

I am so much stronger than I used to be – both mentally and physically – which I'm very grateful for. I feel a lot better about myself body-wise than I did years ago, and to have achieved the goals I set out to as a DVT and pulmonary embolism survivor feels like an enormous accomplishment.

I wasn't really that worried about my body when I was a younger man, but now that I'm older, I realise how important health is. I feel like I have a second chance in life now – I survived a near fatal pulmonary embolism, and I want to be fit and healthy to live to the full, and to be the best dad I can be to my three children.

I do think men are under pressure to conform to a certain body type, which isn't always easy. But for me, it’s all about being strong, training to support my mental and physical wellbeing, and to maintain fitness to enjoy life.