Bodies: we all have them, but how do we engage with them - with our own, with other people's, when writing fictional characters? These are the questions the panel Writing Bodies attempts to answer, looking at Lucy the personal-fitness trainer in Irvine Welsh's The Sex Life of Siamese Twins, the judgments thrust upon women's bodies as detailed in Tara Moss' The Fictional Women, and philosopher Damon Young exploring his own physical relationship with his body in How to Think About Exercise.
With host Rafael Epstein, the panel begins by speaking about the reductionist conflict between mind and body: an idea that people who play sports are stupid, while writers are weak. "I was never impressed by the dichotomy society has stuck up between sport and art," says Welsh. Growing up, he was both. But with Lucy he is exploring the complexity in a relationship with exercise. She no longer exercises for joy, but is instead "gymorexic."
"To be that obsessed with exercise as Lucy is, that becomes dysfunctional," he says.
Looking at Welsh's novel, Young calls Lucy "the very picture of the professional jock", and thinks it is interesting to consider the role of the personal trainer: in entering this relationship, he says "a lot of us have lost sovereignty over our bodies." Welsh relays the inspiration for the book: watching two women exercise together, and one breaking down in tears. "You're paying someone to do this to you," he says incredulously.
Moss has been writing fictional characters for years in her crime novels, but here she discusses the analysis of the ways women's bodies are perceived - and fictionalised - in society. Reading a section from her book, she relays quotes about women's aptitudes and physiology from 1873 (Edward Clarke saying an education will steal blood away from women's reproductive system), 1888 (Friedrich Nietzsche on women scholars having problems with their sexual organs), and 1915 (Charles L Dana and the impracticality of women's spines for politics). Through this, the audience laughs - how archaic!
As Moss mentions Todd Aitken on women's bodies "shutting that whole thing down" in response to rape in 2013, the audience is instead filled with grumbles and shaking heads. As she quotes Tony Abbott's infamous 1970s remark "I think it would be folly to expect that women will ever dominate or even approach equal representation in a large number of areas simply because their aptitudes, abilities and interests are different for physiological reasons," grumbles turn to huffs. Perhaps, it dawns on everyone, we shouldn't laugh so loud at the comments on women's spines being too small for a career in politics, if similar ideas are still being perpetuated.
But judgements on physiology aren't constrained by gender. Says Young, "there is a sense we want to immediately know someone's psyche, the fullness of their history, by their bodies."
Of course, to say that we should stop viewing people's externality is impractical, says Moss. "I'm not saying I'm irrational, I'm just saying I have eyes," she says. "I like to look at beautiful men. I like to look at beautiful women. [...] If you're conscious of your own bias, you're free from some of it. I'm not saying I'm immune to the things I write about in The Fictional Women."
Looking at bodies, Welsh describes humans as "animals walking around with bags of chemicals: they can betray us," and writing about the physical is just like anything else: you chip away at language until you have an approximation of what you want to say. Still, even in fiction there are boundaries in imagination we can't overcome. As Welsh stands to read from his 1998 novel Filth, he apologises: "I can't read from the new book, unfortunately," he says with his thick Scottish accent. "It's a bit of a stretch to see me as a young American woman."
