ON BODY IMAGE… With Martine Wright and Paloma Faith

Body image is a common theme on How to Fail. It’s something everyone at some point has either struggled with personally, or knows someone who has. We hear from Paloma Faith on the topic - she speaks about being thrown out of ballet school aged 10, because she showed signs of becoming curvy, and that wasn’t the correct body for a ballet dancer. Then we go to a part of my conversation with the incredible British sitting volleyball player, Martine Wright. Martine lost both of her legs in the 7/7 London bombings in 2005 and speaks so eloquently about how she actually wouldn’t change anything. She is now a mother, a wife, a charity ambassador, certified pilot and the recipient of an MBE. I hope this episode offers comfort to anyone who’s ever struggled with body image and acts as a reminder that there’s beauty in every version of ourselves. Listen to Martine Wright’s full episode of How to Fail here: https://play.megaphone.fm/c1ou6g8zq3ankh8y2boutg Listen to Paloma Faith’s full episode of How to Fail here: https://play.megaphone.fm/zl1lqe-ht3mcpkqkbuo9ha 🔗 LINKS + MENTIONS: www.martinewright.co.uk Elizabeth’s Substack: https://theelizabethday.substack.com/ Join the How To Fail community: https://howtofail.supportingcast.fm/#content 💌 LOVE THIS EPISODE? Subscribe on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts Leave a 5⭐ review – it helps more people discover these stories 👋 Follow How To Fail & Elizabeth: Instagram: @howtofailpod @elizabday TikTok: @howtofailpod @elizabday Website: www.elizabethday.org Have a failure you’re trying to work through for Elizabeth to discuss? Click here to get in touch: howtofailpod.com How to Fail is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment Production. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts To bring your brand to life in this podcast, email [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Elizabeth Day?

  One of the things we talk about a lot on How to Fail is how difficult it can be to take that first step, and starting a business is no exception. With Black Friday approaching, it's a great time to turn an idea into reality. Shopify makes launching an online store easier with ready-made themes and AI-powered tools, including Sidekick, its AI assistant, which helps you set up your shop and plan promotions without needing coding skills. Whether you're exploring a new venture or finally acting on an idea you've had for years, Shopify gives you the tools and support to get started with confidence and make the most of the busy shopping season. If you're ready to launch your business before Black Friday, go to Shopify.co.uk/fail

• 0:45Elizabeth Day?

  to start your free trial. That's Shopify.co.uk/fail. Go to Shopify.co.uk/fail today to hear your first...

• 0:57Elizabeth Day?

  One of the things I hear a lot from listeners is how tiring it can be when your mind just doesn't settle. And I can only imagine this feels even heavier with intrusive thoughts. It's that quiet sense of being worn down by something you never asked for and never wanted, but just can't seem to switch off. If you struggle with this, I want to tell you about NoCD, because it's a resource that genuinely helps people. NoCD provides specialised treatment for OCD. And what I appreciate about their approach is how human it feels. You're matched with a licensed therapist trained in ERP therapy. That's Exposure and Response Prevention. And over time, you learn skills that help your OCD symptoms become manageable, so you can live more of the life you want to live.

• 1:42Elizabeth Day?

  If you're struggling with OCD or unrelenting intrusive thoughts, NoCD can help. Book a free 15-minute call to get started at learn.nocd.com/fail. Hello there. I'm diving into the back catalogue, bringing you moments of insight, laughter and truth from past guests. These themed How To Fail episodes are a chance to reflect on the universal experiences that connect us all. This week, we're looking at body image, how we see ourselves and how those perceptions are shaped by life's challenges and experiences. Today, we're discussing a common theme that comes up among my guests:

• 2:23Elizabeth Day?

  how they feel about their physical selves, something everyone at some point has either struggled with personally, or might know someone who has. Firstly, we hear from Paloma Faith, from her original episode in February 2024. Paloma speaks about being thrown out of ballet school aged 10 because she showed signs of becoming curvy, and that apparently wasn't the correct body for a ballet dancer. Then we go to a part of my conversation with the incredible British sitting volleyball player, Martine Wright. Martine lost both of her legs in the 7/7 London bombings in 2005, and speaks so eloquently about how she actually wouldn't

• 3:05Elizabeth Day?

  change a thing. She's now a mother, a wife, a charity ambassador, certified pilot, and the recipient of an MBE. I hope this episode offers comfort to anyone who's ever struggled with body image, and acts as a reminder that there's beauty and strength in every single version of ourselves.

