Woman on a mission to stop us hating our BODIES
Her stomach badly scarred from a childhood illness, Michelle never dared wear bikinis. Then something incredible happened and now she’s a...
FLUORESCENT glittery pink-and-orange stripes adorned my first ever bikini. At the age of ten, I’d badgered my mum into buying it for a pool party. I was so excited to wear it that I didn’t bother covering up. But as I approached the pool, I noticed the expressions on my friends’ faces change. Their eyes darted away — and silence descended.
Suddenly it struck me the awkwardness was down to the criss-cross of scars on my tummy. I’d been born with hydrocephalus, an excess of cerebrospinal fluid, which had already led to 13 operations. It wasn’t something I talked about much — not even to my friends.
When I greeted the birthday girl, she froze as if witnessing a car crash. Then her face melted into sadness and pity, an expression replicated through the group like a virus.
I ran back into the house and burst into tears, wishing I could just peel the scars off like a plaster. For the first time, I felt a sharp stab of hatred for my body. I vowed never to wear a bikini again. Thus began a lifelong struggle with body confidence.
Fast-forward 11 years, and I found myself posting a rather unexpected picture on Instagram: me, 21, proudly wearing my second ever bikini along with the hashtag #ScarredNotScared — an attempt to counter the belief that people with scars shouldn’t wear bikinis. Much to my surprise, within 24 hours, the image had gone viral. I ended up being interviewed across the world, in publications from Israel to Portugal.
Clearly the sentiment behind the image chimed with many. It’s not just those of us with scars who don’t feel ‘good enough’ to merit wearing a two-piece: the mythical ‘bikini body’ eludes anyone who isn’t twigthin and in possession of ripped abs.
I wanted to show the world that every woman can look beautiful in a bikini. That we all need to accept and love the body we have. Of course, you don’t just wake
up one day feeling fantastic about yourself. It’s been a long journey. But as a fat person with spots on her face and scars all over her body, I am finally proud of who I am.
And as a qualified body confidence coach, I am helping to turn the tide of hatred that women level at their own appearance. It’s not just about wearing bikinis — but somehow our attitude to this most revealing of garments encapsulates all our body hang-ups.
More than 10,000 women every month Google the words: ‘Am I ugly?’ — words I used for the title of my new book — and, having been on the receiving end of many a cruel jibe, I can understand why.
According to a recent survey, as many as 91per cent of women are unhappy with their bodies and resort to dieting to achieve their ideal shape. They let this define their happiness and, more importantly, who they are as a human being.
I could easily have found myself in the same place. After all, my body had caused me no end of problems.
AS MY first birthday approached, my parents realised I wasn’t supporting my head as well as other babies. At 13 months, doctors discovered I had a brain cyst, and shortly after that I was diagnosed with hydrocephalus.
By the time I was two, I had undergone six surgeries to insert shunts and tubes that would drain the excess fluid from my brain into my stomach.
It must have been a terrible time for my parents. My dad had already lost a sevenyear-old son from a previous relationship, and at the hospital where I was treated, three babies with the same condition as me died in that first year.
Eventually, they took me from our home in Hong Kong to a neurosurgeon in Los Angeles.
For a few years everything seemed okay. My first memory of my health being an issue is of lying on my mum’s bed aged seven, with the shutters down, suffering the most excruciating migraine.
Around then I had yet another operation, but as the years passed the headaches continued — three, four, five times a week.
But the more I complained, the more I got taken out of school, which I didn’t like. So I would pretend it wasn’t happening — I’d get told off for lying on the table in class, when I was trying to manage the pain.
In Hong Kong it was normal to go off to boarding school, so at 11 I was sent to England to a hyperacademic all-girls school.
For two terms everything was great. But at the start of summer term the migraines got worse. I tried to hide what was happening — I didn’t speak to anyone, including my parents.
Then I started fainting in lessons. One day it was so excruciating I was crying in class. My teacher’s reaction was to send me out for being disruptive — but I fainted in the doorway.
After trips to the school nurse and GP, teachers called my mum, who flew over and took me to Los Angeles, where doctors discovered my shunt had broken.
I spent the next three months in hospital, where it just seemed to be one complication after another — first a punctured intestine, then the discovery of a brain tumour I had been born with.
I just wanted the pain to end. I didn’t want to fight any more.
Then I met a volunteer, a psychologist — the first person to inspire me with a desire to help people like me feel better about their problems. Before I could help others, though, I had to learn to help myself.
When I left hospital after three months and five operations, my confidence was threadbare. I was overwhelmingly self-conscious about the scars littering my body, the biggest of them running across my tummy from hip to hip.
At home for the summer holidays, I became obsessive about finding ‘scar-reducing’ creams.
I’d purchase jars and jars of them at the local pharmacy, charging them to our family account and tucking them into the waistband of my jeans so nobody would see.
ONE pot was a purple cream that vanished when rubbed in — proof, surely, it was working?
When my mum discovered my stash and calmly explained it would not erase my scarring, I started Googling plastic surgery.
The dream of changing myself — that I needed to change myself — became a recurring theme.
Going to a private girls’ boarding school didn’t help. Like so many schools of its kind, it was full of stressed-out, ambitious girls — a breeding ground for bulimia and anorexia.
In this hothouse of ‘thin’, it was almost impossible not to focus on my weight. Before going into hospital, it had never been an issue. But now my clothes felt tighter, which only accentuated the stomach roll created by my biggest scar. In PE lessons I’d see other girls looking at me as I awkwardly got changed.
After weeks of quietly analysing myself in the mirror, I declared I needed to go on a diet. As my hunger became distracting, I found comfort in a sense of accomplishment. This warm feeling of pride was nice — and almost made my stomach feel full.
