Who am I?
I,
I’m my thoughts,
My dreams,
My aspirations.
I’m my name,
My looks,
My imagination.
That’s what I see,
When I stare,
Into my reflection.
My reflection,
Ripples in the river of life,
The shallow,
Shallow river of life.
To the world,
I am my reflection:
I am only what the world sees,
Only what the world decides I am.
My body is but a vessel;
Why must the world ignore me,
But acknowledge the vessel?!
Books, merely objects
Are still judged
By only their covers,
So who am I to demand
They not judge me
By only what they can see.
The inside of a book
Is where the value lies
But most people don’t bother;
It’s easier to judge
From the outside
My body is a part of me,
It embodies my soul
My personality,
But it is not all I am.
I am not my scars,
My disability,
I am me,
A completely separate entity.
I, Me,
Not just what you see
body image
New Body
I woke up one day with a new body and it wasn’t the first time.
The earliest memory of my first body was when I asked my father, “if I cut myself and then bleed out, will I get smaller?” He laughed and said that it doesn’t work like that. I remember having thought long and hard before asking him this question because at 6 years old, it just made sense. Perhaps that was the first time I got a new body. Surely I had one before but I didn’t notice it but this new one I saw was too much. Too much of what exactly, I wasn’t sure yet but I knew I hoped it would shrink some to make me feel better. I kept that body for a while, probably until 8th grade right before I went to high school. Throughout that time I began to realize what I didn’t at six. That this body was too big. I was always the tallest person amongst my peers and sometimes I was the fattest too. In middle school I found a way to cope with these feelings of taking up too much space by making that body the punch line in jokes. I saw how others who had bodies like mine were treated and figured it was better to be the one to take charge of my own disparagement rather than be on the receiving end. When we learned about whales having blubber in science class, some students started naming classmates who had “blubber” (i.e. were fat) and I quickly decided that it would be funny to call the fat on my arms blubber and I would shake it to make my friends laugh. For me, it was better for that body to be laughing, not crying even though it felt the same inside.
I got a new body the day I was helping my older sister move into her college dorm and she commented on the size of my butt. I was confused because we all knew to have a big butt meant you were sexy and attractive and everything this body was not. I was suddenly aware that the body didn’t look the same as when I was six but was somehow the exact same. It seemed that the body I gained that day had new forms. It was still Ugly but…? I kept that one until I was 19 years old. I grew to accept the polarizing experiences I had in that body. That body got catcalled while playing volleyball because of the spandex we wore but also was stared out because of how it looked compared to the white, thin girls who dominate the sport. I could go a day with it being the last thing anyone wanted to be around and later that same day it could be the object of someone’s desire. That desire was typically sexual and the person was likely older than me. I always thought that this body had potential but…… At 19, I hated that body. I saw myself going back to the ways of my youth by saying to people, “I’m so ugly. Aren’t I ugly? Tell my the truth, I’m ugly right?” Initially I got the responses I likely was looking for, denying my assertions and telling me no. Then one day after I went through the whole act with my sister she sighed, exasperated and said “Yes!” I think that was something I wanted to hear too. I needed validation for my feelings of hatred towards the body so many other people told me was not the ugly I saw in the mirror.
Since 19, that body changed shape a few more times but really it’s still the same. What’s really changed is how I view it. I enjoy being in this body despite constantly working to change it. This body likely has an eating disorder (LOL) but I don’t remember a time when I didn’t avoid mirrors or taking selfies so I wouldn’t have to look at it so I’m taking that as a net positive. I haven’t decided whether or not my body is my own. I thought I was getting a new body (it’s always either a “good” one or a “bad” one) every time I realized there were different ways that people were perceiving it. In reality, this body may have grown taller, changed shape, or lost and gained weight but it was the same fat Black feminine body in an anti-Black, anti-fat, and misogynistic world. This world both fetishizes and disposes of people with bodies like mine and it’s always confusing to be on the receiving end of such differing responses to it. A question that has always stuck with me in regards to our bodies and positionalities is “How can I live differently in the same world that harmed my parents when I look just like them?”
