Private View - Plunge Theatre

Private View by Plunge Theatre - created and performed by Lilly Pollard, Tutku Barbaros and Izabella Malewska - holds up the magnifying glass to the female body. It draws from personal experience, and reflects on the strain they and other women feel from the media to look a certain way. It is honest, funny, and insightful. It is thought-provoking, and a little bit devastating.

Now, as a disclaimer, my appreciation for the show is biased: I work at Theatre Delicatessen, know the girls, and like them a lot. But this is only in so far as it is utterly heartbreaking to see three girls who I know to be beautiful, inside and out, subject their bodies to the exact same critique and rigmarole that a lot of us - men and women - shamefully apply to ourselves.

"Would you speak to your best friend like that?" Goes the old self help adage.

As such, my response to the piece was pretty emotional. There is a moment where the girls come out into the audience and tear at parts of their bodies, asking us if we think they would look better if they were thinner/bigger-boobed/different, at which point I quietly burst into tears. Because it's one thing to watch people you know do this to themselves, but it's another to be honest with yourself, and admit that you do it too.

In this latest wave of feminism, and as a staunch fan of Hadley Freeman, Caitlin Moran, Lucy Mangan, Sandi Toksvig, Sue Perkins, Jo Brand, Clare Balding, Lauren Laverne et.gloriously.al, I am inclined to the dialogue in which I declare that I am happy with my body, and my appearance. I believe that more time should be given to people, family, friends, intelligence and life-enrichment than to diets and exercise. I exercise for my health - I walk an hour every day because legs should not be wasted, I run to maintain my emotional well-being and do yoga to stretch out the day's strains. I don't actually like chocolate or sweets that much, or meat, and it's pretty underwhelming that my guilty pleasure is a whole packet of rice cakes lathered in peanut butter or houmous.

(Eugh, I know.)

But the truth is, my main motivation is that I am absolutely terrified of putting on weight, and of not seeming to gesture towards the Cara Delevingne/Karlie Kloss slim, hairless, perfectly poised aesthetic.

Karlie Kloss - Vogue Italia - Nike

Alright, whatever. So what? Is it such a bad thing to be healthy? To look after yourself? No, of course not. But the big question is, why am I doing it? Why are we doing it?

That's the scary part, and that's what Private View asks us to consider: is the ideal mirror reflection of our bodies dictated by ourselves, or by Vogue and Heat magazine? And what if that reflection is fundamentally impossible for our individual body type to achieve? It has been noted in another review of the show that it does not encompass or consider other body types, or races, or levels of disability. But the piece takes a step further than that - it speaks to women with the cosy honesty that comes with a girls' night in with a tub of ice cream, in which we all share our hang-ups, not interrogate everyone else's.

We may never shake this grip that the media holds over our perception of ourselves. It's just good old fashioned consumerism, and the very human desperate need to establish self-worth. But if this is the case, then what is most important to remember - and what is highlighted in Private View (thanks to William Ingham's lighting design, with ever shifting spotlights) - is that the Ideal Body Type is only ever a passing phase. And even if you do reach that impossible, airbrushed ideal, it only lasts as long as it takes to eat a tier of chocolate cake.

With that considered, the girls finish the show at their most beautiful - baggy t-shirts, comfy leggings and chocolate smears on their smiling faces while they dance like we all do (come on, admit it) to Bootylicious by Destiny's Child. That is not to say that they have completely renounced the cling film wrapping, waxing, make-up slathering, posing, pouting, spotlight hogging that is a significant feature of the rest of the show, but the fact that this is where they are at their happiest is absolutely crucial. It is realistic - we will not overcome self-consciousness and self-deprecation by simply putting on music and shaking our jelly. But we will damn well enjoy ourselves doing it. 

Private View is at Theatre Delicatessen until 31st January.