The definition of a fruit is ' the sweet and fleshy product of a tree or other plant that contains seed and can be eaten as food'. For awhile, fruits have also been used as a means to categorize the female body into different types. They have been used, perhaps, as a tool to instruct women on how they should react to their own bodies, and this is a practice that is in a desperate need of being stopped.
The earliest memory that I can recall, wherein I was left to question the natural shape of my body, was when I was aged nine. From what I remember, I was with two other girls in the school bathroom and we were stood in front of this long mirror, posing. By chance, these two girls lacked even one ounce of the puppy fat that I had readily accumulated, and I can remember staring at it idly as they both twirled around the floors outside the toilet stalls.
What strikes me most about this memory is not only how young I was when it happened, but the fact that I can still remember it. Something, that otherwise would have been meaningless, has been carved into the innermost parts of my brain, purely because of the way it had made me feel. I doubt those other girls remember that moment, or at least not in the way that I do.
It hurts to think that the female body has been picked at to the point where even young girls struggle to feel beautiful.
Perhaps the most bizarre aspect of this all is the fact that no one fully knows what the 'perfect' female body would look like. Everybody appears to yearn for different things, so why have we not reached a point where we universally accept that every single form on this earth is worthy of being both loved and cherished?
When I was slightly younger than what I am now, I remember turning to internet - in search of guidance as to what I should wear in order to 'best flatter my figure' (a.k.a. to hide my chest) . What I was met with were an array of videos that dictated what women of certain body types should and shouldn't wear. Back then, it had been almost hypnotic. I had felt the need to abide by these unspoken laws, and if that meant rejecting my beloved turtle necks then I was ready to be compliant.
There was some point down the line when I began to recognise the flaws that were inherently laced into the words of those supposed 'wise women'. Every word that they would utter seemed to be in relation to hiding something. And it occurred to me that the things they would insist needed to be concealed, were the very things that made an individual a human being.
It made me wonder about something. It made me wonder about why there was an apparent necessity to hide the beauty within the realism of such imperfections - if that is even what they should be called.
Now that I am older, I can appreciate the wonders of the human body that I had been blind to before. I strive to cherish it, and I work hard to appreciate the abundance of things that it gives me the capacity to do.
It isn't always easy. Moments before writing this I had stared in the mirror, wide-eyed at the prospect of a faint crease embedding itself into the depths of my face and somewhat alarmed at the light lines that peppered the inner parts of my thigh. Yet, I told myself that each of those marks held a potent significance. I told myself that even if they weren't beautiful in society's eyes, they were beautiful in mine. And that was all that mattered.
The painting that I have attached above was something that I created in the early parts of the quarantine period. It had started as a means to ridicule those vacant labels that get thrown around, such as 'pear shape' and 'apple shape', yet when I was finished with it - I realised that it had become something more. To me, it had become a symbol of unity and inclusivity, one that rejected any attempt to categorise the mesmerising beauty of the diverse female form.
It is apparent to me now, more than ever, that women should never have been likened to fruit. Women are not fruit, we are human. And that is something that we should celebrate and revel in, rather than letting it be something that we strive to conceal.
