I love my body

 Exploring body image and gender identification through physical opera

Dr Self / Seawolf

I have always been invested in body image: the road to accepting my body as it is has been bumpy. My mum was diagnosed as morbidly obese, this definitely contributed to my anorexia aged 16-18. But there was deeper stuff too, which I worked through, and with the help of a sensitive GP and my Dad I made a good recovery by 19. There can be no doubt, though, that it is a larger proportion of women who suffer feelings of inadequacy over body state, and at a more intense level, than men. This imbalance is linked to the expectations that society has placed on how women should look, whereas traditionally men could just be themselves. This, sadly, is changing so that there is now a disturbing rise among men of anorexia and body dysmorphia. However, the fact remains that women have only recently begun to gain parity with men in many career fields and so it follows that, with the infancy of gained opportunity, the vestiges of centuries of negativity to a woman's body remains. Most damaging of all is the manner in which women themselves buy into the narrative. These self-image issues naturally lead to deeper questions about gender identity. Perhaps some women, like me, prefer to identify as a successful man. Given the sexist barriers that I have encountered in the the past as a composer, this is an understandable strategy. But the question remains: how can we happily identify as female, if being a woman carries the expectation of a certain look, a certain behaviour, a certain attitude? I hear my female body calling out to me, she is rebelling, she is crying, she is frustrated. She doesn't want to carry the stereotyped personas typically delineating women, such as being a pretty thing, a mother or a whore. Instead she wants to soar and be taken seriously. She wants to swim rivers, climb mountains and compose symphonies. She wants to be fat or thin, she wants to be grubby or clean, she wants to be herself or play a role if she chooses. Currently, as I compose and create my new physical opera HER BODY: The Anatomy of a Woman for Tête à Tête Festival this summer, I have chosen to explore these issues deeply, in concert with my practice of reaching out to others for their stories which I will then incorporate into the show. I put out two questions on Facebook and Twitter and got a huge response.

BODY IMAGE QUESTION ON FACEBOOK

How do you feel about your body? I would be very grateful if your would share your thoughts, nothing held back. If you agree your comment will be anonymous in the show. Please share via message if you feel more comfortable. You will be enlivening research for my new physical theatre work 'Her Body: The Anatomy of a Woman'. Personally it has taken me a long time to accept my female body as it is. Meeting the Venus of Willendorf when I was biking down the Danube in Austria helped!

RESPONSES

I love my body, my eyes, my skin, my breasts, my back, my bottom...

I'd like to be slimmer, taller, smaller thighs and bottom...

I have spent a lot of time worrying that I am fat. I have spent a lot of time worrying that my boobs are saggy. And don't even get me started on what my vulva/labia look like and whether they are 'normal'!

I have always liked my body a lot. I was very lucky to be very slim with small/lean bones. 

I'm too short, my tits are too big, I'm too curvy. 

It doesn't matter how thin or fat I am, I'm never happy. I'm always comparing myself to 'others' and find my self lacking. 

I took on body shame from a jealous stepmother who criticised by body shape when I was young. 

You have a lovely body, Susie. 

I'm older and wider. 

I've been doing a lot of work on the divine feminine and running women's circles. The media make us compare ourselves to other women and we have to look 'a certain way'.

I've always believed I was very fat and now I look back on photos of myself in my 20s, and I realise that was not the case. 

It's been a long journey coming to terms with how I look. 

Now I'm older, I'm still strong. 

I accept that whatever my weight, my smile and my arms can always reach out and hug my family and friends, and those who truly love me see me for who I am, not what I look like. 

These comments are inserted into a section of HER BODY. I sing them, I speak them, I honour them, I love them, I identify with them. These words speak for all mankind, not just for women. Another aspect of creating the work was to paint a picture that encapsulated the sense of what my body feels like. The Green Woman has a real body, she is not defined by the beauty that male artists tend to portray. An orange scabbard falls between her legs, she is on fire inside, set against a sea-marsh landscape to the left, and a Nordic landscape to the right. She is herself, she is Seawolf. She has no agenda, she is part of the landscape.

The Green Woman: 8' x 8' oil on canvas. S. Self, 2021

GENDER IDENTIFICATION

A Personal Account

Have you ever indulged in what I would describe as magical feelings? Well, I have. When I started school, I made myself believe that there was a swimming pool where the tennis court was, that the old lady in the house opposite always left a steaming apple pie on the window sill for me to eat, that one morning I would wake up with a penis. Yes, a beautifully formed pink penis. In the loo at school, I placed the rubber attached to the tip of my pencil between my legs. It look good, almost plausible. Soon it would really happen and I would no longer need to defend my rampant desire for adventure, my need to climb trees, swim in rivers, fight with a toy gun and make mud pies in the rain. My cousins showed me their willies. I was only a matter of time before it would happen.

