
Debbie Bateman graduated from The Writer’s Studio at SFU. Her short stories have appeared in literary magazines and an anthology. Your Body Was Made for This is her first book. A quiet rebel and a Buddhist, Debbie lives in Quw’utsun (Cowichan) on Vancouver Island with her husband and soulmate.
Eating too much, eating not enough, having sex, not having sex, aging parents, grief, drugs, childhood trauma, and the last call of ovaries — a woman’s body at mid-life can get messy. Debbie’s stories take a clear-eyed look at the largely unexplored world of a pivotal stage in virtually every woman’s life.
Interviewed by Erika Lapenat
Erika Lapenat (EL): Would it be wrong to say that Your Body Was Made for This is almost like a field guide for understanding women’s bodies? It felt like we were convening in very private stories that often don’t make it into daylight.
Debbie Bateman (DB): I love the idea of calling it a field guide for understanding women’s bodies. The idea for this collection came from my personal experience. I was working at a college in Calgary. I exercised every day at lunch, which meant that I used the staff locker room. Over the years, I chatted with women from across the campus. I noticed that no matter their age, fitness, shape, or features—most women had a fraught relationship with their body. I began wondering why, looking for underlying causes, and taking a lot of notes. These notes were not so much about specific people or events, but areas of human behaviour I wanted to understand.
When I began writing the stories about five years later, I returned to those notes as a starting point. Then I did a ton of research for every story. That is how I like to begin most short stories—with curiosity and ignorance. Not knowing is delicious. It’s taken me until my 60s to discover this. And I knew that I wanted to imagine the private stories we do not hear about, the buried narratives we hold in our bodies. These are the stories women may not share with anyone, not even their best friend or their love interest. They may not even share these stories with their own self.
So yes, for sure, I think these stories encourage women and all people to gather around and listen quietly and remember to be respectful when they do because what they are about to hear is highly personal. The nude woman on the cover signals that, I think. Thank you to Dorian Danielsen, such an artist!
As for being a field guide, I wish! I tried to contradict and complicate every assumption about what a woman’s body is for, but I do not think I came close to respecting the vast diversity. At best, my book might be research notes for a field guide or something like that.
EL: Are there influences from your life and your female friends in your characters? They’re so real. Where did you draw inspiration from in sharing these stories?
DB: Some of the characters are definitely inspired by people I have known. Brianne, the main character in the title story, was inspired by three women: 1) A female training officer I worked with at the Calgary Fire Department who did indeed run the West Coast Trail in a single day. 2) Kate Braid, local poet and author and one of the first women to become a carpenter journeywoman in BC. We don’t know each other exactly, although we’ve met and our mothers were good friends. 3) Susan Schorn, karate practitioner and author of Smile at Strangers: And Other Lessons in the Art of Living Fearlessly.
When I was a girl, I had long curly hair. I played with dolls for sure, but I also like climbing trees and building forts. My hair was forever in knots. In frustration, Mom cut it really short. In those days, public schools had separate areas for boys and girls. During recess, I was sent to the boys’ side. Being painfully shy, I did as I was told. This scene is in “Take Two” and it still makes me mad that the teacher did not even ask me.
Most of shenanigans and bodily mishaps in “Crossing the Line” happened to me at one time or another during my marathoning phase, which has ended due to arthritis sadly. Also, I worked at a Fire Department Training Academy as a writer/editor for several years and I respect firefighters enormously. But the rest of the stories are about people I made up. Getting to know them was a lot like getting to know a friend in real life. I listened, cared, and waited until they trusted me enough to share more.
A weird thing happened to me in the lead-up to publication. Writerly friends wanted to know if I was worried about what my friends and family would think of me, as if they would think the fiction was not fiction at all. That was not a concern for me. Don’t get me wrong. I knew full well that some people would not like my lack of “boundaries” around what I might write about and honestly I do not care. What I did worry about was whether the “people” in my stories would be upset at how I portrayed them. I actually thought they might contact me to complain until I sat with that thought and laughed myself silly. Because yes, we all know, I made that stuff up. There are no “people”. Yet, I do feel that I know them.
EL: How has your book been received, by women and others?
DB: I have been surprised. When I wrote these stories, I imagined them being read by women who were going through perimenopause or were perhaps older. I thought the stories might be less interesting to younger women or men. But I have received kind reviews from women in their 20s; one even said that every man should read this book, which I totally love. And a woman in her 90s, who does not always finish books these days, read mine in a couple of days and said that it was “a very interesting read with varying and unusual perspectives on the female body and female independence.” A male friend who is about my age sent me a personal note saying how moved he was by one of my stories. He said it felt like stepping into a private room. He didn’t know if he should be there, but he couldn’t look away and the encounter gave him a perspective he might otherwise never have had.
EL: What do others need to know about the female experience? Was it hard going that deep into these private moments?
DB: Most of all I would like people to know that every single human is unique. Just because you see somebody does not mean you know who they are. Be kind. Also, when you get down to it, there is no such thing as a single female experience. My hope is that people expand their feelings and thoughts and that we all stop telling women or people what their bodies are for. That really burns me up.
I guess you could say that it was hard going into these private moments. It certainly took a lot of patience and showing up and sitting there in awkward silence. The stories went through three intense cycles of revision. Each time, my main focus was to not turn away from what is difficult. Especially in the final revisions before publication, I deliberately looked for anything that I might be shying away from, and I did not leave that uncomfortable space until I found myself next to something that ached like truth.
The first story about unresolved childhood trauma was especially hard for me to write. It felt like an illness to stay with that painful story. I was utterly obsessed, day and night. I worried that it was more than I could imagine, but I felt a profound obligation to Pauline and all people who are hurt by those they should be able to trust the most.
EL: “Your Body Was Made for This” is a phrase that many women can identify with. How did you land on it?
DB: I am so happy that you asked. Full credit goes to one of my mentors, Barbara Joan Scott, author of The Taste of Hunger. I learned about layering stories and complexity from her. The first time I sent the title story to her, she put a comment in the margin, musing about how everyone would like to tell women what their body is for but actually their body is for so many things such as rock climbing, or wearing a heavy toolbelt on your hips, or loving a freckly-faced guy who thinks your strength is drop-dead gorgeous.
Immediately upon reading Barbara’s comment I knew I had a unifying force for the entire collection. Every time I worked on a story, I asked myself what does this character think her body is for and what are the people around her saying about that matter. I was nervous about using the title because it’s long for a title, but Wendy Atkinson, the publisher at Ronsdale Press, who is amazing by the way, thought it worked well.
EL: How does Vancouver Island, and your time here, feature with the settings and characters?
DB: It doesn’t at all. I started writing the stories while I was still living in Calgary and continued after I’d moved to the coast. The prairie wind and chill and ice and blue sky does set a mood for the stories. That, and the high-power, forward-pushing, entrepreneurial spirit of the city, which I both love and hate.
EL: What advice would you have for young authors as they pursue their dreams of publishing?
DB: Worry about the writing. That’s not only how you get published, but it’s the best part. Seriously. Write and write and write some more. Enjoy the process of imagining lives that are not your own and meeting other good folk who do the same. And read like your life depends on it… because it does.