Latest news with #MarlboroLight
New Statesman
11-06-2025
- Entertainment
- New Statesman
The rise of the West
Illustration by Charlotte Trounce Wednesday evening, I am sitting on the Golborne Road with a Marlboro Light and a glass of wine. I wait for some tardy friends. Neither the cigarette nor the Riesling are a new affectation; the late arrivals hardly unusual either. The location, however… Until now, heading west was not to be undertaken lightly. West London was the land of peppercorn sauce and claret, last exotic in the 1980s, maybe? It was where George Osborne and Nick Clegg dinner-partied; it was plummy, ruddy, taxidermy incarnate. As London recovered from the downbeat Seventies, its winners drifted to W postcodes, transforming the urban nastiness observed by Martin Amis into something banal, staid, French. By 2016 London Fields (the neighbourhood, not the novel) had condemned west London to social irrelevance. Dalston's identikit wine bars were the chosen destination for the 2018 bourgeois bohemian. Broadway Market was a Potemkin answer to New York's East Village – with 70 per cent more foliage. E8 asked the urgent question: what if we sat on the pavement instead? Well, it's time to smack the big red VIBE SHIFT button. Hackney, I love you. But it's over. Just look to the restaurant scene, the best weathervane for London's ecosystem. Restaurants – the mayfly businesses they are – open and close faster than long-term trends can often identify, outpacing slower tells of change like architectural evolution and even the think-piece economy. And here on the Golborne Road is proof of concept. It has wrested itself out of the culinary doldrums, where it had been languishing since the 1990s. The social gravity soon will follow. Our reservation is at a new opening, the Fat Badger. I'll forgive a great restaurant its terrible name. Also in my eyeline from outside the Golborne Deli is 2024's Canteen (a kind of River Café-lite, but don't tell them I said that) and Straker's (deservedly celebrated since 2022). What precipitated west resurrection? Well, it all starts with the Protestant Reformation and then the emergence of a globalised capitalist… no, hold on. I suspect the explanation is uncomplicated: Hackney was desirable for the aspiring restaurateur in the 2000s because rent was cheap. It was disconnected, the graphic designers had not yet moved in. But as the middle classes looked east, the prices rose with them. Hackney became desirable because Hackney was desirable and so Hackney became too desirable. In this cosmic battle between competing poles, east was felled by its success. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe The vibes-based explanation is slippier: contrary people set the weather, and what's more contrary than the belief that London's most hated postcodes might actually be its best? So, sitting in Ladbroke Grove over the weekend I wonder… is this cool? Geoff Dyer only lives down the road! Not quite. Go a little south and you'll find Fulham, the Privet Drive of the banker class. There is nothing recherché happening around Golborne Road either: our main course at the Fat Badger was still just roast beef. It is all a bit Blairite: two gastropubs – a ghoulish new Labour invention – have cropped up in the area, the Pelican and the Hero (both owned by the same imperial group as Canteen and the Badger). I pretend to know more about Amis than I do (a survival mechanism among colleagues as well read as mine). But I can tell you this: Amis's west London – the darts, the Black Cross Pub – has not returned with tremendous force. But nor has Keith Talent been entirely lost to the Bobo ascendancy. Both can be found in the Cow: at once a working-class pub and an expensive restaurant. And so, here I am on the Golborne Road, where the optimistic hedonism of New Labour meets the mannered sensibilities of Cameron's Conservatives. My friends still have not arrived. [See also: Los Angeles, Donald Trump and the moronic inferno] Related
Spectator
30-05-2025
- Politics
- Spectator
How can France ban outdoor smoking?
