The body confident

I am sitting on the side of a pool in France, watching my children play in the water and wondering how long and how often I have been merely an observer of a life rather than one who participates.

I love watching my beautiful daughter stride around the pool with her long,long legs and hate it when she says she won't wear her tankini because it shows her belly. I hate looking at Max's wobbly belly and knowing that is my fault for not making him have a more active lifestyle.

I'm watching French, Dutch and German mothers in the pool with their offspring and am hearing them repeat, almost word for word the same things I say to my children.  "Ca ce n'est pas gentil" "Bien, jolie!" "schnell !" Then there are the mostly British mothers, like me, sitting on the sidelines, rolling our 3/4 trousers up past pasty knees, slipping our cardigans onto the floor for a moment.

But all these women in the pool look fabulous. Better than me, I think. Or maybe not. Do they look so good because they take part and do the exercise and don't waste time caring what anyone else thinks about -and now I look closer, I can see them- the stretch marks and broken veins and tan lines, and not wearing underwired bikinis or even shaving every bit of body hair.

If I hadn't been so self conscious about what I now realise was my flat stomach and toned thighs, perhaps I wouldn't have become the two stone over-weight blob fish I am now. And if I don't strip off and get in that pool I won't get any browner or lose any of that belly that has resumed the approximate size and quality it had immediately after my fourth pregnancy.

Maybe next year, knowing I have to get undressed, I will behave better throughout the year. Otherwise I'll be waiting until I'm 65, the see when most women feel body confident.  Of course by that time,my daughter will believe that sitting on the sidelines is an option. I need to take responsibility.

Oh. "Is this OK?" the French woman asks me, moving the chairs. Despite the fact I am pretty fluent in French and German everyone speaks tome in English. Is it the fat?  Is it the pink hair? No, just the fact that I am watching from the edge while everyone else takes part. There is definitely a metaphor here....