Day 23: Baby or no baby

Blogging at the end of a busy work day is probably a really bad idea. Rambling and incoherent thoughts, spelling mistakes, grammatical errors and the disclosure of information I really should have kept to myself are just some of the potential pitfalls. So I'll keep this one very brief.

Firstly, a small addition to Saturday's blog. I wrote in my baby gap post that women who've never given birth will never know what it feels like to do so - even if they do end up loving their adopted children as if they were their own. I omitted to say that, likewise, women who have had children will never know what it feels like for those who don't and really want to. It's impossible to put ourselves in each other's shoes, as much as we might try to in an effort to understand, empathise or sympathise. I was also reminded that I'd noted recently that there was no point in me hankering after a baby while suffering from lower back pain and doing very little about it. Watching a heavily pregnant mother reach down to pick up her small son yesterday evening - without any signs of painful twinges - made me think I'd better get back to Pilates if I ever want to do the same. But then I'd better get back to Pilates anyway, baby or no baby, if I want a pain-free future (I've corrected this bit - I posted it as 'baby or no body'. What did I say about mistakes?!).

For the rest of this post, I'll let others speak for me. So here's an article by writer, teacher and speaker Courtney E. Martin entitled 'Botox, bingeing, bullying and breast ironing: we must stop the war on women's bodies' in which she calls for a new 'body image activism' to challenge a wave of body hate that's spreading around the globe. Courtney coordinated the Endangered Species women's summit in New York last month and is part of an international campaign of the same name. I've written a fair bit about the Endangered Species events on this blog and have just published this short feature about them in Six Magazine, a new ethical fashion magazine.

And that's it, short and sweet, and hopefully not too rambling.