Faced with a cost-of-living crisis, rising delinquency, failing public services, and riots in the suburbs, the French government has finally sprung into action – it's banning smoking outdoors. Not entirely, of course, just in places where children might be. The new rules, coming into force in July, prohibit lighting up in any space 'frequented by children', which is as vague and self-important as it sounds. We're told this includes parks, beaches, bus stops and pavements near schools. Where else? No one knows. What is clear is that the state is now more concerned with puffing parents, than with knife crime or collapsing hospitals. The announcement came courtesy of Health Minister Catherine Vautrin, who described it, without irony, as a 'new dynamic' in France's anti-smoking campaign. It's hard to imagine a better illustration of political displacement. Unable to fix anything that actually matters, the French state contents itself with issuing €135 fines to middle-aged women having a Marlboro Light on a bench.
Times
25-04-2025
- Health
- Times
Experts say you should get healthy by 36. I didn't — am I doomed?
News just in from Finland: you are what you eat. Researchers there have found, in a nutshell, that if you sit on your arse smoking, drinking, eating crap and taking no exercise, you'll be in a bit of trouble by the time you're 36, and a lot when you're middle-aged. They tracked nearly 400 people throughout their lives and found they could eat, drink and be merry without consequences in their twenties. By their mid-thirties, though, it was taking a provable toll, from depression to heart disease. Their conclusion? Clean up your act before you hit middle age. This is entirely unsurprising and sort of proves one of my pet theories: only the very young can have more than one vice. If you eat rubbish, or take no exercise, or drink too much, you eventually need either to compensate in other areas, or grow the hell up and realise that moderation is key. But still, 36 is pretty young for reality to bite when it comes to vices, and I had a few. Am I doomed? • Party lifestyle takes its toll on health 'from age 36' I was a late starter, which is both good and bad. I didn't start drinking until after I left university, because I didn't like beer or spirits and it didn't occur to me to drink wine. No students drank wine back then — maybe it hadn't been invented. What had been invented was smoking, so I started doing that aged 21. Interesting choice, looking back, developing a Marlboro Light habit in early adulthood, but I embraced it with my customary enthusiasm and was soon on a packet a day. But I always said I'd give up when I was 30 and I did, six years shy of the Finnish deadline, and haven't had a puff since. That's got to be a tick, right? Or at least not total doom. Then there's food. I weaned myself off my sweet tooth during a long relationship with a man who didn't have one. Ordering pudding in a restaurant is no fun if you're eating it on your own, so everything sweet went out the window. Eventually, I lost the taste altogether, so that's another tick — plus my dentist loves me. I do remember a first, faint alarm bell, maybe in my late thirties, when a doctor told me I was basically fat but slim. I think he meant that I had no muscle and some sort of invisible, underlying fat, but hey. My age still began with a 3. I was invincible. I checked my figure in the mirror and reached for another chip. • The results of unhealthy lifestyles manifest sooner than expected The slimness is not unconnected to my aversion to exercise, because I find gyms soul-sappingly boring. The thought of those ghastly weights machines, or doing a spin class, any sort of organised activity appals me. More importantly, if most people went to the gym to lose weight, and in my thirties they seemed to, why should I bother? But then I celebrated my 40th with a cancer diagnosis. We needn't trouble ourselves here with the tedious details of that year, except to say that after surgery I was swollen. I think it was called an oedema, and whatever it was called, it would not go away. I forget all the things they tried, but I know they tried everything, for months, until one day a doctor looked up from my notes and said, 'You could always try swimming', so I did. Finally, I'd found an exercise regime and, when the swelling had gone, I realised I was swimming not for my figure, or my fitness, but my head. It's been more than a decade now, because when you're face down in a pool you can think about everything, or nothing. It's a 40-minute digital detox. Bliss. These days, the chips are fewer and further between, wine has definitely been invented and I've had to curb my enthusiasm for bread. I still think a cup of tea and a Marlboro Light is the greatest breakfast in the world, but I stick to the tea, and overall, I think the Finnish researchers would be pretty pleased with me. I went to an incredible health spa place last year, where a nutritionist insisted that chickpeas and lentils are just as nice for lunch as a sandwich. That's simply not true, but sandwiches and toast are now a treat, and the weight I lost there has never come back. As for the rest of me, they analysed everything and fingers crossed, it's looking good. I once asked my oncologist if I could still drink wine and eat bacon, or if I should change my job, avoid all stress and eat nothing but broccoli. He looked at me, appalled. 'Live your life,' he said, so I do. Everything else is luck.
