I spent a week with only women and my body image issues disappeared

It's no wonder women want to live in communes

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My friends and I have a little fantasy going for when times get hard, or people frustrate us. It’s called The Commune. “Don’t worry, this won’t be a problem in The Commune,” we say to each other when a partner or love interest has let us down, or a client or teammate is being rude. We’ve gone as far as to share links to weather-beaten barn conversions on Rightmove, or cosy cottages in the middle of nowhere. 

The Commune is essentially an all-female space that’s self-sufficient and grounded in shared manual labour—a place where our friendship group can thrive away from capitalism and the patriarchy. It’s one-half joke, one-half aspiration. 

The idea for the commune is an amalgamation of very real places and scenarios. Perhaps you remember the enchanting Guardian article about New Ground, Britain’s first cohousing community exclusively for women over 50, where women live together in a kind of feminist utopia in London? Or, perhaps you’ve visited Charleston in East Sussex, home to the painter (and Virginia Woolf’s sister) Vanessa Bell, who filled its rooms with the most creative minds of the decade, painted every inch of space in garish colour, and famously “loved in triangles”?

As we live through a cost of living crisis here in the UK, it’s no real surprise that people are less enthused by capitalism and the rat race. After all, capitalism only works if there’s some semblance of aspiration, the next rung of the ladder almost reachable. Take this away, and people lose the motivation to try. They begin to think about the pointlessness of it all, and their minds inevitably wander towards other possibilities and realities.  

Ironically, though, it takes a lot of money to turn your back on capitalism. Regular people can’t just run off into the woods and make it work as a lifestyle choice. For that reason, The Commune will likely remain a comforting, slightly silly fantasy my friends and I say to each other now and again, like a prayer. But on our recent holiday to Spain, I did get to microdose on what The Commune might do to my body and mind.

My friend Rachel and I in Spain

The most significant thing I noticed, when living isolated with only women for company, was that any insecurities I had around my body all but disappeared. When we first arrived and stripped off into our bikinis, I found myself arching my back as I sat by the pool, inadvertently trying to make my stomach flat and my boobs high. Then, slowly, the question arose: who am I posing for? In that environment, no one’s love for me rested on anything as trivial or mundane as my body.  

By the end of the week, I was hunched over my book, bare breasts practically touching the pages, hair utterly wild, makeup forgotten. Normally, in such a state, I’d declare myself “a mess”. But I wasn’t a mess. I was merely myself, undecorated.  

“If I wasn’t always slightly worried about how I looked, what else might I do with all that luxurious, empty space?”   

I, like probably every other woman ever, am always very aware of people looking at me. When I walk down a public street, I’m unable to stop myself from thinking constantly about how I’m being perceived. Do people think I’m pretty? Ageing? Fashionable? Overweight? Intriguing? Over or underdressed? Am I walking too in time to my music? Do I look standoffish, mean or angry? In a way, I was amazed that - after a lifetime of fretting about how other people see me - in under a week, I no longer gave one solitary shit.     

I couldn’t help but imagine what else might change about me if I were given more time in the company of only women. If I wasn’t always slightly worried about how I looked, what else might I do with all that luxurious, empty space?   

I actually love men. Some of my favourite people in the world are men. But we can’t deny how much they influence the way we move through the world, and the things we care about. The beauty industry, for example, is run by men at the root. The (extremely creepy) obsession with looking permanently pre-pubescent has also been gifted to us by men and their desires. As an overtly ‘girly’ girl, I’m somewhat ashamed at how much of my time and money is spent on this kind of upkeep—of making myself look as young and beautiful as I can manage and afford.  

That said, the older I become, the less invested I am in the whole concept. It’s a slow erosion, I’ll admit. But it’s happening. I’m starting not only to believe but to applaud the women who say that - far from ruining their feelings of womanhood - the menopause finally brought them back to themselves. 

I might not be able to afford a feminist utopia in the countryside, but perhaps I can try to live a little less blindly under the harsh spotlight of the male gaze. After all, if the people who love me most don’t care what shape my breasts are or how many rolls my stomach has, then what does it matter about the rest of the world? And if I wasn’t dwelling on such details, what else might my wide-open life have in store for me?  

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