Silence

There is no sound,

No mother present.

No toys.

The television hasn't arrived.

The flat is silenced by the empty walls.

My sad father never speaks.

There is no sound of cooking,

No laughter,

No pulling of toilet chains.

It is as though I am deaf.

Analysis:  Self, 2019

I was born in a maternity home opposite Belsize Park tube station, but my parents, being financially poor at that time, lived in a garret flat in West Hampstead. You could hear the overground trains rattle at night, and Sid James, the actor from the Carry On films, spluttering with laughter in his flat below. My Dad said the smell of Sid cooking meat for his dog was disgusting, but I have no memory of that, only the reassuring scent of my Dad's armpits when he came home from work.

Armpits

When my father comes home in the evening he leans over my cot

And bends down to kiss me.

His armpits smell of delicious sweat.

It is a sweet smell,

The smell of safety.

Analysis: Self, 2019

My beginnings were fraught. After four days in the nursing home, after what I believe had been a traumatic birth, my mother Penny stopped midway through cutting out teddy bear greeting cards announcing my birth, and became catatonic. Her total breakdown led to five months in a mental health hospital on the North Circular. She was returned to us just before Christmas, having had ECT (electro-convulsive therapy). All I remember of her at this time was that she was like a zombie. She had another breakdown when I was five. The hospital my father and I visited was like the one in One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest. I remember Penny weaving baskets, she was always personable even though she was vacant. A family friend said that Mum would sometimes rant, saying that she wished she was a man. I rose up to the call of feminism early! There was little to fill my 3-to-5-year-old days. My bedroom wall was bare of pictures, I had no toys. Instead, my imagination ran riot. In a recurring dream I was not a person but the landscape of an island.

Island

Its touch is internal.

It is rough hard rocks

Then smooth warm sand.

I am the rock

I am the sand

First: Constricted

Second: Open and Relaxed.

Analysis: Self, 2019

Episodes in the flat were peppered with feelings of great loneliness. My mother stared into nothingness. Miss Canning, the nanny, wouldn't let me sleep on a mattress in my father's room while my mother was in hospital. I painted an eiderdown my grandmother gave me purple, because I didn't like turquoise. I tried to feed my Dad my watercolour paints when he was sick with mumps. The au pair ran away because I had the radio on too loud and wouldn't turn it down.

Tomato

The tomato has very little taste

Perhaps because I am frightened.

My au pair has left me alone.

I am only two.

I try to ring a number on the phone

And I eat a tomato.

Analysis: Self, 2019

Finally, a saviour arrived in the buxom form of Mrs. Mac. She had five children, a rough working-class life and lived in Bell Street near Marylebone. 'Supermac' cooked home-made chips and made milky sweet tea. She took no nonsense but she knew what counted.

The Magic Garden

She takes me away from the sad flat.

We go to the derelict garden.

She is grumpy and fat.

Wild flowers reach over my head.

I am in love. I am in joy.

O Supermac!

Analysis: Self, 2019

The wanting to be a boy, however, did not go away. My male cousins seemed to have a better life than me, they could pee in the woods without getting their knickers wet. I sensed that my parents had wanted a boy. This was very tough to bear. Looking back, I am glad that being able to physically change sex wasn't on offer to me as a kid, as I am now very happy being a woman. My new mode of female identification is inspired by the Amazons. I feel it could be more interesting to be non-binary but in truth I am straight.

GENDER QUESTION ON FACEBOOK

Have you ever wished that you had been born a different sexual identity? Richard Branson's daughter has revealed that she wanted to be a boy when a young girl. Like her, I emerged out of that desire and grew to understand my complex reasons behind it. I am interested to hear your take as I rehearse HER BODY for Tête à Tête Festival.

RESPONSES

As you know from our many and long deep discussions, I often feel like I'm a gay man trapped in a straight man's body - but I'm cool with that!

Not a boy. But not a "girl" as such either.

Me too...not a girl but not a boy...but dislike girl's clothes...

I have always felt like a female. I have never had any conflict around this within myself. In the last year or so I have changed my sexual orientation to 'questioning'. I'm accepting that I am not 100% heterosexual and I would very much like to explore relationships with women. I feel that I'm probably leaning more towards the idea of 'queer', which in my case would mean that I don't necessarily feel the need to pin down and label what it is that I feel. I truly want to experience everyone with an open mind, trying to let go of labels. See them as unique beings. Seeing whatever we share as something unique and special. This has also led to me discovering other forms of relationship structures like ethical non-monogamy and polyamory. Such a time of transformation, Susie!