Buzz Feed
26-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Buzz Feed
Gen Xers Are Getting Real About The Parts Of The '90s That Most People Gloss Over, And The Rose-Colored Glasses Are ALL The Way Off
Today, most people view the 1990s as the last "great" decade — a time of peace and advancement in all aspects of life, from technology to the destigmitazion of certain marginalized groups. However, there comes a point when an individual acknowledges that nostalgia has heavily tinted their view of the past. While some long for a time when life was "easier," many realize that the '90s had its fair share of dark moments... This is why when Redditor u/OoglyBoogly00 asked, " Everyone always talks about how good the '90s were. What was bad about the '90s?" Gen Xers flooded the comments to share the often-overlooked negative side of the '90s. From mental health stigma to kidnappings, here are 17 aspects of the '90s no one discusses: Content warning: sexism, violence, anti-LBGTQ, eating disorders, abuse, kidnappings, school shootings, and mental illness. 1. "'Heroin chic,' obsessive diet culture, and rampant eating disorders — it didn't start in the '90s, but that's when it became the norm, and it was awful." — u/aka-hellcat "Female celebrities were shrinking to child sizes and getting praised for it. 'Thinspo' was a thing. ALL my friends group from high school and college, including myself, had eating disorders — Marlboro Light and Diet Coke for every meal. Our idea of sports was extreme cardio only. We were SO unhealthy. Thank God we were young enough to bounce back to normal without major issues." — u/peruvianheidi 2. "The constant fear of being kidnapped. My mom always told my sister and me to stay close to her when we were out because too many kids were getting taken. I remember seeing posters of missing children at the supermarket, and it was sad and scary." — u/Ehh_Maybe88 "I was under the age of 10 throughout the '90s. My biggest fear was getting lost (while driving, from my parents, etc.) Nowadays, you can use Google Maps anywhere, call your parents if you're lost, and put GPS trackers on your kids. But back then, if you lost your child or took a wrong turn on the highway and got disoriented, things could escalate quickly." — u/ImmediateKale 3. "The 1990–1991 recession, aka the ' Gulf War Recession,' people seem to forget how many blue-collar families became unemployed and lost their homes." — u/Useafriggincoaster "This recession is actually what greased the skids for Bill Clinton in the 1992 election with James Carville's famous ' It's the economy stupid! ' And he had a point. I voted for Bush in 1988, but by 1991-92, I was desperate for a full-time job and struggled to find one." — u/Plane-Ad6931 4. "Between AIDS, 'don't ask, don't tell,' the Defense of Marriage Act, Matthew Shepard's murder, etc., coming out of the closet was scary as hell. We made some gains, and it felt like we were closer to acceptance, but there was so much backlash and fear." — u/Uffda01 "Growing up as a queer kid in the '90s meant I had no LGBTQ+ role models to look up to, so I learned to lie about myself in order to survive. I came out when I was in high school in the early 2000s, and more than half of my 'friends' stopped talking to me. In middle school in the late '90s, the school psychologist tried to force me to come out so she could shame me in front of my parents. She also interviewed all my friends to try to find out if I ever acted 'gay' around them and even wanted to know if I had ever tried to kiss them; the school knew all about this. One of my friends was sent to a conversion camp, and we didn't hear from him again until Facebook became popular. I sometimes still wonder how the hell I survived, but I'm glad I did." — u/Supergatovisual 5. "Everyone loves the music from the '90s, but it's all so bleak. Most of the grunge bands were singing about addiction, severe depression, and barely coping. I think a lot of that bled into mainstream society. The 'alternative' music scene was rife with gut-wrenching lyrics." "I was in high school/college then, and I can't go back and listen to bands like Alice In Chains, Mad Season, Nirvana, and Pearl Jam anymore. Back in the day, I listened to it constantly, and I loved it, but in hindsight, I think it harmed my psyche. Thank God I found The Grateful Dead when I did." — u/Sturgen 6. "Being a child diagnosed with autism in the '90s, I was lumped in the special education classes despite not needing them, and it sucked. Back