• 3:27Elizabeth Day?

  Your first failure is being thrown out of ballet school aged 10. Why were you thrown out? Because this is the really heartbreaking bit.

• 3:35Speaker 01

  I was thrown out because I showed signs of becoming curvy, and that wasn't like the correct body for a ballet dancer. And I was really committed. I was at like a proper ballet school and I went four times a week after school. And then they, they told me that. They didn't, they just said, we just don't feel like your body type will be suited, which was a big moment, which has probably influenced me. I think I've got like, like a slightly, I always talk about body positivity, like I'm envious of it. I'm really body negative.

• 4:16Elizabeth Day?

  I know. And then I feel negative about being body negative because I feel like I should be being body positive.

• 4:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, you want to lead by example, you're desperate for it, but you can't. Although I'm quite good at it with my children, I think. So as long as I can make two women be body positive, then I've succeeded, setting realistic goals.

• 4:38Speaker 01

  But I think, um, yeah, it was a bit of a blow and then it made me sort of obsessed with it forever. Basically, that was it.

• 4:48Elizabeth Day?

  What form did that obsession take?

• 4:51Speaker 01

  I didn't ever develop an eating disorder, which I'm grateful for, but I I did go on to dance school and I have body dysmorphia, like I don't act on it in sort of like addictive ways, but like it doesn't, sometimes I look at photos and I just think I was huge in that photo. But then I'll see the photo and be like, I wasn't. Like in my mind, it's like, I was really sad at that point because I felt I was overeating or whatever. And then I'll see a picture of it or a video and be like, I've never been like, and I tell people as well, I've I've said in interviews even, and I won't say it today.

• 5:33Speaker 01

  I've said like, my weight's always fluctuated and actually it really hasn't, like, I mean, within half a stone, but like, the only time it ever did was postpartum and I was just really headstrong about it and I just got on with it. I just got rid of it. I was, I don't think I've ever it's been as bad as it is in my mind, like the torment of it. And I really, like you say, wish that I wasn't because I see other people owning who they are and owning their bodies. And I just feel like they're amazing and inspiring and all of that. I just can't get there.

• 6:10Elizabeth Day?

  How much of that self critical voice is actually you, do you think? And how much of it is conditioning ballet school?

• 6:22Elizabeth Day?

  The nineties being told that a bowl of special K a day was a good diet to shift those extra pounds. I know it's probably quite difficult to sort of separate all of those strands.

• 6:33Speaker 01

  Well, I call it the inner bully because it's sort of a permanent thing. And if you speak to anybody who's had sort of a successful career, most of them have quite a loud inner bully, because it does also motivate you. And I think that actually, when you talk about body, relationship with your body, it's not usually about your actual body in a literal sense. It's to do with saying you can try harder, you've got to be better. And I think, like, growing up, my mum was always really encouraging of me as I was and never put any pressure on me. I had some learning difficulties as a kid, and then suddenly just excelled overnight. And it was really strange. I was in the Hackney Gazette for

• 7:17Speaker 01

  doing really well in this underachieving school. But I was kind of like very bottom end until I was about thirteen, slow reader, slow, all these things. And my mum was just always like, you'll come to it in your own time. And my dad was always like, even when I did well, he'd be like, why isn't it an A star? If I said I got an A, that's how we graded it back then in the olden days. That's what my daughter calls me. In the olden days, when you were little. Like, I'm not that old. But then it just becomes this thing of like, me always feeling like that child that was behind, always feeling like I needed to prove something. Even like, once I'd got to dance school, one of the

• 8:01Speaker 01

  teachers called me to her office and was like, did you write this essay? Because it's extraordinary. And I was like, yeah. But she goes, but why do you present yourself as like a bit stupid? And I was like, do I? She's like, I don't, I don't, I can't believe you wrote it. And I was like, I just think that I'm not pretentious. Doesn't mean that I'm stupid. Anyway, all that stuff, it kind of like adds up, doesn't it? And over years and years, it mounts and you're like, I have to prove this thing.

• 8:35Elizabeth Day?

