Op de Britse feministische website en discussie platform The F-Word: Contemporary UK feminism blog kwam ik vorige week een pakkende getuigenis en body positivity blog tegen geschreven door gastblogster Gemma Louisa Morrison. Enkele reacties die vooral spraken vanuit herkenning werden eronder gespost. De blog wordt hieronder geherpubliceerd als een broodnodige bijdrage aan discussies ook in onze Belgische context over gender, body image & body positivity.
"It's 1978 in north-eastern Scotland, and a particularly pleasant and tactful member of my father's family tells my mother:
'You look like Diana Dors in that dress, you look like a tart'.
My mother is wearing a long satin gown which has transgressed the rules of etiquette by displaying too much décolletage. Incidentally, 'décolletage' was not a word used much in Scotland prior to 1989.
Southern Scotland, in the slightly more enlightened 1980s, my brother and I are two and four respectively. We walk down the street, listening to builders shouting at my mother. She quickens her pace as I squint awkwardly at them through my My Little Pony glasses.
It's sometime in the 1990s and my mum is standing over the stove, stirring a pot of cabbage soup. She's doing this so she can 'lose some weight off her chest'. It's the only thing she eats for days. Our house smells like cabbage soup for weeks afterwards.
Then it's the early 2000s and we're all in a tiny fishing town where my mum has made a pilgrimage to a 'specialist bra shop' (this was before the internet had reached the Highland region). She is tearful after buying a bra with a cup size that does not correspond to one of the first four letters in the alphabet.
Thus, I learned that tits are a big deal.