then, anyone who was autistic was typically thought of as 'slow.'" — u/Ok-Examination9090 "My mum worked in special education, and she knew I had autism, but she adamantly refused to get me diagnosed because she understood the way the system worked and knew they would have just put me in the lower classes, and I didn't need that. I tell people today, 'My mum knew I was autistic and didn't do anything,' and people see that as neglect or callousness, but honestly, it is hard to say she was wrong. I never heard of an autistic kid from my generation getting any help that wasn't just slower-paced teaching." — u/EfficientDelivery359 7. "It was in the '90s that American politicians — specifically Republicans — decided to stop working with each other, and the right-wing echo chamber was created, forever destroying the 'news.' This can largely be attributed to Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, and the sh*tshow around the Clinton impeachment." — u/MotorizedDoucheCanoe "It saw the beginning of the process where the Republican Party completely abandoned its values, its intellectual wing was wiped out, and Rush Limbaugh laid the groundwork for Fox News. It's hard to fathom now, but in 1993, your typical college Republican had consistent economic and philosophical principles. It was actually a point of pride among them that they approached problems with intellectual rigor — they considered themselves people who thought deeply about national problems and were guided by their logic, rather than their emotions." — u/HotspurJr 8. "Mental health support was still stigmatized as something only 'crazy' people got. My dad died in '97, and I had a complete psychotic breakdown in '99. My mom cried while asking if I wanted to see a psychiatrist. Going to therapy was viewed as a death sentence." — u/workmagic18 9. "Misogynistic comments were hurled at women on a day-to-day basis. I was grabbed in various situations, pushed in corners, kissed involuntarily from the time I was 11 years old, etc. As a girl, you just had to live with it. " "Belittling, discouraging comments towards women, especially young ones, were normal; society expected its women to be pretty and available at all times but saints and virgins in their minds and bodies. So, basically, like today." — u/strangerinthebox 10. "Neighborhoods were far more dangerous. Gangs were constantly having turf wars over useless stuff. Cops got away with framing whoever they wanted because there were no cell phones to film them, and the jury always believed the cop over some 'hoodlum.'" — u/TroXMas "Gangs were rampant in the 90s — everywhere. I grew up in a suburb, but we still had ESL, aka 'Bloods,' Crypts, New Wave, Skinheads, etc., represented. Kids were pressured into joining these gangs when they were young. I witnessed my first major gang fight in eighth grade when thirty kids began brawling after school. The next Monday, I had friends on crutches; one kid got sliced with a knife, thankfully not deep, and four others had broken bones in their hands, etc. No one talked to anyone about anything, so there were no suspensions." — u/OpticalPrime35 11. "Maybe it was my house, but everything was 'low-fat' or 'non-fat' and tasted like sh*t. As it later turned out, the fat wasn't the problem but the sugar they put in everything." — u/Grateful_Dawg_CLE "The 'poison food' era — full of dyes, sugar, preservatives, and artificial ingredients, packaged and microwaved in plastic for your convenience. The nutritional guidance was so bad it kicked off an obesity epidemic we're only solving now, thanks to breakthrough medication." — u/Responsible-Salt-443 12. "If your family lived in a rural area and wasn't rich enough to immediately buy a computer, you could be lonely in a way that people can't even comprehend now. I spent the last two years of high school doing nothing, watching TV and playing 16-bit RPGs repeatedly because I couldn't get anywhere or do anything." "And yes, I know that sounds super chill nowadays, but back then, it could be very depressing — especially when you knew that the kids who had cars were going to concerts and coffee houses while you were just home alone doing nothing. It was maddening." — u/chronorin 13. "School shootings became normalized." — u/FreshwaterViking "Columbine deeply altered my worldview. I was a kid in the '90s, and until 1999, at the age of 13, I was never concerned about a school shooting — it just wasn't a thing. When I say it wasn't a thing, I don't mean it didn't happen, but