  One of the reasons I was extremely keen to have you on this podcast is because I'm aware that I talk about failure a lot and so do my guests, but failure is different when you experience the world in a different and marginalised way. I can have no idea of what failure is like from the perspective of a person of colour, someone who's homeless, someone who lives with a chronic illness, and I also can have no idea of what it's like to experience failure as a disabled person living in an able-bodied world. And I wondered if I could ask you to speak to that. Has your notion of what failure is changed according to the context of the world that

• 9:20Elizabeth Day?

  you find yourself in?

• 9:21Speaker 02

  I think obviously you can't go through what I went through that day without it affecting your life and my life and all of our lives and all of the subsequent attacks that have since happened over the last 15 years. We can't get away from that. But I suppose, has it changed as a disabled person? I suppose my whole journey has changed. When that happened, on that morning, that Thursday morning, in that, I know it sounds cheesy, but in that split second of when that bomb went off, my life completely changed. And as a result of that, I think my motivations, my failures, you know, what I see as failures, did change, did change with me.

• 10:03Speaker 02

  I am still in essence, Martin, I might have slightly shorter legs or thinner ankles, as I said, that's it, prosthetic legs give you really thin ankles, but I have changed. And as a result, I think those failures and what you achieve have failed. I suppose I have changed as well. And I suppose I liken it back to why I went off. And I think a big thing for a mindset or coping with the world that we live in now or have been living or how I've dealt with my life over the last 15 years, I think grabbing opportunities, not being scared of grabbing opportunities is really, really important. And I think I realised this very early on when I was in hospital, because I woke up and obviously I saw that I was someone else.

• 10:47Speaker 02

  I just kept looking down in my bed at that point and saying, I've got no legs, I've got no legs, I couldn't see, I thought my life was over. That was it, I wanted to die. And I think the hardest thing to deal with for me, and when I speak to other patients in hospital, I'm a mentor now for people, a lot of the time they say the hardest thing to deal with was the memories of who I once was and how I used to do things. And I understand that and I remember very early on in hospital thinking my life is over, I'm not going to be able to do this. I was a international marketing manager, I used to travel around the world, I had a big team of people. How was I going to do that now?

• 11:30Speaker 02

  And I think the main question I had to ask myself is really what I was going to do about it. All our journeys change, our life changes. We might not even know what's going to happen in life until it happens in life to us. And I think it's just that ability to be able to cope with those memories. And what I decided to do to cope with those memories is I decided to create new ones. And I decided to, I suppose, grab those opportunities that I never ever thought that I would have an opportunity to do. So for instance, you've mentioned flying. Yeah, I did go up to South Africa and did about fifty five hours of flying, flying planes on my own. But why did I do that? I question myself, why did I do that? Well,

• 12:13Speaker 02

  who wouldn't want to go to South Africa for six weeks to fly planes? But why did I do that? Do you know why? Because I had in my brain, okay, I might not be able to run for that bus anymore. I might be not, I was obsessed with people walking along the road, aimlessly talking into a mobile phone. I can't do that. If I'm on my prosthetic legs, or if I'm in a wheelchair, especially on my prosthetic legs. You know, the pavement out there is like the Himalayas, you can't concentrate on something else. So why did I want to jump out of a plane? Why did I want to, yeah, go off and fly planes? And it was about creating those memories, but it was really about, okay, Elizabeth, you might be able to run a hundred metres or run for that bus, but you know what I can do? I can fly a plane. And

• 12:58Speaker 02

  it was that strength that if I hadn't gone through this such a negative thing, or maybe a failure, a failure to get up that morning on time, I would never ever have been able to create these amazing new memories and do the things I want to do. So I suppose. I think it did change. I think it did change. My brain changed. My brain had to cope with what happened. And as I said, you know, it's so important to go on those ups and downs. Because that's when you can figure out what you want to do. But I think a lot of the time, it did change. As a disabled person, because I think my successes and my failures. I was seeing it in a very new light and trying to take that failure.

• 13:41Speaker 02

  As an opportunity really, as wow, I've got an opportunity. To pick up an MBE, to be awarded the Helen Rollison Award. I mean. You know, if you said that to me fifteen years ago, Elizabeth, I would say, Elizabeth, you're off your rocker. I am not going to be a professional athlete. I am not going to get an MBE. I'm definitely not going to be a bomb victim, but. That story, what happened that day, or my story, or what happened on that event, has defined. Me, has defined me and who I am. But more importantly, the way I've dealt with it, it's been my choices, it's been. The people that love me and support me, and ultimately, it has been my belief.

