Book Review - Decolonising My Body By Afua Hirsch

Ours is a culture that glorifies youth. I am 35 years old and only just left that most coveted 18-34 demographic last year. Time is doing that pesky thing it seems to be a fan of marching forwards without any regard for how any of us might feel about it. As a result, I feel like I only just had my last birthday and I’m already staring down the barrel of turning 36 next month. Ageing is one thing in this world which is inevitable and yet there are entire industries devoted to holding it back. The ultra wealthy are all in on the defying ageing game as can be seen with billionaire Bryan Johnson’s obsession with staying alive to the point where his entire life, and vast fortune, is devoted entirely to that singular goal. An alternative to this approach is to accept ageing as part of life, and instead of focusing on the doors that close to us as we age look to the new doors that open. That is the path Afua Hirsch has chosen to walk with Decolonising My Body. Decolonising My Body is part memoir part travelogue as Hirsch undertook what she calls a “year of adornment” upon turning 40. The book charts the journey her life took her on as she reclaimed her beauty, heritage, and spirituality reconnecting with her roots, and her body.

      When she writes about ageing, and her own response to it Hirsch writes about one aspect of aging that I will never have to experience: menopause. She writes, particularly early in the book, about being peri-menopausal and how knowing menopause is drawing closer she feels a pressure to decide whether she wants a second child or not. She even mentions consulting a doctor about getting her eggs frozen so she has more time to decide. She writes about her own menstrual cycle as something she previously felt she had to power through, refusing to let cramps or fatigue keep her from working. Part of her year of adornment means decolonising her mind as well as her body and she spoke to a woman called Lawrence who describes herself as a “holder of shared space”. Lawrence explained the power of the menstrual cycle in spiritual terms. To Lawrence the menstrual cycle should be listened to and attended, not considered embarrassing or unwanted. When Hirsch writes about what she learned from Lawrence there is an edge of pain to her writing. She identifies western societal norms around ignoring the physical toll menstruation can take on the body and not letting it slow you down and writes with regret at not having learned from Lawrence sooner. As Hirsch puts it “Our mothers didn’t know how to tell us because they were raised in the wake of culturally annihilating European Empires, or patriarchal religious institutions fearful of women’s knowledge and bodies, or a version of modernity that demonised the rituals of old.” She seems to resent that she was denied this information, this wisdom and guidance, earlier in her life, and part of the point of the book is discovering what else she was denied, and ensuring the same doesn’t happen to her daughter.

      This process of unlearning, and relearning about herself, and her body is the heart of the book and the chief purpose to Hirsch’s year of adornment. She challenges the Eurocentric beauty standards imposed by British society throughout the book. Hirsch does this by examining the way British society, and the beauty, and fashion industries are constantly moving the goal posts when it comes to beauty standards. She highlights the way magazines glorified the extreme thinness of so called “heroine-chic” when she was growing up in the 90’s, only to now offer advice on how to make your rear end as large as possible. This is so much so that according to Hirsch the global market for butt implants was $1.5 billion in 2020, projected to increase by a further 22% per year until 2028. The standards seem to be constantly shifting in the west so no matter what women do they can never win, but they can keep paying to try. As long as there’s gold in those hills the beauty and fashion industries won’t stop finding ways to dig it up. Again, Hirsch shows that this isn’t the way things have to be by contrasting this with Ghana. She writes that contrary to the messaging in the west when she has been there, she has been told that she’s not fat enough, and that in West and Central Africa fat is considered nature’s necklace.

      Hirsch doesn’t stop at butt implants or body size. She looks at all the money that people put in to try to meet these impossible standards. For example, she reveals that the average British woman will spend an estimated £70,294 on their appearance over their lifetime. It’s not just about the money either as Hirsch points out; beauty is its own kind of labour as it takes a lot of time, and work to hit those standards too. In an extended section of her chapter on beauty, Hirsch looks at body hair as an example. She reveals that the average British woman will spend an estimated £23,000 of that £70,294 just on body hair removal over the course of their lifetime and describes how she herself got laser hair removal done. She then contrasts this fixation on removing body hair with Ghana where body hair on women, including chin hair, and chest hair, are considered beautiful. She writes about how while attending a wedding in Accra she was struck by the bride who “had a thick, visible patch of dark hair on her chest. And far from removing it, she had had her dress cut to accentuate the detail.” Not only had the bride not spent any money to remove her chest hair, but she had gone in the exact opposite direction, spending money to make sure her wedding dress showed it off. In Ghana, body hair is not something to be removed with expensive waxing or laser treatments, it is something to flaunt and be proud of.

      Hirsch doesn’t just use comparisons between British societal norms, and societal norms across Africa in her project of decolonising herself. She goes on deep dives into the history of these norms interrogating and investigating the role colonisation, and the British empire has had on shaping both British, and African society. These tangents are peppered throughout the book and give added context and weight to what Hirsch is going through and discovering about herself. An example of this can be seen again with attitudes towards body hair. Hirsch lays a lot of blame for the West’s apparent disgust at body hair at the feet of Charles Darwin. She writes that before his work on evolution in the west attitudes towards body hair were much more relaxed. There were indeed hair removal processes that predate Darwin, but they were less socially enforced. After Darwin’s work stating that man evolved from apes the idea that body hair was an evolutionary hangover from humanity’s more ape like ancestors took root. The removal of body hair became not just about attractiveness, but a sign of being more civilized, or even more human than others. The implications here are obvious, and the understanding of this historical context adds a more insidious tone to the western focus on removing body hair. These explorations of history interspersed through the book further informs the reader on why Hirsch chose to go on this year of adornment. They almost reframe her process of self-decolonisation and growth as an act of rebellion against systems and thought patterns heavily influenced by the spectres of the British empire and colonialism.

      There are further examples I could give including how Hirsch writes about the history and cultural significance of waist beads, and how the perception of them has changed over time but I will draw this piece to a close. There is much more I could delve into in Hirsch’s writing, but this is meant to be a review, not a recap. Hirsch weaves together history, travel, and her self-reflection and re-evaluation with a deftness, and skill that shows in every page. Like her book Brit(ish), which I have previously reviewed for TREC, Decolonising My Body is a book I would recommend to as many people as possible. I know I have a tendency to recommend every book I review to the point where it would be surprising for me to not recommend one. That’s because some of my main criteria when looking for books are to expand my mind and give me insight into other perspectives. For me, Decolonising My Body does just that, and if it can do that for me maybe it can do the same for others if they too follow Hirsch on her year of adornment.

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