school shootings weren't front-page news and dinner table conversations. I don't know if this is even right or not, but it felt like that was a turning point in history because, after that, school shootings have been more prevalent. I went 13 years without the remote concern of a school shooter. Who can say that now?" — u/Sadoul1214 14. "Cigarette smoke was everywhere — stores, malls, you name it. Smoking sections in restaurants were sometimes on the left side of an aisle as if that helped. It was so weird when my parents quit smoking because I stopped being nose blind to the smell. That sh*t REEKS." "When I was a teenager, we moved, and while packing, we removed the pictures on the wall and noticed white squares left where they had been hung. The change was so gradual that none of us noticed it — so nasty. Until that point, both of my parents previously stopped smoking IN the house but still smoked elsewhere. That was the final straw that caused my father to fully quit." — u/SithLordSky 15. "Child abuse and neglect were more normalized. It still exists today, but at least now the schools care and are mandated reporters, and people are better about stepping up to stop blatant public displays of abuse; no one stopped it back in the day." "If a parent grabbed a kid by their hair, hit them, or screamed obscenities at them, the public at large would just mind their business or even jump in to defend the parents' 'right to discipline,' and teachers were allowed to beat us at school. Any adult could hit a child, and people would just stand there and agree with it. Most friends I had growing up were 'latchkey' kids and neglected at home from super young ages. They had to walk home from elementary school, cook dinner for themselves, feed their siblings, and care for the house. Parents didn't seem to care about their kids. At night, commercials asked: 'Did you hug your child today?' And 'It's 10 p.m. Do you know where your child is?' Those commercials/PSAs started decades before, but they continued throughout the late '90s." — u/OhMaeOhMy 16. "Drunk driving didn't have the stigma it does today. It took a long campaign waged by MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) to shift public perception on how dangerous drunk driving is." — u/stolenfires "When I was a child, we had a group of family friends whose kids were all around the same age. The parents would throw house parties, taking turns hosting and partying hard while the kids played. At the end of the night, they'd all load the kids in the car and drive home absolutely hammered. Everyone was like this — not just my parents' friend group. I'm sure it still happens today, but I haven't seen it." — u/No_Principle_4282 17. "There was a lot of media pitting girls against girls and framing other women as competition, not friends." "People would say the most unhinged things about my (and others') looks and hobbies, and it was socially acceptable for them to do so. It was wild that being a mean girl was encouraged. I'm so glad we've moved past that as a society; the '90s were a brutal time." — u/BananaRepublic0 Did any of these negative aspects of the '90s surprise you? What do you think people tend to overlook about the '90s? Let us know in the comments! (Or, if you prefer to remain anonymous, you can answer using this Google Form). Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity. The National Alliance on Mental Illness helpline is 1-800-950-6264 (NAMI) and provides information and referral services; is an association of mental health professionals from more than 25 countries who support efforts to reduce harm in therapy. If you or someone you know is struggling with an eating disorder, The National Alliance for Eating Disorder helpline can be reached at 866-662-1235 in the US. The helpline is run by clinicians and offers emotional support for individuals and their family, as well as referrals for all levels of eating disorder care. is an organization that provides resources to prevent harassment and bullying against children. Stomp Out Bullying offers a free and confidential chat line here. If you are concerned that a child is experiencing or may be in danger of abuse, you can call or text the National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-422-4453 ( service can be provided in over 140 languages. If you or someone you know has experienced anti-LGBTQ violence or harassment, you can contact the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs hotline at 1-212-714-1141.
