I’ve been thinking about Tracey Emin a lot lately.
She was on Woman’s Hour recently, talking with Anita Rani about her new exhibition at the Tate Modern. She said she’s always had a difficult relationship with her body, that she can’t stand looking at it and has no full-length mirrors in her house. And then she said something that really moved me :
“But this is what keeps me on the earth. So even though I may not like the way that I appear, actually, at the moment, I really like the way that I am”
After a diagnosis of aggressive bladder cancer in 2020, after major surgery, and after genuinely not knowing if she was going to survive, she has arrived at something. Not quite love, and not quite body positivity in the Instagram sense. But something real: a kind of grateful truce. An acknowledgement that this body, however it looks and feels, is what is keeping her here. I found that incredibly moving — and, as someone who works with body image in therapy, incredibly useful.
The problem with “loving your body”
We’re told we should love our bodies. The wellness industry, social media, and the body positivity movement — all of them are telling us to love our curves, celebrate our stretch marks, and embrace our imperfections. And I understand the intention, because it’s genuinely coming from a good place.
However, for many people, maybe most, “love your body” is simply too big a leap. It can actually backfire, making us feel worse when we can’t quite get there, as though we’re now failing at self-acceptance as well as everything else.
What if we started somewhere smaller? What if, instead, we aimed for peace?
Where body dissatisfaction really comes from
Here’s what body image therapy has taught me, and what the research consistently shows: our relationship with our body is not a fixed, factual thing. It is constructed. It has been built, layer by layer, over the years by comments made in school corridors, by things parents said without thinking, and by magazines, adverts, and the billion-dollar industry that profits from making us feel not enough.
Think about your own story for a moment. Who told you, explicitly or implicitly, that your body wasn’t right? A parent who commented on your weight? A PE teacher who said something thoughtless? A partner, perhaps, or a friend group where “fat talk” was simply the currency of female bonding?
Because “fat talk” is a very real thing. It’s the casual, constant commentary “my thighs are enormous, I’m so bad, I shouldn’t have eaten that” — that we often use as a form of social connection without even noticing. Research suggests this kind of talk reinforces body dissatisfaction not just for us, but for everyone around us who hears it. So the body we see in the mirror has been shaped not only by biology, but by every voice that ever commented on it. That’s both painful and strangely hopeful because what has been constructed can, with the right support, be gently deconstructed.
The body as home
One of my favourite reframes in therapy is this: your body isn’t an object to be judged and managed. It is your home. It is the place you live.
Think about what home means to you: safety, comfort, familiarity, a place where you can put your feet up and just be. What would it feel like to inhabit your body with that same sense of ease? Because here’s the thing: there is no “you” separate from your body. We talk about “me and my body” as though they’re different things, as though you’re a little person living inside a container you happen to dislike. Yet your humour, your intelligence, your capacity to love, your memories, your emotions, none of those have any existence apart from your physical self. When you say you hate your thighs or your stomach or your arms, you are, in reality, saying you hate part of yourself. And that costs something.
What would you do differently if you really loved your body?
This is one of my favourite therapeutic questions, and it’s a genuinely useful one to sit with — not as a guilt trip, but as an act of curious inquiry.
If you really loved your body…
- Would you change the way you dress? Would you stop saving the “nice clothes” for some future version of yourself and wear something you love now?
- Would you eat differently — not perfectly, but with a bit more care and pleasure?
- Would you move your body differently, not to punish yourself, but simply to enjoy the experience?
- Would you rest your body more and let yourself recover without feeling guilty?
- Would you listen more carefully to what your body actually needs?
And perhaps most importantly: if your body could speak to you right now, what would it say?
Mine asks quite frequently, “Please, can I have a rest?”
Changing the language around your body
One of the most practical things we work on in body image therapy is noticing the language we use about our bodies and gently shifting it — not overnight, but incrementally.
The goal isn’t to leap from “my thighs are disgusting” straight to “I love my beautiful thighs,” because that jump is simply too large and it won’t feel true. Instead, the shift might be from “disgusting” to “strong,” from “fat” to “soft,” from “my huge arse” to “my generous bottom.” Try it — read it out loud — and notice how even small changes in language can change how something feels. It might seem a bit silly at first, and that’s completely fine. The truth is, you’ve probably been speaking unkindly to yourself for decades, so relearning that language naturally takes a bit of time and patience.
It’s also worth noticing when you’re using “fat” as an emotional word rather than a descriptive one. “I feel fat today” What does that actually mean? Tired? Overwhelmed? Sad? Uncomfortable? Try, instead, to find the real feeling underneath the word.
A peaceful truce is enough
So, back to Tracey Emin.
She didn’t say she loves her body. Rather, she said she’s learning to like who she is: her self, her aliveness, her daily existence — even when she doesn’t like how she appears. And she said that since her cancer, every single day feels worth it. There’s something profound in that. The body that embarrasses us, that we pick apart in the mirror, that we hide and punish and ignore that same body breathes for us, moves us through the world, heals in the night while we sleep, and gets us to the people we love.
You don’t have to love your body madly. But perhaps you could treat your body with a little more kindness and aim for peaceful coexistence, recognising that you and your body are not in opposition. You are, in fact, the same thing.
And maybe, on a good day, you might even be glad of your body.
If you’re struggling with body image, disordered eating, or the way you feel about yourself, body image therapy can be a really useful space to explore all of this gently and at your own pace. I offer individual therapy in Wilmslow and online — you can find out more at eileenfishertherapy.co.uk or get in touch to have a conversation about whether we might be a good fit.
