The real body

It’s blazing hot summer in Spain and we have two children and friends visiting with their two children. The inevitable circumstance of heat and children means that clothes are discarded and the beach and the water park become destinations of choice.

We’ve been to both places over the last month and it’s been a lovely, timely reminder of what people really look like. When people get to the beach or the water park, it’s a simple process, get the clothes off, maybe leaving the sunglasses on, get in a chair, in the sea, on a slide, on a lounger and enjoy.

This presents a fantastic opportunity for watching people and how refreshing it is to see real bodies at the beach or in the pool.

I know that magazines don’t show me real women and I know that when I watch TV I see a pretty standard shape or size of woman. I know that advertising only presents me with the current model of ‘idealised beauty’. Despite knowing all this, and seeing my own body in the mirror every day, it is easy to forget that woman and people come in all shapes and sizes.

The opportunity to see a broad range of women, large, small, tall, with small breasts, large breast, uneven breasts, large hips, small hips, no hips at all. Curvy women and flattish women and beautiful women who don’t fit the standard model that we see every day in the media. Women with tattoos and piercings and stretch marks and scars. Men with big bellies and small bellies and no bellies at all, men with tattoos and piercings, with long hair and short hair and no hair at all. With visible muscles and hairy chests and hairy backs. This is the real stuff. This is life in all its shades and colours and sizes. With fat and curves and comfort.

Why don’t we see these realities in the media? Why do the tv gurus and the magazine moguls and advertising executives use real bodies and real people for a change. They certainly all look a lot healthier and happier than some of the models seen in advertising recently.

Bring us the real stuff...we can live with it.