Don’t tell me I have the wrong body

by Henry

What can be more anarchic than bodies. They come in all shapes and sizes. They adapt, grow, shrink. Listening to my body breathing I’ve been revelling in the idea I can tell my body what to do. And equally that my body can tell me what to do. I’ve been resisting the idea, as all women must, that my body is essential and immanent, ready to be at the service of the tribe.

[Left] This photograph of my mother, Anna Dowson, was taken by a professional photographer in 1949, when still only a teenager, she went on tour with a small group of members of the Sadlers Wells Ballet. The still is from L’Île des Sirènes part of a programme which starred Margot Fonteyn and Robert Helpmann, big stars at that time.

When she shows it me, at first, I barely recognise her young self. The figure seems other worldly, mythical. Then gradually being able to see two Anna/mothers I was able to focus; her body so familiar to me but present here in the unfamiliar posture, the old-fashioned costume and full stage make-up. She is strong and athletic. Her arm thrown up, arched back, left leg reaching behind her. Even contained within the discipline of classical ballet, I can see her body rebelling and expressing her own will, in the jaunty twisting of her left thigh. She is so very much my mother in the photo, her familiar prominent nose outlined by the dramatic stage make up. To me it’s a marvel, evidence of a legendary existence that she kept partly hidden.

She gave birth to me, looked after me, did an awful lot of housework, cooking and educating. She still cares for my father. (In her long life, she has done and still does many other things besides.) The mother body, which to me, as daughter, is essential, is in a sudden shrinkage moment of this photographic evidence, transcendent.

My mother left school at 14 and joined the Royal Ballet aged only 15, having trained her whole childhood and adolescence. Barely a few years later a back injury meant she had to give up ballet suddenly, which must have been devastating. She’d missed out on school, and yet had her whole life ahead of her. She has always been immensely strong. Even now, aged 91, she walks down the road at a cracking pace, feet still turned out. She rarely has anything wrong with her.

For whatever reason, my mother was determined for me not to go anywhere near ballet and suffer any of the same disappointment. I knew from the start, somehow wisely, truthfully, fortunately that I hadn’t inherited her strength or flexibility. My feet were too big, which meant I was going to be too tall, my hips too tight, my back too stiff. In the environment of school in the sixties, I had no aptitude for team sports either. I still insisted I should go to ballet, like my friends, mainly for the black leotard, pink tights and ballet shoes with satin ribbons, but my mother chose Miss Denning’s quietly radical class, all brightly coloured crêpe and bare feet in a nearby, dusty studio.

I do think I inherited something from my mother, the dancer, though. Eventually she relented, and found a ballet class on the Kings Road. Once I’d learned how to tie the satin ribbons, I discovered pleasure in joining in. My favourite step was one the whole class did together, arms linked, galloping round the room in a big circle. I was airborne!

Fifty years later, at yoga for a stiff neck. At first yoga felt self-indulgent, a hideous, luxury item. But gradually I discovered in there the desire to flex my foot, bend my back, let the breath fill different parts of my ribs and belly, follow a discipline. The female teacher is even a mother body, strong tender, something to mirror. However awkward my body it’s natural to move my body, to tell my body what to do, attempt to twist and stretch.

Even today when the importance of getting everyone into physical activity is generally acknowledged, the message of wrong body, wrong aptitude or temperament, wrong gender or race strongly persists[HC1] . Even when organisations such as the Football Association or radical ballet companies try to open up the categories and become more inclusive, mass consumerism in entertainment demands conservative body types. Notions of fairness, categories and competition interweave to become problematic and contradictory.

One episode of the BBC podcast ‘Across the Red Line’, presents a discussion about inclusion of trans athletes in sport. Trans activist and racing driver, Charlie Martin, talks to Sharron Davies, ex Olympic swimmer. A facilitator encourages them to find shared ground. Davies insists sport deals with scientific facts, that she is trying to find a solution, suggesting a third open category, saying she is trying to protect young girls involved in sport ‘from being sacrificed on the altar of woke.’. Davies more or less says straight out, you will never be a woman, you are the wrong body. The wrong person in the wrong category. I sensed that Martin found it hard to respond, even with arguments she’d prepared.

I found the discussion shocking and painful to hear. In sport, like ballet, the participants are reliant on an exposed and vulnerable thing, their own body. Sharron Davies, the ex-Gladiator, must know this. Her refusal to acknowledge all the other elements of sport, psychological, emotional, communal relegates women athletes to the essential, a body with a certain kind of gamete, and in that sense all women too to the essential, imprisoned by biology. In the supposed name of fairness and giving women a fair chance, she is confining the bodies of women athletes to the essential, which helps neither cis women nor transwomen. It is being wilfully blind to the influence sport has on the wider community and therefore chances for girls in the rest of their lives. Perhaps also inherited from my mother I have some innate revulsion towards competition. It’s the categories and classifications beloved of elite sport and the arts that are worth resisting. But that’s for another essay.