How old were you when someone first commented on your appearance? Have we really moved beyond the dictates of thinness and diet culture as a society? Are the ways you take care of yourself intuitive, or were they taught to you? Mikella Nicol, the author of Mise en forme, and Manal Drissi, a columnist and comedian, discuss the place of others in our relationships with our own bodies.
Hello, Mikella. In your latest novel, Mise en forme, you talk about how you started to become obsessed with weight loss when you were only 10 years old. That’s so young!
Mikaella Nicol
“Yes… and I don’t think I was an exception. I remember my grandmother telling me I had a big stomach, and I was often told that at school, too, by other kids. I don’t know if that still happens, but I remember adults commenting on my body a lot when I was a child.”
Hello, Manal. Did you have the same kind of experience when you were young?
Manal Drissi
“For as long as I can remember, people have always made comments about my body, even when I was three or four years old. But always in a kind and loving way. The women around me, who were role models for me, thought that by telling me to control my body, they were saving me from something. They told me ‘it’s better for you to know this now so you can do something about it than to do nothing and regret it later when you’re left out because of it.’ There was a form of fatphobia in there that was so internalized that it was exploited thinking that it was doing good. “ This is why these ideas are hard to deconstruct afterwards, because the relationship of girls and women with their bodies doesn’t always come from a place of hatred of others.”
So, we should avoid commenting on children’s bodies once and for all…
Manal Drissi
There’s a question of belonging in all this. Even the word fitness contains the word fit, meaning to be part of, to be capable. But what exactly are we capable of?
Mikaella Nicol
“That’s the question I ask myself in my book! The words used in the field of personal growth really interest me. We’re promised that by working on ourselves, we can become ‘better mothers,’ ‘better friends,’ ‘better girlfriends,’ and it’s always in relation to others; the goal is never to be a better person for oneself.
“It’s interesting, this idea of belonging better, because for me, I’ve always seen femininity as something into which I wasn’t capable of entering. If I could follow role models, literally watch them and imitate them, maybe I would be ‘capable’ of being part of femininity myself.”
“Everything sport could offer me […] was cancelled by the fact that the numbers on a scale weren’t going down enough and, in the eyes of others, I wasn’t gaining in value.”
Where do you find your role models?
Mikaella Nicol
“I absorb them! It’s hard to say; it’s culture, it’s everywhere. And yet, we’re always asked as women to detach ourselves from our culture. We’re told, ‘yeah, but you know, you have to take some and leave some.’ Well, taking some and leaving some is a cognitive process, and it’s a full-time job. I don’t have time to take some and leave some, when everything I see every day wants to impose a way of being on me. I have to sort through the messages one by one? It’s extremely difficult to do that, because we don’t even realize what information we’re taking in.”
Manal, how do you see fitness?
Manal Drissi
“I’ve never considered myself an athletic person, but I played soccer and basketball, tried climbing, signed up for different gyms… But I’ve never actually been thin. And for me, thinness and the term ‘athletic’ are so intertwined that I’ve always felt like an impostor just using the word ‘athletic.’ It didn’t belong to me, and it was like lying to say, ‘I’m athletic.’ It was as if, by looking at me, you would have proof that I wasn’t. And that means no matter how much I might enjoy physical exercise on its own terms, it would always become a tool of control, something I had to use to change myself, and it wasn’t worth doing if the results weren’t there. “So, everything sport could offer me—that is, being less anxious, having better physical health, sleeping better, doing better at school—all that was cancelled by the fact that the numbers on a scale weren’t going down enough and, in the eyes of others, I wasn’t gaining in value. That tainted my relationship with sport so deeply that I’m still paying for it even now.”
What is your vision of self-care?
Manal Drissi
“ My position on this subject has evolved in recent years. In the beginning, I understood the appeal. I said to myself, ‘we live in a stressful society, so it’s good to take care of ourselves and listen to our needs,’ only to realize that self-care is just another thing that has become an industry. It’s one more thing we have to spend money on individually, one more thing that allows companies to tell their employees ‘do yoga on your lunch break’ instead of implementing shorter work weeks and offering benefits that actually allow people to have a better quality of life. For me, the self-care industry is the same industry that told us 20 years ago, ‘if you don’t lose weight, you’re worthless,’ and which tells us today, ‘if you spend 50 bucks more, you’ll feel better.’
“In my opinion, self-care reached its limit very quickly, and the outcome of this stressful life we lead is community care. It can’t be self-care, which takes us back too much to individualism, which is one of the sources of the problem.”
Mikaella Nicol
“All my life, I’ve been told that I don’t fit in, and for the past 10 years, maybe even less, we’ve been told overnight that we have to accept ourselves as we are. And I was unable—like many people, I think—to make that transition so quickly. And there, I hear: ‘Well, it’s because you have to accept yourself. What do you mean you don’t accept yourself?’ Today, if we speak negatively about ourselves, it’s as if we’re projecting our negative self-talk onto others.
“It’s the same thing for self-care: I have no intuition for self-care. I don’t really know how to take care of myself, without it being rooted in productivity or serving some other goal like being in shape, for example. And strangely, the nights where I feel like I’m doing the most self-care are the ones where I spend four hours in front of the TV.”
Why?
Mikaella Nicol
“Because I’m not performing! Sitting down to do yoga with my little diffuser, I was taught that. It comes from an external source. Someone told me that was self-care, but that’s not always what I need. Taking my Epsom salt bath, sometimes… it doesn’t work.”
How do we find our freedom through all the messages we receive?
Mikaella Nicol
“Getting older isn’t so bad (laughter). I recommend it! All my life, women have told me, ‘you’ll see; things will calm down.’ And it’s true that things eventually settle down. “I think getting in touch with reality, seeing more real women’s bodies, can do good, too. For example, in clothing exchanges between women, there’s always a stage where everyone strips down to their underwear to try on the clothes, and every time, it makes me realize how rarely I’ve experienced this. Being with lots of women in their thirties, all different sizes, not self-conscious, in their underwear… I really wondered why we didn’t get undressed more among ourselves (laughter). In a very healthy and common place way, just with the aim of exposing our gaze to more bodies. In addition, when they’re our friends, we’re already biased toward kindness, and it’s even easier to see the beauty of bodies.”
Manal Drissi
“I think neutrality is something revolutionary, and for me, it’s the logical continuation of the body positivity and diversity movements.”
What is that?
Manal Drissi
“Neutrality invites you to consider your body like your vehicle. It’s what contains who you are, your soul, and that’s all. It doesn’t need to be beautiful or ugly, to perform or not, it doesn’t need to have value in the eyes of others; it exists, period. We have to stop looking at the body as something at the market, as something to comment on. I realize that in my life, I’ve witnessed far more conversations between women where we’re critical of ourselves than conversations where we’re neutral about our own bodies. It’s so common to get together with the gang and say, ‘Ah! I have to lose ten pounds,’ ‘Ah! My hips…’, ‘Ah! My cellulite….’ We don’t inhabit our bodies; we’re outside and looking at ourselves: ‘Am I sitting up straight enough? Is my stomach sucked in enough?’ We’re always in a play, and it’s so liberating to finally feel at home in our bodies. To move like we want, to sit like we want, to really exist, and to embrace our personalities.”