Am I done with sucking in my tummy?
Emma Thompson and Jamie Lee Curtis are but I still can't help it. What about you?
I’ve been looking at myself naked in the mirror this week. Full length naked. It’s not something I normally do, especially if I’ve got my glasses on, I mean why would I? But I thought I’d give it go after seeing Emma Thompson nude on the big screen.
The 63-year-old Oscar winner takes all her clothes off in her wonderful new film Good Luck To You Leo Grande, written by comedian Katy Brand. I was invited to a preview of a couple of weeks ago and came away with a mind swirl of opinions.
This week on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour Emma spoke of how normal it is for many women of this generation and younger to be flooded with a wave of negativity when they view themselves naked. Dame Emma said disliking her own body was so ingrained in her psyche she would never be free of it. “We’ve been brainwashed to hate our bodies,” she told Woman’s Hour’s Emma Barnett, adding: “I deeply resent the fact that my attitude to my body and my comfort in my body was taken from me - I think literally taken away from me - when I was very young. I worked in a profession where I was constantly told that I didn't look right, that I didn't have the right kind of body, that all of the 99% of male executives would not be interested anyway, in me in that way”.
In the film she plays Nancy, a retired teacher, aged 60’ish, who hires a sex worker to give her an orgasm after an unfulfilling marriage. As she stands naked she looks at her body with curiosity but Thompson said she found it almost impossible to stand in front of that mirror on set without sucking her tummy in, posing sideways or lifting her leg to make everything look slimmer.
As soon as I stood in front of my mirror at home I did the same, it was an automatic response, I didn’t think to do it, I just did. In went the tummy.
Now you may be some one who can stand fully naked in front of a mirror and not suck your tummy in or turn sideways, but when I talked to other midlife women about looking at their bodies naked it seems there are a lot of us tummy suckers out there. We all subconsciously try to look thinner or may be just ‘better”, whatever that means to us in this context.
Women have devised a lengthy list of ways to try and minimise the parts of us we illogically view as not up to scratch and we care too much about this (well some of us do). We’re too quick to suck in our tummies. It is, as Dame Emma said, ingrained in our psyches.
Of course there are many reasons for this and as Emma points out the patriarchy (movie money men) takes a dim view of naked women who don’t conform to western society’s acceptable standards of body perfection. Ageism is rife in all industries not just film, and you can’t be what you can’t see can you and we hardly ever see older women, with bodies like ours on screen.
If you’re not one of the Jennifers (Lopez, Anniston, Garner) you probably won’t show more than your ankle in a movie sex scene. So for the rest of us normals, of all shapes and sizes, it’s hard not to feel a bit Marge Simpson growly about this instant tummy sucking habit we have.
I don’t really spend much time contemplating what my body looks like and I’d wear a bikini at any age (I am 53 now) but I still suck my tummy in and that Pavlovian response annoys me. I feel tricked into it. I hadn’t given it much thought before Nanny McPhee pointed it out but now I am done with the tummy sucking, just like Jamie Lee Curtis, who is the same age as Dame Emma. She stars in Everything Everywhere All At Once” and told her 4.2 million Instagram followers she was over it. She plays a tax inspector in the film and displays a rounded tummy under her yellow polo neck.
Curtis, who said she did not use prosthetics for the role, added:"I've been sucking my stomach in since I was 11, when you start being conscious of boys and bodies, and the jeans are super tight.”
Now she says she “very specifically decided to relinquish and release every muscle I had that I used to clench to hide the reality.”
I spend quite a bit of my time swimming outside and usually undress in public on the beach, river side or pool side. It’s a big community of midlife women swimming alongside me and I can tell you there is no tummy sucking going on in that situation. The context doesn’t allow for us to worry about that kind of thing and yet the moment we’re fully naked in the privacy of our own homes I would bet most women do a bit of tummy sucking in the mirror.
I feel guilty about this for my generation, the women who read the magazines I edited (Cosmo and ELLE) because I know in the mid 90s there were a fair few lose weight get in shape features encouraging some tummy sucking in. And that’s fine for those who want to lose weight and get fitter but we also took the message that the shape we were in wasn’t right, wasn’t good enough.
