Back in my inglorious days of thespian gadaboutery, a particular acting exercise haunted me for weeks. The inevitably rotund and chenille-wearing dance tutor, short and henna’d of hair, long and earnest of speech, made her underfed and overambitious hamlings circuit the cold room in pairs, one behind the other. The follower had to imitate the leader, slowly adjusting their body until they physically mirrored every tiny detail of hunched shoulder, clenched hand, stiff knee and tilted head. Then the leader would step back, and watch ‘themselves’ walk.

Kurtz didn’t know the half of it.

As I came to the quietly devastating realisation that I led with my chin, cranked back my head, arched my back, swung my arms like a gorilla and pulled a disturbing kind of smug-terrified hybrid half-smile, I realised that I’d taken the mantra of solicitous mothers everywhere – “shoulder’s back” – and turned it into a cartoonish parody of upright womanhood.

I looked like someone acting good posture.

The thing is, I was always a little paranoid about walking tall. When you’re six foot at fourteen, the last thing you want is an I-don’t-fit-under-doorways slouch, so it’s essential to cultivate a carriage that speaks of assurance and sass.

But the English philosophy of poise – stiff upper lip, book on head, and yes, shoulders back – is steeped in stress. Tension equates to grace. We’re trained to be perpetual puppet-masters, fighting every minute to prevent our splay-legged, belly-jutting savage within from collapsing uncouth in the dirt. It gives us stiff necks and aching joints and immovable backs, but hey, we look like we could wear The Collected Works of Wilde like a jaunty beret.

Back at drama school (oh, forgive me. I was young and knew not what I did), the inevitably wisp-haired and scarf-draped Alexander Technique tutor made me crawl for a whole term before I could graduate to sit, but I learnt nothing save the complex delights of the chewing-gum marquetry on the rehearsal room floor. It took until the start of this year, and a headlong dive into yoga, to understand how I could be perpendicular, healthy and hot.

Hot, literally. Bikram yoga, the infamous creation of an arrogant and mouthy LA-dwelling Indian, consists of two sets of 26 postures performed in a 40º C room, and although it feels like living hell, it sorts out your stature like nothing else. Bikram softens your hips and strengthens your pelvis, relaxes your shoulders and lengthens your neck, and creates a natural traction of the spine that allows everything to gradually realign.

The perfect posture for brittle Brits is undeniably the Standing Bow Pulling Pose, or Dandayamana-Dhanurasana (try saying that when you’re five gins to the wind) – an opening, elegant bodily arch that makes you feel like Darcey Bussell and does all kinds of good stuff to your frame.

I’m still a messy beginner, but I’m not half pleased at the structural improvements so far.

Follow me now, bitch. Just you try.

• Wish They All Could Be California Pearls
• Stardust Memories, Future Dreams
• God’s Work
• Charvet

Tags: LA, Oscar Wilde, yoga

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 15th, 2010 at 9:28 am and is filed under The Perfectionist. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Yes, we know.

The perfect tan is of course an untan; a snowy and virgin dermis unpenetrated by UVs A or B; a triumph of health over vanity and of the science-sated super-ego over the Barbie-basted id. Any sensible girl should team her digital-dreamy Peter Pilloto prints with an ivory parasol, in a chic little homage to the new My Fair Lady film, and emulate the pale, English-rose sweetness of its rumoured star, Carey Mulligan.

 Should. Very much, in the light of the many authoritative and rightfully scary skin cancer campaigns out there, should.

 But this is a familiar battleground for the female species: Sane vs Thin. Because tanning quite simply makes us look thinner. We may claim that we love that ‘healthy glow’, that ‘athletic sheen’, the blemish-veiling, teeth-whitening, Ralph Lauren vigour of it all, but really we’re just thinking: Mmmm. Thinner thighs. Those toxic rays shade our buried bones and puny muscles in a way no amount of bronzer contouring can. They hit the spots – collarbone, cleavage, abs, biceps, shins – that help every one of us celebrate the nascent Crawford under our tired, grey, dimpled, over-insulated skin.

Tanning is part of a long and respected heritage of century-spanning stupidity – starving; vomiting; enforced pooing; cross-country running; lung-annihilating corsetry; purchasing patronising, overpriced, pink and purple paperbacks with manic-eyed, gauntly grinning women in leotards on the front – dedicated to the holy grail of walking into work and being told you need to eat a biscuit, because you look ill.

This is a very serious matter, of course, representative of deep-rooted social, political, psychological, physiological and economic forces that conspire to keep women quietly stirring a vat of cayenne pepper and maple syrup in the Enchanted Tower of Childlike Self-Limitation while mankind gets on with fun, but it’s also just dumb. And I do it. I always cover myself with a thick rind of Factor 30, but I still watch my cheekbones freckle and my moles darken with glee. In my head, all I can see are those scary, blotchy UV-scans of prematurely aged women, but all I can think is: Mmmm. Thinner thighs.

I’ve never been a fake tan girl, of course. That simply smacks of vanity.

I know.

But all hope is not lost. This month, I discovered Xen-Tan, and loathe as I am to promote something already stupidly over-publicised, this stuff is easy, effective, and smells like pudding. Nice creamy orangey pudding. Which I can happily eat, because my thighs look well, at least one creamy orangey pudding thinner than they did last month.

Perfect.

Tags: Barbie, Carey Mulligan, Crawford, Xen-Ten

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 1st, 2010 at 1:30 am and is filed under The Perfectionist. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.