God forbid a woman catches a cold.

I only like my body when I can make it 'better.'

I’m sitting on my bed, exhausted, heatpack applied to the lower belly (I’ve been having sporadic cramping episodes since getting the IUD three weeks ago) and feeling the remnants of a nasty cold I’ve been recovering from since last weekend.

I need rest, biblically. And yet all I can think is ‘when can I go to the gym?’

For every cancelled hot pilates class and skipped 7km run, the neutral body image I’ve worked so hard to build, bends. Threatens to break.

Every body hang up feels magnified. I feel vulnerable and exposed. Like I’m a paparazzi photo in a trash magazine – the dimples on my upper thigh circled in deep, bold red for all the world to examine.

For everyday that I’m in pain, poorly or just don’t have the energy to work out, an anxious, looping noise begins to swell from silence – it’s growing volume cluttering my mind with each day of rest. It doesn’t shut off until I’m able to move my body again. It tells me that if I’m not constantly bettering my physicality, I’m not worthy. That I’m falling behind.

Rationally, I understand the importance of rest. I know I need to slow down to ensure I don’t push my limits to the point of no return. I know that an essential part of self care is taking time to slow down when the body calls for it.

But this knowledge comes up against a teenage-hood’s worth of damage that I credit to wellness influencers of the mid 2010’s. Shredded blondes in matching sets barking the importance of discipline over motivation, broadcasting what they eat in a day to ‘stay lean’ and assuring me that no, I’m probably not tired but just very, very lazy and should hence haul my arse onto a yoga mat if kills me.

This diet of early era fitspo content –served best with a side of being privy to subtle body-bashing chatter over office treats, second helpings of tea and biscuits and dessert menus – has left a stain. A stain that’s faded – bleached by the sunlight of positive influences and years of a more gentle approach wellness – but still a stain. One that becomes more luminescent and ugly when my body begs me to stay horizontal for a couple of days.

What I find the most frustrating, is that I’ve done so much work to create a healthy, stable relationship with food and exercise. One that thrives through most weeks of the year. I don’t feel the need to restrict or ‘work off’ a single meal that enters my body. I workout intuitively – the exercise I do depending on my mood, a fitness goal and not much else. I focus more on the feeling of being strong and capable, and frame up physical changes as happy accidents that usually go unnoticed. I feel comfortable ordering off any menu and will happily help myself to seconds and / or thirds without shame.

But what I’m learning – as I lay here nearly 3 weeks post-procedure with an ache in my cervix and only a couple days in to breathing through both nostrils again – is that my body image is more fickle than I thought. I may not have experienced text book disordered eating or exercise habits, but I sure as hell still hear that noise. The noise that becomes amplified when I’m unable to complete the rituals that keep my figure looking a certain way.

If my satisfaction with my body is contingent on whether I can move it - can I really say I have a healthy body image? If the ripples through the backs of my arms start to bother me more than when I can’t hit Upper Body Day, can I genuinely say I feel neutral about my body?

In insecure moments like these where I can’t relish in the healing properties of rest, but instead feel bloated, sluggish and failing – I think about the man in my head.

He’s making all that ruckus. All that noise upstairs.

“Male fantasies, male fantasies, is everything run by male fantasies?

Even pretending you aren't catering to male fantasies is a male fantasy: pretending you're unseen, pretending you have a life of your own, that you can wash your feet and comb your hair unconscious of the ever-present watcher peering through the keyhole, peering through the keyhole in your own head, if nowhere else.

You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur.” - Margaret Atwood

I thought I silenced him long ago, but I’m learning that under patriarchy he’s made quite the lovely home. He’s the heavy-footed neighbour on the floor above that shows no signs of shutting the fuck up. He awakens in my most static of states to remind me that he’s watching me through that little keyhole. He threatens to kick in the door of the warm, carefully arranged home where my relationship to exercise lives.

I do believe that a lot of the health and wellness routines I engage in are truly for the benefit of my wellbeing. I really think that exercise plays an integral part to the upkeep of my mental health – an essential tool in my wellbeing kit.

But if that were wholly true, why am I flooded with guilt the moment I need to jump off the hamster wheel of working towards, what’s shaping up to be, an immeasurable standard of health and fitness (read thinness, femininity)? God forbid a woman catches a cold.

It’s clear that even with all that I’ve learnt from feminism and the body positivity movement, all the work I’ve done reclaim my relationship with my body, I remain fixed under the thumb of the male gaze. My resistance to rest is intrinsically tied to what is keeping me stuck there.

In the spirit of ‘acting like it’ (hello to the theme of my Substack - I swear I’ll always try find a way back to you), I want to evict the man in my head. He’s a really shitty tenant.

I know that it’s him and his patriarchal pals who pick apart the areas of my body I’ll never be able to change instead of letting me embrace them. He paints me as a canvas of flaws that needs round-the-clocking tending to – turns my being into a project that needs fixing. It’s him that twists the power of my loving, intuitive relationship to food and fitness and turns it into a pressure cooker that threatens to burn my self esteem to a crisp. It’s he who creates the comparison trap. It’s him that shames me with every snoozed alarm – every moment of rest.

To live my values is to lean into the necessity of rest. To let my body’s cues drown out his nagging tone. To take back my relationship to exercise as something that is truly mine – untarnished by his seedy stares. To relish a peaceful night’s sleep, a week’s worth of restorative rest, an essential break from exercise in the face of his aggressive thuds – his whining reminder that the male gaze remains omnipresent. That there’s still a race to be won.

But this race is a sham with no prize. No winners. And in order to tap out, I’ll treat rest like its radical.