• 14:23Elizabeth Day?

  Oh, I could just listen to you talk for days on end.

• 14:26Speaker 02

  I'm sorry, I know, we're not for one there, didn't I?

• 14:29Elizabeth Day?

  No, no, no, it was amazing. And we will get on to your failure. To wake up on time that morning on seventh of July, two thousand and five, because it is one of your failures. Just before we do, I wanted to ask you about what the world is like and whether it is friendly. To disabled people, because I remember reading this piece, it was an interview with you in a newspaper. And it was a description of your first visit to a disabled toilet. And I think you noticed a pedal bin, didn't you?

• 15:00Speaker 02

  They still do that now. Petrol garages do that now with anti-back. I asked a woman yesterday, I was in a petrol garage. And I'm fine, I can put my petrol in, I don't need assistance, things like that. But hmm. Foot pump for the anti-back. And I saw my mask on and this woman walked past to go into the shop and I said, excuse me. Could I borrow your foot? She sort of looked at me and I went, for the anti-back, yeah. Is the world friendly to disabled people? Well, I suppose if there was a yes or no answer to that, I would say no. I mean, there are inequalities in the world everywhere. I mean, look what's going on at the moment, what's happening recently. Those inequalities exist within our society.

• 15:40Speaker 02

  You know, you mentioned in the summary, your intro, I am proud to say I'm a Bebel company. I was born in London and my whole family born in London. And London is not very good for access at all. That's a huge problem for me sometimes because I do like to still spend quite a lot of time in London. But things are getting better, but all of us are responsible for this. All of us are responsible to communicate that with each other. And yeah, as you said, yeah, in an interview, I had to point out that, yes. The first time I used sable glue that was in the hospital. It was actually in the hospital where I was strong enough the first time to actually go to the toilet on my own. And and it was quite a nervy experience.

• 16:25Speaker 02

  I just looked at this foot bin and think, it's a dumb house and so I'm going to put it down. And it was like, we're in a hospital, we're in an amputee ward. I've got a foot, a foot pedal. And I did laugh about it, but obviously, I think in life, again, that's one of my mantras. You've got to smile, you've got to enjoy life, you've got to laugh because otherwise things will be really, really hard to deal with.

• 16:49Elizabeth Day?

  Do you know, I just, I think that's, I'm so glad you said that about the antibacterial dispensers. Because I had never thought that and I think it's so important. We will have a duty to think about other people who, for whatever reason, can't use that or a handle will be too high or it just very small practical things that we we all need to think more about.

• 17:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, but see, the thing about disability, thing about race really and sexism is is that we're all individuals. So what I would find hard, someone else might not find hard, or even psychologically, we're all very different, you know, I'm one of those people, I think maybe having an understanding of what life was like before I was disabled. If now someone, not necessarily wants to grab and push my chair, because I wouldn't necessarily say that, but if they want to open a door for me, or if they want to go, can I get something from the top shelf in the supermarket? A lot of the time I go, all right, well, you get the top one, I'll get the bottom one, because I'm giving the bottom ones. I don't get offended by that, you know, that's someone wanting to help.

• 17:56Speaker 02

  And I feel like sometimes we've all got an education, you know, we're all educators in society, you know, I look at my son, he's eleven, he's such an educator, just by the experience that he has at home, with his mum being a Paralympian, being an athlete. I think all of us have that responsibility to talk about things and educate things, educate people. And actually, I do think the last year, this Covid world, where we're not all seeing each other face to face, and we're not all in the same room, I feel like on the flip side, it's actually given us an insight into each other's motivations, insight into people's homes, literally, seeing it through Zoom.

• 18:38Speaker 02

  And the first question isn't usually now, have you got that email? But it's, how's your family? Are you keeping well? Doesn't your kitchen look nice behind you? You know, it's all those things that I think really have made us realise that good things come out of bad.

• 18:56Elizabeth Day?

  Please do follow How To Fail to get new episodes as they land on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. Please tell all your friends. This is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment original podcast. Thank you so much for listening.