When I ask my boyfriend if he likes his body, the answer I tend to get is “of course I do. Because it’s MY body, and mine alone. It does what I want it to do”.

Another thing that Mark have told me is that he likes my legs because they are strong. And he means it: I don’t think he is just trying to tell me that he likes them in spite of them being fat, big or oversized or even in spite of them having cellulite. I initially found his compliment to be quite disturbing, because I never thought of them as strong. Except for the occasional worry which goes along the lines of “I wish I had smaller thighs” to “I can’t wear a short skirt today because I didn’t wax”, I don’t think much of my legs - they are merely limbs which bike to work everyday, and walk miles every week. But strong? I didn’t ever stop to think of it, nevermind thinking of it as a good thing.

And it’s nonsense, isn’t it? That all women tend to be at their most happy when (warning, feminism 101 coming up) they are at they smallest, thinnest and in many cases, frailest. Few of us, I dare to guess, ever stop to think “damn, look at those big bulky legs, they could carry me around the country easy” or “check out my arm muscles, I bet I can destroy scores next time we go to the amusement park“.

I was reminded of this very point this week when reading about the Wimbeldon tennis coverage in the British media (1). While the first two days of the tournament focused solely on what Maria Sharapova wore (shorts! shock, horror!), we were then bombared with pictures of Nadal/Murray flexing his fucking arm muscle/ debating his level of fitness on the majority of national newspapers’ covers. Of course, as an incitement to praise them for being so strong and masculine - crowd movers.

When was the time a woman was publicly praised for being muscular? In tennis, it was probably Amélie Moresmo - but then again she wasn’t praised, god forbid, she was mocked for being a lesbian and ‘looking like a man’.

I mean fucking hell, give a girl a break - either that or I am going to sit and re-watch Million Dollar Baby which as ghastly as it was, at least had the courage to show a woman kicking serious ass.

(1) As boring as tennis is, at least Wimbeldon now pays equal money across the board to both men and women. This was decided in 2007. Um, yay?