Being a Body is Hard

Beauty standards, the ageing process, and our collective relationship with appearance

"Being a Body is Hard"

This is the line that caught me in thought a few times this week, thanks to Psychologist, Dr. Hillary McBride's discussion with Plastic Surgeon, Dr. Gary Linkov in an episode of the Mighty Pursuit podcast.

She said this a few times during a debate about beauty standards, the ageing process, and our collective relationship with appearance.

You can listen to the full podcast here: Spotify: Mighty Pursuit Podcast

And it is hard, isn’t it? Being a body. With all of it's functions, both natural and encouraged. Living inside one. Watching it change. Managing how others see it — or don’t. Waking up in it on the good days and the bad ones. Feeling invisible in some seasons and too exposed in others. The human body, especially in a world hyper-focused on how it looks, can become both armour and victim.

Chatting with a Friend

The timing of me stumbling across this episode collided with a WhatsApp exchange I had with a friend this week. We hadn’t spoken in a while, and she was giving me an update on her dating life. Her new date, it turns out, doesn't send pictures that please her. While she found him attractive in person, she struggles to appreciate his pictures and worse... He committed the unforgivable sin of… Replying to her selfies with a picture of his dinner.

I, on the other hand, thought that was brilliant. And quite possibly a green flag.

She was put out. Offended that he wasn’t sending photos of himself back. She was sharing her face in still form, so she seemed to expect the same ritual in return: “I send a selfie, and you send me SOUP?!”

Honestly? I can’t relate. Not to the dating. Not to the selfies. And definitely not to the assumption that constant visual updates are the marker of connection. But is that just because I don't consider myself to be photogenic enough to please the recipient? Or the awkwardness of trying to look natural while doing something so unnatural? Probably a little of both, if I'm honest. If the roles were reversed, and a man demanded a woman send more photos of herself in response to his unsolicited images, we’d all have something to say. But selfie culture has become so deeply embedded that it’s easy to forget how new (and strange) it really is.

We Were Never Meant to See Ourselves This Much

Our ancestors only saw themselves in passing by rippling ponds, or glimpses of polished copper. Maybe a rare painted portrait. But not reflections on every wall, or filtered thumbnails of themselves served up 100 times a day.

We weren’t built for this level of self-observation, or comparison. 

Dr McBride touches on this when she mentions the dramatic increase in mental health complaints around the time the front-facing camera became standard on our phones. That’s not coincidence. There’s something deeply unnatural about seeing ourselves so constantly. Our faces, frozen in high-definition stills. Our perceived flaws magnified. The subtle changes of time scrutinised instead of honoured. In another personal reference to relate to this, Invisalign! Why have I spent a shocking amount of money to move my slightly crooked teeth closer together? Because unfortunately I see my face frozen mid-Teams-call about 650 times a day, and I didn't like what I was seeing. Do you know what was never missing from my meetings pre-lockdown? My own face...

Remember how often the circus used to appear in horror films? Well, we’ve built a mirror maze and called it connection.

The Unseen Beauty of Ageing

One of the more tender moments in the podcast is when they talk about the gift of watching our grandparents age. The little lines around their eyes that deepen with every smile. The way time softens them. 

This part of the conversation was quite beautiful and I absolutely resonate, since I have been lucky enough to grow up with grandmothers around me and I have certainly seen their beauty - despite that they looked nothing like each other.

The debate covers the quiet admiration we can hold for our elders, and how often it's missed by those who grow up at a distance from their older relatives. If we don’t have those intimate, everyday moments with ageing bodies, how can we learn to see the beauty in it?

Instead, we’re spoon-fed a narrative that ageing is something to fight - with products, with needles, with apologies. Yet there’s something sacred about a body that has lived. That has carried children, held grief, wobbled joyfully as they've danced at weddings, and walked through decades of weather.

The Freedom of Invisibility

There’s a strange freedom many women report finding in midlife - a shedding of the pressure to perform beauty.

Is it 37? I feel like maybe it's 37...

Society starts to deem them irrelevant, and instead of chasing the spotlight, many feel a wave of relief. There’s space, finally, to exist without being looked at. No longer measured by how close or far they are from the “ideal.”

It’s bittersweet... Liberating, but also frustrating that this freedom comes after we’re written off.

What does it say about our culture that women feel safest when they become invisible?

Bonding Over Body Hate

Dr McBride also touches on the way women have learned to bond through body dissatisfaction. How common it is for our shared language to be rooted in shame: the bits we’re trying to change, hide, improve. You can walk into almost any women’s exercise class and overhear strangers forming connections over their shared belief that their bodies aren’t good enough.

We’ve turned critique into camaraderie. What might it look like if instead, we bonded over joy? Or gratitude? Or the downright miracle that our bodies do all that they do, even when we’re hard on them?

When was the last time you thanked your feet?

How beautiful a sign are laughter lines?!

Before and After Snaps

The podcast also explores our obsession with before-and-after photos. While they can show progress, they also embed a message: “Before” was wrong. “After” is better. If your current self looks like someone else’s “before,” it’s easy to feel you’re not yet good enough.

And yet, bodies change all the time. After doesn’t mean final. It might just mean "for now." A body that’s just given birth doesn’t need to be rushed back to some imagined ideal. A body that’s aged doesn’t need correcting. We’re not meant to be static. We’re meant to unfold as the body takes it's journey through time.

A New Kind of Influence

Maybe the future isn’t about hiding procedures or glamorising them. Maybe it’s about shifting the conversation entirely — being honest, and also being examples of what it looks like to age with curiosity, self-trust, and gentleness.

What if we were influencers of ease?

Of saying, “This is what I look like today” and "This is what it feels like". Of showing stretch marks and smile lines not as badges or flaws, but simply as part of being here — alive, human, beautifully unfinished.

If you're a woman looking for more of this kind of influence, I highly recommend following Stacey Solomon on Instagram.

Being a body IS hard.
But maybe with the right conversations, the right mirror, the right community, we can learn to be a body with a little more softness, a little more grace.
And maybe that would be more than enough.

I highly recommend listening to the full debate on the Mighty Pursuit Podcast. If you feel you've been affected by anything in this blog, you are always welcome to reach out directly to Happy Citta for a discussion.