Write Priorities

Friend heading off for a trip to Bali decides to get a fake tan, to help her settle into holiday mode more quickly. On offer are the shades light, medium and dark. Being a bold colours kind of girl, she goes for dark. Now I have never had a spray tan, but she assures me it is very discreet process. Whip off your clothes, don the showercap and head for the spray booth, where you must be sure to lift what needs to be lifted (I hope you get my drift), and straighten what needs to be straightened, and bend in appropriate ways, in order for an even complexion.

Well she goes home all tropical like, hits the pillow and wakes the next day to her 10-year-old son saying: "Mum, your face is all orange". Ahem, very natural tan that, obviously.

I tell this story not to make fun of my friend (although it is pretty amusing) but to offer an example of the lengths we women, and increasingly men, are prepared to go to to disguise what nature has intended for us. Another example I can offer is a recent gathering of womenfolk in my family. We were all comparing hairiness of legs (as you do when you go away with your sisters!) and I was shocked to learn that one of my sisters - who had decided to go a la naturale for the winter - has the hairiness of my dad! I am 41 and I never knew that about her. I couldn't hide my astonishment at what she had kept hidden all these years. All of us do it - shave, or epilate, or wax; our legs, our bikini lines, our underarms, our eyebrows. And now there are those who strip every single hair from every part of their bodies (except the head) in the name of beauty. To me they are so bare they appear almost pre-pubescent, which I find a bit disturbing. But I'm no different really - I remove the hair from my legs and my underarms for what purpose? To make it appear I don't have any?

Why is it that we are so keen to change what nature intended for us - our skin colour, our hair colour, the fact that we have hair at all? Why is there such intense interest in bodies and muscles and fat and weight loss (yes ladies, take a look at those magazines you are reading); in cosmetic surgery; in "thin clothes" and "fat clothes"; in celebrity diet regimes? I saw a documentary recently where women were so ashamed of the size and shape of their labias (thinking they were abnormal) that they were having surgery to trim and shape them. They weren't the soft and delicate petals of an emerging blossom, each and every one of them unique and to be appreciated. They were something weird that needed fixing. It was so, so sad.

When a newborn babe is placed for the first time in his or her mother's arms, all that mother can think about is how perfect that child is. From the sticky skin to the earthy smell to the masses of hair, or absence of it, as the case may be. And as they grow and those glorious rolls of fat appear around the wrists and the thighs and the knees, we delight in their deliciousness of their appearance. And then they grow and elongate and become all clumsy and long-limbed, like a baby deer. And we adore and embrace the transformation. And so it continues, throughout life, change and development, but at some point the body becomes a source of misery and embarrassment.

So what gives? Nature intended this process for all of us. Why can't we embrace the beauty that is in all of us, no matter what our age, no matter what stage of development we're at? Why can't we rejoice in the brilliant, active, amazing bodies we have all been given? Why can't we celebrate our uniqueness and diversity, as well as our sameness? Why can't we nourish our bodies and minds with positive thoughts and be proud of what they can do, where they can take us? Why can't we listen and trust what they tell us?

Your body is a gift, to be treasured, from the day you are born until the day you die. It is your friend, your companion, your servant, your temple. Honour and love your body, and it will serve you well.