Sorry… What Am I Apologising For?

I apologised to a chair yesterday.

I walked straight into it, said “sorry” and carried on.

The chair said nothing.

Rude, really, considering it was clearly in my way.

About ten minutes later I couldn’t find my phone. I checked the table, looked in my bag and retraced my steps before realising I’d put it in my pocket.

I was using the torch on it at the time.

I wish I could tell you these things don’t happen very often.

Anyway, where was I?

Oh yes. Sorry.

Not sorry to you. I mean the word sorry.

I’ve started noticing how often I say it, and once you notice it you can’t stop noticing it.

Sorry I’m late.

Sorry, can I ask something?

Sorry to bother you.

Sorry, could I just get past?

Sorry, I’m having one of those days.

And I suspect quite a few of us women know another version too.

Sorry I don’t look my best today.

Sorry I’ve put a bit of weight on.

Sorry I’m getting older.

Sorry I’m not very confident.

Some of those we say aloud. Others only happen in our heads.

And somewhere between apologising to furniture and wandering around looking for a phone I was actively using, I started wondering why we’re so good at it.

We can be terribly hard on ourselves

I don’t think we’re born inspecting ourselves quite as closely as many of us eventually learn to.

Little girls don’t usually stop halfway through having fun because they’ve suddenly become concerned about whether they look flattering from the side.

Somewhere along the journey into womanhood, though, many of us become much more aware of being seen.

I know I did.

And it’s complicated, because there are things about being a woman that I genuinely enjoy.

I like feeling lovely. I like those mornings when everything somehow comes together without an argument and you walk out of the house feeling rather pleased with yourself.

But there are other days.

You catch your reflection unexpectedly and think, Is that really what I look like today?

Or somebody takes a photograph and everyone else sees a lovely memory while you’ve immediately spotted the one thing about yourself you don’t like.

I’ve done that.

Then, months or years later, I’ve found the same photograph and wondered what on earth I was worried about.

Perhaps some of us are much kinder to yesterday’s woman than we are to today’s.

Our phones aren’t exactly helping

There is research behind some of this.

A 2026 study followed 143 women for seven days and looked at the appearance-focused social-media content they encountered during ordinary life. Exposure to “fitspiration” and “thinspiration” content was associated with greater body dissatisfaction and lower appreciation of their own bodies.

It doesn’t mean social media is inherently dreadful.

I’ve lost an embarrassing amount of time watching videos of animals doing things animals have absolutely no business doing.

There was a goat on a trampoline the other day.

Twenty minutes.

Gone.

Completely worth it.

But appearance comparison can creep up on us much more quietly.

We see another woman looking fabulous and instead of simply thinking, She looks fabulous, sometimes our brains add an entirely unnecessary second sentence.

…and I don’t.

Why?

Her beauty hasn’t stolen ours.

Her confidence hasn’t reduced the available global supply.

Yet comparison can make it feel that way.

I touched on the other side of this recently in Let’s Talk About Willies, because men have their body worries too. What struck me while writing it was how easily all of us can become convinced that everybody else is paying far more attention to our bodies than they actually are.

Most people aren’t.

They’re too busy worrying about their own.

Which is strangely comforting.

Then we take our clothes off

Naturism has been rather good at exposing the absurdity of all this.

Pun entirely accidental.

Actually, no.

I’m keeping it.

Being around other women in ordinary naturist settings has taught me something no advertisement ever really could.

We’re incredibly varied.

And after about five minutes, that becomes completely uninteresting.

You stop noticing bodies and start noticing people.

You notice who makes you laugh. Who makes the tea. Who has an interesting story. Who remembers everyone’s name. Who wanders off halfway through a conversation because something caught her attention.

That last one may be me.

You discover that the woman you thought looked wonderfully confident has insecurities of her own. Then perhaps another woman says something lovely about you and you’re genuinely surprised because she’s noticed something you’ve been completely unable to see yourself.

Those little moments matter.

I wrote about some of the expectations we put on ourselves in To Shave, Trim… or Leave It Be?, and I keep coming back to the same conclusion.

There really isn’t an entrance examination for being a woman.

Or for being a naturist.

We don’t have to arrive perfected.

We just arrive.

Perhaps outside helps

One piece of research I’ve particularly enjoyed reading this year looked at 50,363 people across 58 countries.

Researchers found that greater contact with nature was associated with greater self-compassion and restoration, which were in turn associated with more positive body image.

Now, the researchers aren’t suggesting we should all immediately take our clothes off and run into a forest.

Which is fortunate.

There are nettles.

I cannot stress the nettles enough.

I discovered fairly early in my naturist life that nature is beautiful, restorative and extremely good for the soul, but occasionally rather less considerate towards the naked bottom.

Still, there’s something in those findings that feels very familiar to me.

Outside, I think about myself less.

There are other things demanding my attention.

Birdsong. Wind moving through trees. The smell of rain. Sunshine on my skin. Whether that innocent-looking patch of grass contains something prickly.

And, because this is Wales, whether the cloud approaching me is the friendly fluffy sort or the one that’s about to deposit the Atlantic Ocean on my head.

When I’m outdoors naked, my body isn’t something I’m displaying.

It’s simply how I experience where I am.

The sun feels warm because I have skin. The ground feels cool because I have feet. I can walk somewhere beautiful because my body carries me there.

Suddenly whether I look particularly good from a certain angle seems like a remarkably unimportant question.

Avoiding the nettles, however, remains extremely important.

I’m going to try something

I’m going to listen for my unnecessary apologies.

Not the real ones.

If I’m thoughtless or hurt somebody, I’ll say sorry.

And I’ll probably continue apologising to furniture because apparently that’s who I am now.

But I’m going to try catching the others.

Sorry I’m getting older.

Sorry I don’t look like I used to.

Sorry I’ve changed.

Sorry I’m taking up your time.

Sorry I’m taking up space.

Maybe some of those sentences don’t need finishing.

Because we women spend enough of our lives adapting ourselves to situations, expectations and other people without apologising for simply existing as well.

Naturism hasn’t made me fearless.

It hasn’t made me completely confident.

It certainly hasn’t made me organised.

What it has done is introduce me to lots of wonderfully ordinary people and slowly teach me that ordinary was never something I needed to apologise for.

So I’m going to practise.

I am thirty-one.

I occasionally forget what I’m doing while I’m doing it.

I walk into furniture.

I compare myself with other women sometimes even though I know perfectly well I shouldn’t.

I have good days and wobbly ones.

I am still learning.

And I’m not sorry about any of it.

Except possibly the chair.

No.

I’ve thought about it.

The chair started it.

Eira

Ladies, what’s something you’ve caught yourself apologising for that really didn’t require an apology at all?

Eira’s reading for today

Schönhals, K., Lalk, C. & Vocks, S. (2026) — research examining fitspiration, thinspiration, body-positive and body-neutral social-media content and women’s body image, International Journal of Eating Disorders.

Swami, V. et al. (2026) — research examining the relationship between positive body image, nature contact and life satisfaction across 58 nations.