The Guardian
16-03-2025
- Health
- The Guardian
‘Boxing let me be angry': Anna Whitwham
I am standing in the middle of the boxing ring, a stage lit up like a theatre. I've hit the woman so hard she staggers back into the ropes. The pause makes me relax. I think I've won, but I'm wrong. Rage moves her. Boxing can be like a game of chess, a play on stillness and control. But not now, and not here. I am scrappy and wild. When she comes for me, I launch myself at her. My face can take this pounding – it's been thickened by temper and that's enough. Then she hits me and my legs buckle and my head spins. There is the thud of silence as I scramble for sense – but it's over. My body is done. I started boxing soon after my mum died. It had been a long and brutal three years of watching the tumour take over, edging closer to her throat. It happened during Covid, so visiting her in the hospice felt clandestine and sneaky – we'd stalk the silent wards in masks, hands raw with sanitiser, scared to touch each other. I nursed and helped her to the end. I witnessed how the mechanisms of her body stopped working. I watched Mum stop eating because her body wouldn't let her swallow. Bedsores stopped her sleeping. She needed extra blankets to stop the mattress causing her pain. It was the slowness of it. I saw the cancer break her to nothing, her body fade and fall away to nothing but a ghost. The pain of it, too, the endless morphine and her dreadful sleeps that always looked as if she'd died. I had to clean and feed her, and witness how reduced she felt by this. All her power and the magic and the force of her turned to a ghoulish stillness; her sentences broken, breathless and rasping. The tumour even took her voice in the end. Grief was thick and unmanageable. I was desperate to find a way to get to some other side, to actualise the pain and rage I felt. I found it in boxing. Or boxing found me. I was waiting for my daughter to finish dance class when I saw the fighters swagger into the building. They were beautiful. When I asked what was going on, their trainer asked if I wanted to fight, too. I said yes. It made sense. My grandfather had been a boxer, my daughter's father also. Boxing had always been there. I was often angry. I spent my 20s trying to soothe myself with all kinds of self-harm: truancy, drugs, fights, cutting. Mum would sit with me and hold my hand until dawn, until clarity and sleep. She made it better. She was kind, so patient, waiting for me to understand myself. I didn't go to school for a while, I truanted, I wasted everyone's time. Those tired teachers and my broken-hearted parents. I was a teenager in the 90s and hung around with boys in bands. We flocked around all that indie sleaze, our currency based on how thin and pretty we could be. Always so grateful to be on the list, or backstage, I reduced myself, dangling a Marlboro Light and holding my tongue, tiny and quiet in stilettos. Desperate to be a body they would desire. Desperate that I would be chosen. I didn't consider sex as something I could enjoy as well. When things felt too much, like a bad relationship getting worse, I cut marks into my arm. They will never go away. The gloss-pink scabs have faded to scraggy ghosts, curled and white, but they never vanish. Motherhood stopped this. My body belonged to my daughter, so I took better care of it. When I became a single mother I was even more aware of how I held myself in front of her, the way my daughter saw me walk into rooms. How she saw me talked to by men, what I did with my myself. I always try to hide the scars from her. Or I lie. They are the thing I can never get rid of. Boxing felt like the opposite of self-harm. The bruises were a way of showing up for myself – and my daughter. They helped me take care of myself. It gave me space to rearrange patterns, to turn grief into bruises that came and went. The hurt and the healing was clean, simple. My fight was violent. My friends tell me afterwards that it wasn't nice to watch me fold and sway and fall. But they also tell me how good it was to see me hold myself tall again, to find my corner and walk out of the ring. I had looked to where my daughter was sitting. I knew she was watching from somewhere in the dark and I knew she had to watch me walk out like I was fine and owned my body. She had to see me strong, able. I was concussed, but she didn't know that. She thought I was smiling at her. Afterwards, when I looked in the mirror, I saw my face in all its bashed-in glory. I saw the damage done. Things blurred, but the jagged whips on my face, where the glove caught my face, were precise and definite, as if I'd done it with makeup, the markings of a real fight. My purple mouth busted to a beautiful, plummy smile, the cracked eye and scuffed forehead