Fausterella

(First published at the Huffington Post)

There’s a lot of advice out there about being yourself. It’s generally in favour of the idea, and quite right too. The opposite of being yourself is not being yourself, and who wants that? Who would you be then? You’d be somebody else. And that can’t be right.

Here is a brief summary of prevailing self-help wisdom on the subject of being yourself:

– Find yourself.
– Be true to yourself.
– Don’t try to be something you’re not.
– Result: happiness.

Finding yourself has to come first, of course, otherwise you won’t know who the self is that you’re supposed to be true to. You can achieve this through travel, yoga, meditation, a career, a family – there are so many ways to do it that it’s amazing anyone has ever managed to lose themselves at all.

Once found, cling to your true self like a leprechaun clutching a tiny precious pot of gold. (In this analogy, your true self was at the end of the rainbow. If this feels a little too fey for your tastes, please imagine that you found your true self somewhere more butch, for example under a monster truck, and that the leprechaun is actually a tiny rugby player clutching a gold rugby ball. OK? Good.) Never do anything that isn’t dictated to you by your little gold item of choice, and you will achieve health and happiness and other good things probably also beginning with ‘h’. (Harlots? Hobbycraft? Ham? Halfords? Who knows.)

The problem with all this – or rather one of the problems – is that when people tell you to be yourself, what they tend to mean is “I know what you are really like. Be that person.” They mean well. They genuinely believe they want you to be yourself. But there will always be provisos.

To give an example: earlier this year I watched the US reality show The Glee Project. This was a search to find new cast members for US show Glee (with which I am somewhat obsessed). Glee is basically about singing, dancing, high school misfits with big dreams, and the contestants were therefore in the situation of needing to fit into that trope, while also being ‘themselves’. Authenticity was praised, but so was fitting in to the existing cast. You couldn’t come across as too pliable or conformist, but you’d get kicked out for not obeying instructions or causing hassle. And all this struck me as largely being how life is: it’s ok to talk about not fitting in, as long as you also make sure you do fit in.

One of the final contestants, Alex, was flamboyantly gay: initially this worked in his favour, and then it somehow started working against him. He kept being told to ‘be his real self’, show them the person underneath the camp. But when he did what they told him to – when he performed a quieter, sober number and won applause for it – I thought: they’re telling him to be himself, but they’re also telling him what that self should be like. Is that fair? Can’t being flamboyant and camp be who you really are?

There’s this tendency to assume that the deepest layer is the real one. But they’re all real. The skin of an apple is as real as the core (and, I would point out, much tastier). Maybe you’re someone who spends most of their time as a housewife and mother, but sometimes likes to get dressed up in black eyeliner and big stompy boots, and go to goth clubs. Or you’re really shy at work, but a karaoke fiend in the evenings. Or you’re 60 but you like miniskirts, or techno, or World of Warcraft. Are you pretending to be someone you’re not? Are you being your truest self? Or are you just expressing different facets of your overall personality? Trying to be something you’re not may be a bad thing, but who’s to say what you are and what you aren’t?

And anyway, people don’t really mind you trying to be something you’re not. They mind you trying to be something they don’t think you should be. After all, many people aren’t thin and rich, but working to become those things is very much encouraged by society. But don’t act posh if you weren’t born to it, and shave your legs, and don’t wear pink if you’re a straight boy, and don’t go clubbing if you’re over 30. Why not? Because changing yourself is good, except when it isn’t. And being yourself is good, except when it’s not. All in all, it’s probably best to shrug, dust off those stompy boots, and go dancing.

(First published on the Huffington Post)

The word “just” bridges a multitude of gaps. As in “just lose weight!”, “just be confident in yourself!” and “just stop taking heroin!”. It has that handy ability to make something difficult sound as if it should be easy, with the bonus implication that anyone who doesn’t find it easy should be a bit ashamed of themselves.

The phrase “just listen to your body”, used by a number of books, articles and people, falls into the same category for me. Assuming for the moment that you and your body are indeed different entities – and apologies to any philosophers who are choking on their mint-flavoured cappucinos at this point* – then this sounds like a perfectly sensible idea. If you listen to your body it will tell you useful things, like what you should be eating and when you should be sleeping. Maybe it even tells you what to wear to a wedding and how to mend a pair of trousers, if you listen closely enough. I’m not sure.

Because the trouble is, I’m not very good at it. I increasingly worry that where my body is concerned, I’m not really listening so much as nodding and smiling while thinking about something else. Like letting one’s long-term partner tell you about their day at work. You want to be supportive, you’re genuinely interested in how they are in a kind of overall, general sense, but specifically, at that moment, you don’t actually know what they’re talking about because you’re thinking about the latest episode of Doctor Who or wondering whether there’s any vodka in the house.**

So that’s how my communication with my body works. I let it get on with things, and presume that it’ll let me know if something’s gone wrong. In the absence of other information, I assume that what it usually wants is chocolate, sleep, and to lie on comfortable sofas alternately eating chocolate and sleeping.

But I worry that maybe sometimes my body wants other things – celery, jogging, toenail polish? – and I’m not picking up on it. I’ve never been good at reading other people’s body language; reading my own is even harder. I can’t even see my own facial expressions! How am I supposed to know what I think about anything?

Perhaps it would be easier if we formalised the whole thing and exchange a polite series of notes, like partners who work different shifts and have to leave requests on the fridge. Or, given that this is 2011, perhaps we could email or IM each other.

Body@Kate: I want to go dancing. DANCING. NOW
Mind@Kate: Are you sure? We have work in the morning.
Body@Kate: DANCING! NOW!
Mind@Kate: Oh, OK then, I guess we could manage something -
Body@Kate: Oh wait, is it 10pm already? Sleep now.
Mind@Kate: But you said you wanted -
Body@Kate: SLEEP NOW.
Mind@Kate: *sulks*

In fact, now I think about it, the problem is not just the difficulty in mind-body communication, it’s my body’s lack of consistency in what it’s trying to tell me. What it wants is frequently unclear, and often contradictory. (In this way it reminds me somewhat of my one-year-old daughter.)

For example – and this may be why this whole thing is on my mind at the moment – I was recently diagnosed with coeliac disease. This means I can’t eat anything with gluten in ever again, in case tiny wheat-flavoured goblins start building spiky hedges in my small intestine. Or something. I’m not good at medical terminology.

But the point is: if anything with flour in it is going to damage me, then why do I still want to eat cake? Where is the joined-up thinking, body? Couldn’t you have alerted me sooner – for example, by making me involuntarily spit out any pasta or bread I tried to put in my mouth? Perhaps with a little note explaining what the problem was? I could have made myself some Alphabetti Spaghetti if that made communication easier.

And as I reach the end of this train of thought, I picture myself watching in horror as my fingers construct the phrase “Don’t eat flour! It will hurt you!” out of floppy alphabet-shaped pasta, and I realise that maybe I’m happy with things the way they are. If listening to your body might result in being trapped in an internal, low-rent, mildly metaphysical horror movie, then I think I’ll just steer well clear of it all and eat a banana.

* Why do I picture philosophers drinking mint-flavoured cappucinos? No idea. Can you even get mint-flavoured cappucinos? No idea.

** A note to my long-term partner: I definitely do listen very closely to everything you say about your day at work. Yes.