I’m sorry about that now with the gift of hindsight, it was unthinking and we really should have paid more attention, it felt right for the time and was what the readers demanded every time we asked them in focus groups but it no doubt helped create this army of tummy suckers.
Learning to love one’s body, particularly as it changes with age and your collagen goes on a one-way trip to God knows where, is quite a journey. We all come at it differently: it’s ok to be worried and it is ok not to worry. But maybe feeling more at peace with it starts with not feeling as if you have to suck in your tummy in when you stand naked in front of a mirror alone.
On our podcast Postcards from Midlife we have interviewed many health and fitness experts and we’ve also talked to many women who’ve started new sexual relationships about body image and it’s worth dipping int our archives to explore this more for some body positivity and we’ve also frequently chatted with Ruth Ramsay, she is a sex educator and erotic coach. Ruth also teaches striptease so I asked her for some guidance on how we may find a more comfortable place with our naked bodies if we want to and she sent me some tips. I’ll leave them here for you, should you need them…..
You’ll never be as young again as you are right now by Ruth Ramsay
“It’s no surprise we don’t like what we see in the mirror naked. We rarely see representations of what the typical nude female body looks like – hooray for ‘Leo Grande’ for showing this! Instead we get JLo pole-dancing at 50 held up as what midlife women should aspire to.
We’ve been bombarded all our lives with messages that our naked bodies are not good enough. If you’re rebellious-minded (and many of us become more so post-menopause), consider cultivating positivity as a way of sticking two fingers up to this cultural narrative. Have a think about who’s benefiting from your fault-finding, and who it’s costing. Use this awareness as fuel to help you reverse your thinking and look for positives instead.
There is a concept of ‘pleasure activism’ which is all about cultivating bodily pleasure despite not fitting the rules of who’s ‘allowed’ to be happy with their bodies. Focus on how good your body can feel rather than how it looks, and revel in that as much as you can. You'll find you start to love your body more - including when it's naked in the mirror.
While you’re doing that - have you ever looked in a mirror when you’re nude and turned-on? Probably not, so give it a try. When we are sexually aroused, we notice more positives – a kind of sexual rose-tinted-glasses. Imagine you are looking through the eyes of a lover who desires you.
If you’re someone who looks back at old photos of yourself and thinks “wow, I was so hot then, and I didn’t realise it!”, consider how your 20-years-older self will look at your body now. I love the saying “you’ll never be as young again as you are right now”. Pledge not to waste it by being cruel to yourself.
I teach striptease to a wide range of women: from 18 to mid-60s, from able-bodied to various types of physical disability. At its core good striptease is about getting in touch with your inner sexual spirit then expressing it to an audience. I’ve seen again and again: when someone taps into their authentic sexual energy, their confidence soars, whatever their age. They go from hating looking in the mirror, to loving it. Take some time to tap into this energy by exploring alone: what truly turns you on? What would you love more of? What would you happily never do again? What have you always been curious about but not yet tried? In your fantasies – free of rules – what are you like sexually? Try to get in touch with that.
A trend I am seeing since lockdowns lifted, is midlife women with age-20-something men as sexual play partners. And this is before ‘Leo Grande’ hit the screens! While we might not all want a 20-something lover, keep in mind having a 20-something body is not all it’s cracked up to be without confidence to go along with it.
Think about all you have achieved in your life to now and the confidence that gives you, and try to apply some of that to your body. After all, it’s your body which has carried you through all those achievements.
And finally try to spend more time naked – be that asleep in bed, or around the house. Do you really have to cover yourself right up before you can go downstairs and put the kettle on in the morning? Could you hold off until after your first cuppa? We find looking at ourselves naked more stressful if nudity is a rare occurrence.”
To find out more about lovely Ruth read about her work here: Ruth's website
To see the Good Luck To You Leo Grand trailer go here: Watch Trailer
To listen to Postcards From Midlife archive tap this link: Midlife Podcast
To Listen to Womans Hour with Emma Thompson tap here: Woman's Hour
Excellent piece. Thank you.
Love this article! Have sucked in (and hated) my tummy since primary school, but I also let it all flop out on the riverbank after swimming. Love this about OW swimming.