Sponsored by
The sensual way to deal with MS
LOOK at this woman. And then look again – would you guess that she has got an incurable condition which could, one day, see her in a wheelchair? Of course you wouldn't, you just see a woman.
LOOK at this woman. And then look again – would you guess that she has got an incurable condition which could, one day, see her in a wheelchair? Of course you wouldn't, you just see a woman.Jemma Walton spoke to one woman with multiple sclerosis who agreed to be painted naked for a show highlighting the sensuality of women with MS.
AT some point, every female over the age of 11 has looked in the mirror and said "Oh dear".
There isn't a girl or woman in the country who hasn't worried about the size of her bum. Or wondered if her boobs are smaller, or saggier, or less sexy than every other gal's. Or gone on a wacky diet involving eating nothing but chillies and limes for three days.
The fairer sex's relationship with their body is complicated at the best of times. But some women's relationship with their body is extremely complex.
Take Julie Howell, for example. Julie was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS), a incurable degenerative condition affecting the central nervous system, when she was 20. She had felt as though she was going mad after suffering months of unidentified symptoms.
"I don't consider my body a friend," she said. "At 19 it turned against me, it let MS take it over. My body has always been prone to being overweight. My face is not pretty. I've always just felt 'attractive enough'."
But, despite any bodily hang-ups she has, Julie agreed to pose naked for acclaimed artist Melissa Mailer-Yates, as part of a show in aid of the MS Society, See Me . . . Then See Me, which explores the sensuality of women with MS.
Sketches of her naked buttocks and breasts are now hanging on a wall in Birmingham, for all the world to see.
This would be a huge thing for even the most confident Kate Moss lookalike. But for someone who despised her overweight body as a teenager and feared she would always be unfanciable, it was a huge leap into the scary unknown. And so why do it?
"I thought I'm 36, I'm not tall, I'm certainly not slim, I don't have good skin, and I always look tired," she said. "But the MS Society asked me to do it and I like to do things that help the society promote greater understanding of the condition.
"The experience of MS can be very degrading at times. This is an opportunity to remind everyone – especially other women with MS – that we remain sensual beings, no matter what MS does to us.
"And the project might raise the esteem of other women with MS.
"And there are other, less politically correct reasons – I knew that if I didn't do it I'd regret it and not forgive myself, and if I didn't do it I'd be jealous of the women that did and I'd kick myself for my cowardice."
Her assessments of her appearance are far too harsh, by the way – in the flesh, Julie is a curvaceous, bubbly blonde with a natty line in leopard print coats, funky bags and a gentle, sexy voice. Her MS hasn't spelled the end of the world, and she is mostly fine, although gets tired easily.
She has been involved in the See Me . . . Then See Me project since last October, but the paintings were only unveiled last Thursday.
To put the pictures together, she posed for an hour in a number of spine-snapping poses, while Melissa took photos of her to work from.
Julie said: "Melissa doesn't look at your body like a body, she looks at it as a shape. I felt really comfortable taking my clothes off, and kind of forgot I was naked. Afterwards I talked to her naked, I didn't even think to put my clothes back on.
"And I like the pictures, especially the one that shows my face. I think they emphasise my sensuality rather than anything sexual, because if you look at my face it is serene, and I'm calm and in control of my body and my nakedness.
"This is who I am, I'm a woman of many aspects, and my physical aspects are just one part of me."
As a plump teenager, Julie dressed in black, baggy clothes and hid herself away. She was shy, awkward and introverted.
"I thought that I was unattractive, would always be unattractive, would marry someone unattractive and live an unattractive life. But this all changed as I got older, and at 17 my life began to change. I was a goth, and an attractive one at that!" she said.
"And then when I went to university in Brighton, to study librarianship, I met a whole new crowd of people who saw me in a different way, I saw myself in a different way and one day I woke up beautiful!"
Julie, from Woodston, said she has never struggled to attract male attention, and married one of the handsomest men she had ever clapped eyes on.
"I didn't think I'd get someone like him," she said. "But I married out of fear. We went through my MS diagnosis together and I thought 'Oh, we've been through so much together, we must get married', but it just wasn't right and so after seven-and-a-half years I left him."
Today, she is in a relationship, and has a wide, mainly male, circle of friends whom she quiet clearly adores.
"David, my partner, is so supportive and always tells me he's proud of me," she said. "But he accepts the way I am – he knows he has to share me with the world, and is fine with that.
"He sets me free rather than oppresses me."
She has come to terms with the way she looks, and said that recent experiences of sexual assault had confirmed her convictions.
She said: "I was groped on a bus in London, and it wasn't the first time it's happened. It was just disgusting, and left me wondering 'who would want to be more attractive?'"
The topic of physical disability and sex is perhaps the last taboo in our society. Just because a doctor tells you you have X, Y and Z doesn't mean that your desires, attractiveness and sex drive – and your sensuality – wither away to nothing.
But it's an issue seldom discussed in the media or anywhere else – which is perhaps why exhibitions like the one Julie is taking part in are so unusual, but also so interesting.
Hyperarticulate as well as supremely intelligent, Julie says everything worth saying on the subject when she writes in her blog: "Spend some moments talking to any woman with MS and whatever physical disability they might be contending with that day will fade into the background until you forget you're talking to a women with MS and realise you're simply talking to a woman.
"When the physical is gone, you're face-to-face with a woman who is embracing life, who is not beaten, who has all the sensuality that every woman has, and I think that is clear in the paintings.
"Our bodies are just a shell. Our bodies are not who we are. For me, it's our strength as women that makes us beautiful. Beauty Through Strength – and that is what my blog about the exhibition is called."
Read more about Julie's experience of posing nude for the exhibition on www.beautythroughstrength.blogspot.com.
Email to a friend
Print this page
Looking for...
Featured advertisers
Jobs
Search for a job
Motors
Search for a car
Property
Search for a house
Weather for Peterborough
Friday 10 February 2012
Today
Heavy snow
Temperature: -7 C to 1 C
Wind Speed: 10 mph
Wind direction: South east
Tomorrow
Sunny
Temperature: -5 C to -0 C
Wind Speed: 7 mph
Wind direction: South
Your view
Please sign in to be able to comment on this story.