The funny thing about wanting the ‘perfect’ body is that my idea of what that body actually is has been different at various stages of my life. Throughout my teens and twenties, I worked out in the obsessive way that most of the people I knew did in the Skinny BC era (pre-GLP-1 body negativity) which was mainly out of fear. Fear of putting on weight. Fear of not fitting into skinny jeans and narrow sample sizes. Fear of not fitting in, because that was what upwardly mobile people did: expensive workout classes in designer activewear. Fear of people knowing that I did all of this out of fear, because I would recite the party line whenever I was asked about early-morning workouts: “It’s just really great for my mental health!”

I did the obligatory stints at Austrian health clinics. I cut out gluten, dairy and sugar. I would do boxed detoxes that consisted of nut bars and powdered soups and somehow convinced myself that they were tasty. I once got on a flight to Italy of all places with packs of chicken soup for my hotel to serve me as dinner, which in hindsight, I should have been arrested at customs for. I was my thinnest, my most obsessive, my most organized, and my unhappiest. During lockdown, when gyms closed and the world forced me to stay at home, I compulsively did Zoom workouts and took up running, taking it as far as enrolling in the London Marathon in 2021.

In hindsight, there was a reason I managed to cross the finish line in under three hours. I was running from something that I had nestled deep within myself since childhood but perhaps didn’t have the eloquence or courage to confront. I wasn’t just aspiring to a ‘perfect’ body, relentlessly punishing my physical form. I was aspiring to the wrong body.

Spoiler alert: I began a gender transition a couple of years later.

I’ve come to learn that life works in mysterious ways. I don’t know a single woman who has not struggled with her own wavering sense of self-esteem, or has undergone some kind of transformation, big or small. Increasingly, perhaps, because most of us have no real inkling of where the world is going but know that it will only get worse—and because what we’re told by magazines and imagery is so contradictory and confusing—we often turn the impetus onto ourselves to maintain a grip of control amid the chaos of, well, being alive.

A part of my transition, I have undergone enough therapy and soul-searching to recognize my own patterns of behavior and symptoms of dysphoria. And while I could pretend that I am unshackled from the moorings of insecurity, the reality is that I have simply learned to live with these things. I don’t give the demons as many flowers as I used to.

Where things get a little murky is being able to decipher the intention behind my own desires and, quite often, my own pain. Even more often, that is in relation to my body. This is especially confusing. We are living in the age of “maxxing”: looksmaxxing, proteinmaxxing, fertilitymaxxing, maturemaxxing, moneymaxxing. Basically, you can maxx anything as long as it involves optimization towards some kind of increased market value. And chances are there is plenty of content on social media out there to make you feel like you are not maximising enough, or correctly, or for the right things. 

This makes sense when you think about how bad the economy is and how apathetic people feel towards wars and genocide and the awful things we see alongside selfies and handbag sponcon. When you cannot afford a house, you can still afford to be gorgeous. When the economy feels like a casino, at least you can control your body fat percentage. The body becomes the last investable asset.

Osman Ahmed modeling in the Conor Ives show in London; at the Chanel Couture show in Paris. Courtesy Osman Ahmed.

We live in an era of optimization, and what I’ve learned is that to be a woman is often to live with pain, the burden of expectation and the panopticon of constant surveillance. For so long, our bodies were the enemy: something to be controlled, reduced and compliant with (literally) narrow ideals of female beauty.

And look, I find myself constantly falling prey to those very anxieties. I am certainly not immune to optimization culture. Can you blame me? I’m transitioning in the Age of Looksmaxxing. I sometimes wonder if I’m Transmaxxing. Womanmaxxing!

I have had Botox injected into my brows for years. I do Pilates most days. I start my morning with lemon in hot water, followed by a fistful of supplements. I use expensive skincare. I have spent money on meditation apps I’ve used twice. Hell, I even get a blow-dry once a week, which frankly should be subsidized by the government because it is basically gender-affirming care.

It took a long time to make peace with my body, even though–in many ways–I have felt that it has failed me; that it is a biological mistake. Ultimately, I got bored by my own insecurities because I realized they were making me an incredibly dull person. I’d rather be Grace Jones, life and soul of the party, than Steven Bartlett, spiralling over a second glass of wine.

I understand that I have been fed lies, that I have been subliminally advertised to since birth. To be feminine is to be smaller; more docile; more nimble. And yet we want to be toned, because that is more a status symbol these days with the advent of GLP-1s, which reduce muscle mass and therefore untoned thinness is associated with ‘cheating’. But not too muscular because that would be masculine. Too powerful; too strong; too much of a threat to male dominance. It is a Sisyphean battle, never to be won.

What I’ve learned is that some days are better than others. Occasionally, I lean into my muscular frame–galvanized by pictures of Madonna leaving the gym in the 2000s, and Grace Jones oiled-up and powerful in her heyday–but other times, I find myself falling down a Reddit rabbit hole of esoteric cosmetic procedures that I convince myself would help quiet my paranoia. When my gynecologist told me that hormone replacement therapy would make me feel like I was going through puberty all over again, I didn’t expect those hoary old chestnuts of self-hatred to crop up again.

And you know what? That’s OK. Perhaps the most important thing is to be self-aware. I take solace in the quiet sense of achievement I feel when my body is being stretched and toned in Reformer sessions. I have immense gratitude for my body functioning healthily, which I take for granted when I’m struck down by intense hormonal stomach cramps. I know that I am not perfect. I know that I would like to be a little bit thinner, and that it’s a precariously slippery slope down to somewhere I tried to claw myself back from.

I know. I sound like I’m in the throes of some kind of nervous breakdown. And trust me, I am constantly trying to figure out whether I am just a navel-gazing narcissist or getting closer in my endless digging to some kind of treasure trove of profound enlightenment. I know that altruism is probably the only real antidote to this, but it is harder to implement into your workout routine.

Most of all, I try. Oh my God, do I try. I try to be better, to be kinder to myself, to recognize how far I’ve come, rather than how much further I think I must go. And though I may not ever reach the Promised Land of body positivity, I know that sometimes just going on the journey–mental, physical or spiritual–to become a better version of myself to myself, and those around me, is what living life to the maxx is all about.