Much as I enjoyed the newfound camaraderie, it lasted only a few weeks. Sick of my hunger-related mood swings, my roommate cajoled me back into eating. I probably have her to thank for the fact I didn’t descend into anorexia.
Puberty and the tricky teenage years created new anxieties.
I assumed no boy would ever find me attractive and grew more and more uncomfortable when friends talked about the opposite sex.
I tried to tell myself that my scars were souvenirs of bravery and courage, a reminder that I felt grateful to be alive. But I couldn’t help hating how deformed they made my stomach look — as if I had three rolls of belly fat.
By the time I started university I was terrified of revealing my scars to friends — scared rigid about the prospect of any boys ever seeing my body.
Funnily enough, the two hurdles were overcome on the same night. An alcohol-fuelled game of ‘truth or dare’ on the fourth night of Freshers’ Week led to me stripping off — cue an admission about my operations, which was met by curiosity rather than horror.
That night I lost my virginity to a friend who had seen the scars — and hadn’t been repelled. No relationship developed, but it was the first time people had reacted as if my scars weren’t a big deal.
Then, over the Christmas holidays in my second year, I ended up in hospital in Hong Kong for six weeks with an obstructed bowel. I wasn’t allowed to eat — as I was being tube-fed to relieve the pressure on my bowels — and the reaction to my dramatic weight loss got me thinking how deeply ingrained the cult of skinny is in our society.
A steady stream of friends and family visited me, all saying things like, ‘You look fantastic!’ ‘Your face looks skinnier.’ ‘You actually look good — much healthier.’
It frustrated me that weight loss was praised even in the context of illness. Was skinny still the goal if your health had to be at risk in order to achieve it?
When I’d entered hospital, I was already the slimmest and fittest I’d been in years. I ate what I wanted, when I wanted, and had the healthiest relationship with food I’d ever had before — because my days no longer revolved around food. I’d also become more comfortable with my scars.
Yet here was everyone saying I looked better after my illness. It made me realise that something had to change about our collective attitude to our bodies.
I returned for my final year, got my first boyfriend, graduated with a degree in psychology and began volunteering at a hospital for
children. It was the perfect way to get closure on a lot of my experiences.
Meanwhile, I started doing courses in life coaching, hypnotherapy and other ways that can help to bring peace and acceptance to a person.
But it was going on holiday to Australia in 2015 with a friend, Nadia, that really crystallised how I would best help women with body confidence.
We spent days at the beach, swimming, kayaking, surfing, hiking to little ponds and waterfalls. For the majority of time we were in our swimsuits, which is what sparked a question from Nadia. It caught me off-guard. It also changed the path of my career. ‘Why don’t you wear bikinis?’
Six months later, as a qualified life coach, I was 21 and at a coaching retreat in Florida. As a result of Nadia’s question, I had set myself the goal to wear a bikini for the first time since I was ten.
I was pretty determined, but the night before I left for the retreat, I realised I hadn’t even bought a bikini.
I did some panic shopping online, and the next day a box of them arrived at my flat. But when none of them fitted, I decided to shelve the entire idea.
When I told Hayley, a new friend on the course, about my foiled plans, she whisked me down to the hotel shop and stood outside my changing room until I found a bikini — it was zebra print, it fitted and it looked good.
I looked in the mirror, but the image I saw looking back didn’t compute. Was that actually me, in a bikini? I didn’t stop to think; I threw on a sundress and we went down to the pool.
SWIMSUITS triggered awful memories — as is the case for many women. As I walked to the pool, I imagined judgmental stares, looks of shock and pity.
To keep myself from backing down, I whipped off my dress as soon as I arrived at the pool.
As I walked around the corner to join the other women, Hayley was beaming with pride and clapping. The others seemed confused, so it was explained that this was the first time I’d worn a bikini as an adult.
‘Oh,’ the women said, looking straight at my face and not my scars, and I was applauded again, congratulated — and then, just as quickly, the hubbub was over, the conversation moved on to where we were going for lunch, what we wanted to eat.
Everything was exactly the same. I didn’t want to stand out or be different or pitied. I just wanted to be like everybody else.
For so long I’d believed that my life would only truly begin when I lost enough weight and loved my scars enough to wear a bikini. I’d believed that if I could accomplish that, I could achieve anything. To a point, I was right, but only because I believed that a two-piece swimsuit stood in the way of everything.
Now, I felt exactly as I’d imagined I would over all those years of thinking wearing a bikini was a symbol of skinny perfection.
But this pride, this euphoria, was from finally being myself, how I looked now, not in five, ten, 20, 30 pounds’ weight loss from now.
That’s when I decided to post the photo on social media — hoping to inspire others to accept themselves in the same way.
I couldn’t have anticipated the reaction: messages began pouring into my social media accounts and people were baring their souls, telling their stories — many for the first time.
I was suddenly in a position to speak about my experiences and become a role model of sorts — a position that seemed odd, considering not so long ago I’d been wracked with insecurities.
At university I believed being a psychologist was the only way to help people, yet now here I was, changing people’s minds with a simple photograph.
I realised the importance of embracing your story. It had been liberating for me, and somehow it seemed to be liberating others. But it wasn’t about me or my body: it was the realisation that you aren’t alone.
I thought back to my childhood and how happy I would’ve been to see someone with scars in magazines, and that’s when I realised the impact of a photo — and, more importantly, representation.
Just like that I had stumbled across my passion and my purpose — I wanted to create a space for these people to be heard.
To this day, that space has continued growing, online and offline, with my online audience reaching more than 100,000. I give talks about the importance of body positivity and representation.
It is rather ironic that my former biggest secret — my scarred tummy — is something I tell strangers about nearly every day.
I could never have imagined how proud I’d feel about my beleaguered body. If I can achieve that, anyone can. Bring on the bikinis!