stinging with scrapes. I took out the braids and my hair stayed stiff, frazzled and crimped down my shoulders, which were still sticky with sweat. My arms so muscled and big in the black Everlast top I wore for this fight, a cut to my left shoulder blade – I was bigger than I had ever been. I felt pumped and silky in black. My body had power. I felt strong, something cosmic, magical, even though the fight ended with so much drama and hurt. Especially because the fight ended with so much drama and hurt. I ran red lipstick over my mouth, careful not to touch the places where the skin had cut. I often wonder what Mum would have made of me boxing. When she sat and held my hand and asked me why I had to keep hurting myself, would she see this as more of the same? But there was a moment when she was a day from death, her body so out of breath and her chest barely rising, when she grabbed my hand and told me I was strong. She told the nurse I was strong. She sat up to say it. I think she would wince at the bruises, the same way I would if I saw my daughter's face patched blue and brown. But she would love that I was standing with such certainty through my life without her, walking into a new power, all that temper harnessed, finally. I imagine her at the fights, sitting close to the ring, telling me to keep going. She appears in dreams and doorways, too, making sure I keep living. I had to go to an extreme place to get better. I took fighting as far as I could. Now I have found a place that feels peaceful, where I can pause. I have allowed myself to be in love and to enjoy all its softness. My mum's absence is a reality I am learning to get used to. This is the world without her. I am living again. I make life happen for my daughter. My body is her body, too. She is now 10, and graceful and beautiful and strong, as if she has gathered all the best parts of her ancestry, an elegant toughness from all the women before her. I watched her navigate a group of noisy teenage boys playing football last week. She sailed through them with a calm confidence that the space was hers just as much as it was theirs. She came with me to get my nails done last week. They are long and acrylic and the colour of gunpowder, gold stars on my ring finger. It means punching will feel less comfortable in gloves. Perhaps I had to give my departure from fighting its own ceremony. The fake nails feel like some ending: I was supposed to fight next month, and now I can't. Boxing was scaffolding. It held me together so I could heal, become bigger, louder. It gave me an armour – it let me get to that next bit of grief. I had to go to the hardest place to know how I could be soft again. To know how to live without mum holding my hand when life felt impossible. It will always be the thing that saved me, even if I don't fight again. I was always strong: boxing helped me to remember this. However, it wasn't always this way. I remember when I couldn't shadow-box. I was too embarrassed and awkward to move around the ring on my own, uncomfortable to be so exposed and so on show. I'd try to do it in a corner of the gym so I wouldn't be seen. My trainer would have to get me back to the middle of the floor, make me face myself in the mirror. The first few spars I had would cause me such anxiety, not because I was going to be hurt, but because I was going to get looked at. I didn't know how to be seen when I wasn't trying to be pretty. Boxing moved me into a new space where I could. Brutal and beautiful, boxing let me be angry. A new kind of makeup and face – the stripes across my nose and the bruised eye; the swollen, plump lip. I knew it was confrontational and touched nerves around women and violence. But I loved being so brazenly and openly ugly, I chose it and enjoyed it without shame. The real violence was holding my tongue and shrinking, not the black eye or busted nose. Fighting allowed me to bring my body to a place where being hurt was a kind of vitality and a reassuring pattern I could be held safely in: if I hurt, then I would surely heal, too. It changed my relationship to pain. I always got better, every time, every week. Healing was as inevitable as the scrape or break. My body also became my mother's body, the pop of a new bruise a reminder of her. I was getting better for both of us. I am now able to hold my body in the world without a boxing ring. I still have my shoulders, too big for the dresses in my wardrobe. And I still have the nose, a little fattened from punches. And I can still make a fist. I am proud of this body, of its size and shape and history. I will always know I did it and could do it, and my body was so good at healing itself. Soft Tissue Damage by Anna Whitwham is published by Rough Trade at £14.99 on 27 March. To preorder a copy, go to