Grew up surprised to find I was referred to as a girl. In my mind I was just 'King'. Happy being female, but it seems new.

I always wanted to be a boy. But didn't want to change sex. Love being a butch gay woman though. I think a lot of this gender stuff is an illusion.

I am quite conflicted about this - I always feel that I am definitely a girl, but I am also very unfeminine. I have come to the conclusion that I am just a not very feminine girl but if these things had been more considered when I was young would I have made different decisions? I don't know.

I definitely wanted to bee a boy. And I think if I had been born male I would have been just as happy as I am as a girl. Perhaps I might have been more happy, especially when younger. I've grown into my womanhood and love now that I'm pregnant and having a baby, which is definitely something I wouldn't have been able to do as a male. I do wonder how my son will fell about his gender...

I don't really identify as having a gender. Never liked typically 'boy' stuff growing up, but I'm identified as male by others ("you're a Mr." and being called "sir", and other stuff I do without) so really the labelling is society's, not mine.

Full on tomboy here. My nickname at the boy's school was "bloke". I still liked doing girly things too, but they didn't suit me 'til I was older. Definitely a "Das Mädchen" rather than a "Die Jungfrau" till I was 18.

More than happy to be female but in the blissful state of childhood I can't say I identified either way. My brother is 11 months and 3 weeks older than me, the Americans call this 'Irish Twins'. We played happily together in a Swallows and Amazons childhood existence around Fishbourne harbour. I loved nothing better than to climb and swing from trees (actually, this is quite good fun still) and fish in the harbour streams, but he equally enjoyed dressing up in wigs and playing with his Action Man doll when I played with my Pippa dolls. I don't get this pressure on youngsters to identify their sexuality.

Once, aged about four, I dressed in my brother's clothes and went down to the kitchen and said "I think I'll be a boy today". My mum said don't be silly. I also remember having crushes or hero-worshipping certain older girls at school. However, I always knew it was boys I wanted to kiss.

I was an unhappy 'straight' woman for most of my life, never understanding why I was not attracted to men who were very attracted to me! Married at 26, but it was a non-starter in the bedroom department. Figured that was just normal - I was so unaware and really blind to myself. I'd never considered that I was bisexual, even though I gazed a gorgeous women...Duh! Susie, I remember you quizzed me about this in Skyros in 2010 - I think you were more aware than I was! I liked gay women and men, and transgender people, and finally after 10 years of solitude I suddenly realised I needed to change my life, spontaneously, at my 50th birthday party in 2012! I looked around the room of all my gay friends and just announced, to my own surprise, that I was "50 and fabulous, and I've decided to become a lesbian", to rapturous applause! Then blew out my candles and hoped for the best. Married the T girl of my dreams in 2017 and we're blissful. I know a lot more about sexuality and gender identify now, and just wish that every human could be accepted on her, his or their own terms. This constant effort to label and pigeonhole people actually works against tolerance - like the mad alphabet soup LGBTQAI+ - so inclusive that it's ex-clusive. See how the LGBs are rejecting the Ts now. Apparently conforming to expectations is just as much an issue within each Letter - my wife and I have been rejected by the Lesbian community because we're not gay enough! Long hair, jewellery and makeup are offensive to some...oh well. The most important thing is to be your authentic self and love who you love. Hopefully the world will stop excluding and legislating against people (trans women especially) who don't have any impact on them, and just learn to accept people as they are. This would solve a lot of problems.

I see myself as a human animal. I know I am female and I enjoy being a woman AND I don't see myself as limited to this genre. I am not limited: I am a playful child, ancient witch, happy doggie, soaring bird, golden boy and wicked twin...to name but a few.

To conclude, I am so glad that I used social media to ask these questions which are enlivening the creation of HER BODY: The Anatomy of a Woman which premieres for the Tête à Tête Festival at the Cockpit Theatre in London on Wednesday 28th July at 7.30pm, and online with a discussion led by Bill Bankes-Jones, Dr Alison Habens and Loré Lixenberg on Friday 30th July at 8.00pm.

To book tickets go to:

https://www.tete-a-tete.org.uk/event/her-body-live

Susannah's new 8-minute work for string orchestra and marimba called HER BODY is published by Composers Edition.

https://composersedition.com/susannah-self-her-body

Susannah's opera Analysis is published by Composers Edition

https://composersedition.com/susannah-self-analysis/

One minute introduction to HER BODY The Anatomy of a Woman 

https://youtu.be/XPRT-chnDI0

Extracts of Analysis at CODA FESTIVAL 2019

https://vimeo.com/383265308