The Beautiful Bodies of Bondi Beach

The first thing that struck me when I arrived in Australia – after the adrenaline rush I experienced from jumping in the cool, clean ocean for the first time had subsided – was that everyone on Bondi Beach was bronzed and beautiful. This realisation opened the flood gates to massive insecurity because, looking at myself, I realised that after ten months in the UK with little exercise inbetween bouts of beer and curry consumption, I was pale and somewhat chubby, particularly in the vicinity of my belly button.

While I appreciate that I was neither blessed with classic good looks nor hit on the head as a child with an ugly stick, I feel I’ve been able to hold my own over the years in the swagger and pout department and I’ve received my fair share of sideways glances from girls, which I sincerely hope related to some degree of attraction rather than, as I sometimes fear, disbelief at my profoundly average dress sense. However, returning to Australia and immediately feeling generally hairy and unattractive was quite a shock.

Better men than me would have shrugged their shoulders and not given it a second thought and while on one level I did dismiss my paranoia, take off my shirt and parade my pale pecks, the feeling that I was generally unattractive to the average Bondi beach babe did niggle at me. The fact that seemingly every girl in Bondi is beautiful did little to assuage my fears. I came to Bondi Beach for the first time in 2004 and, after a few minutes taking in the scene on the beach front, I felt like banging my head repeatedly against a brick wall because of sheer sensory overload – this many beautiful women in bikinis – it did not compute, my system crashed.

Beach culture breeds hot bodies, it’s a simple scientific fact. In the UK our bodies are almost completely covered for eighty percent of the year and so the only real opportunity for us to feel self-conscious about them is during the brief hop out of bed to retrieve the prophylactics. Even in that awkward situation it isn’t necessary to expose yourself if you’re fortunate enough to be blessed with the necessary planning skills and the optimism to have placed your johnnies handily in reach by the side of the bed.

In Bondi during the summer, depending on the kind of swimsuit you favour, between seventy and ninety percent of your body is on display one hundred percent of the time. Therefore it is in your own interest to do the requisite amount of exercise or beer and curry abstention in order to keep yourself looking trim. I had forgotten this small but important fact, so while the bodies of friends and strangers alike rippled, mine wobbled, and within hours of integrating this alarming new reality into my consciousness I was radically reassessing my pulling potential.

As time went on and my body browned but did not buff up – I was drinking a lot of beer and not a small amount of curry… after all, you can’t break the habit of a lifetime. I continued to feel insecure about my shabby physique and began to rationalise it all to myself. I even began to write a disparaging little poem about what I initially perceived to be a very shallow and body-conscious culture but eventually realised was a self-protective opinion I had formed as a result of pure and simple covetousness.

I resolved to get into shape. On one level this was quite easy – Australia boasts a brilliant selection of good, healthy food - but unfortunately also one of the tastiest beers in either hemisphere in the form of Coopers Pale Ale, which I continued to consume during my weeks down under with some considerable aplomb. The only time I engaged in any premeditated exercise my efforts were met with disaster. One morning I decided I would jog the length of the beach in order to get to my favourite snorkel spot. I think I had it in my head that this would be the first day of the rest of my life and all that nonsense, that it would be a turning point and that everything that came after would be good and pure and sexy.

I loaded my bag with everything I needed for a run and a swim – snorkel and mask, towel, sun cream, water bottle – and set off down the hill. Halfway along the beach I started to struggle; my rucksack was feeling heavier by the moment, my chest was hurting, I was gasping for breath and I was presumably quite red in the face if the smirks of the beautiful people I passed were anything to go by. This is the pain barrier I thought, keep going and it will get easier! As if by magic it did start to get easier. For a split second I was amazed by the fact that my bag suddenly felt significantly lighter, then I realised that this was because it was suddenly empty. I stopped and turned and observed my stuff strewn down twenty metres of the beach getting washed away in the surf – the zip on my bag had broken and everything had fallen out.

Cursing, I dashed into the surf and endeavoured to collect my belongings one item at a time before they all got washed out to sea. When I found something I placed it a safe distance up the beach before charging back into the water to find the next item. Soon I had recovered everything except my mask and snorkel, which was the only thing to have fallen out of my bag which had any monetary or personal value attached to it. Forlornly I scoured the swell and was beginning to give up hope until I spotted a flash of blue some thirty metres off the shore. I could see a blonde person donning a mask that looked suspiciously like mine. I dived into the ocean, Mitch Buchanan style, and swam out to confront this Aussie beach bum who had the audacity to sport my mask. In fact he was very nice about the whole thing, happily handed my mask back and complimented me on it’s quality. This was just as well because there was a moment there when the guy might have had to intervene and save my life – I was out of my depth and there was a rip tide pulling me in the wrong direction.

I made it back to shore, my pride only slightly wounded, flushed and tired from the swim which, after the run down the beach and the frenetic dash to retrieve my belongings from the surf, had left me feeling thoroughly drained. I looked for my stuff but saw only a girl waving in my general direction. I approached her and saw my collection of sodden belongings covered in sand in a sorry-looking pile at her feet. She explained that while I had been struggling to get back to the shore the tide had come in to the extent that my stuff had been washed out to sea again and she had been compelled to go and collect it. I thanked her profusely but didn’t bother to stay and try to chat her up. It didn’t seem like there was much point.

The very next day I handicapped myself in a freak snorkelling accident (which I describe elsewhere in this blog) and so for much of my remaining time in Bondi I was unable to do much more than mope about, drink beer, eat pies and watch DVDs. Apparently someone up there felt that exercise was bad for me and so I bowed to their better judgment and stopped… well, it seemed like a reasonable excuse at the time but now I’m not so sure.

Despite my initial enthusiasm I didn’t get far with the poem either before apathy-induced writers block descended and I lost my creative mojo. Artistically, athletically and romantically my trip to Australia was a failure but that didn’t stop me having the most amazing time, inbetween the occasional bout of toe-curling self-doubt which came about more as a result of an unexpected culture shock induced paradigm shift than because of paranoia associated with my inferior physique.

One of the reasons I love Australia so much is because of the outdoor lifestyle I can enjoy there. This is the reason I’m giving serious thought to moving back, why it feels like it might be the right place for me to be over the next few years: I’m never happier than I am swimming in the ocean and walking in the countryside – I know this about myself now, as I get older I’m beginning to understand what it is that makes me tick and what my limitations are. Call it a cop out if you like but the lifestyle I’ve become accustomed to in England doesn’t give me much scope to motivate myself to get out and about and be active and healthy. I know I can change my lifestyle but I think that would be really hard. If I move to Australia I won’t have to change myself – the lifestyle out there will change me.

To be honest it does also have a lot to do with the weather.