“Yes, and the body has memory. The physical carriage hauls
Claudia Rankine, “Citizen”
more than its weight. The body is the threshold across which
each objectionable call passes into consciousness— all
the unintimidated, unblinking, and unflappable resilience
does not erase the moments lived through, even as we
are eternally stupid or everlastingly optimistic, so ready to
be inside, among, a part of the games.”
How is this body my own when it holds the history of my ancestors’ first body in a new world? How can I get rid of the negative thoughts that always linger? This current body has never changed but becomes new whenever its beholder has a new use for it.
I’m hoping for just one more body but I want to see it in a new life.
Stuck in my Body
Subscribe to continue reading
Subscribe to get access to the rest of this post and other subscriber-only content.
The Body Neutrality Bubble
Is it possible to adopt a body neutral mindset in the face of external structural notions about what the body should be?
Image Description: The image depicts a graphic from bewitching.net that has a green background and colorful splotches with text. The middle pink splotch says Body Neutrality. It is surrounded in a circle by 5 other splotches that say be grateful for how your body functions; focus on how your body lets you be in this world; your body deserves respect; practice self compassion; your body isn’t an accessory. Each text has a different body next to it posing.
Body neutrality is a contemporary concept that describes the practice of adopting an objective, arguably more function-oriented mindset towards one’s physical self. Popularized in 2015 by Annie Poirier, body neutrality as a concept encourages individuals to view their bodies as physical vessels that allow them to experience and conduct through daily life. Some find it to be a stepping stone to body positivity, however in its fundamental ideology body neutrality is intended to promote a more peaceful relationship between the mind and body that does not focus on negative nor positive conceptualizations of the body, especially in those ways that can consume and strain the mind (i.e., significantly focusing on the size, shape, or color of the body). The concept of body neutrality is designed to operate in contrast to societal expectations that systemically operate to burden individuals to fit into physical and emotional molds in order to be legible as human beings and gain access to various spaces both physically and socially. It is critical to note that societal standards of physicality and being often disproportionately impact minority communities, who often may be denied access to other mechanisms of legibility such as personhood and femininity.
As the concept of body neutrality manifests as an individual effort—where one must rewire their thoughts to accept themselves in their current existence—it is critical to consider to what extent this mindset is sustainable. For sustainability seems unlikely in a world where one’s internal perspectives are competing with the perspectives ascribed to them by other social actors and the implications of structures more broadly (i.e., the spaces their physical and emotional selves may be accepted in or denied access to). It appears to be the case that the body neutral mindset can only exist in the individual bubble, as venturing out of those individual boundaries forces one to be confronted with realities of dominant thought about the superiority of thinness, smallness, whiteness, etc. that will inevitably, even momentarily, impact the way one views themselves and others. It can be said, then, that genuine bodily neutrality is an in-achievable pursuit in our current world where subjects are “locked in” their bodies unable to transcend to a space of being that allows them to shed their physical and spatial identities. While this perspective is less than optimistic, it does offer a more pragmatic contextualization of how societal influence is imperative in creating an environment where humans are categorized and then held to physical and emotional standards that are historically long-lasting and seemingly intrinsic, which hinder individual and population-specific liberation.
Sex With Limited Mobility
Growing up, we saw physically disabled people as the odd ones out. I could take responsibility for viewing disabled people that way, but that was how everybody around me viewed them. I had no chance of “knowing better,” at least in that environment and age. That was the case until I was introduced to this class and had a fair share of friends who were open-minded. These people changed my thinking in both positive and negative ways, but the point that they taught me that people are different; not everyone is going to look and act the same as everybody else, and that is okay. I know the previous statement can come out as a very “duhh” statement for most of yall; however, I didn’t use to think like that. It was more of “you are weird! something is wrong with you.” And of course, like most adolescents who are just discovering sex and how it works, I wondered what sex must have been like for people with spinal cord injuries and other disabilities like that. I asked myself, “Do they feel anything down there?” or questions like, “can women who are paralyzed from the waist down give birth?” Most of these questions came from mostly ignorance and a bit of curiosity.
Sexuality and Disability: The Missing Discourse of Pleasure by Mitchell Tepper opened my eyes to this issue regarding disabled people and sex. An article like Tepper’s is exactly what people like me missed back in junior high. From reading the article, I learned that sex is more than just borrowing some friction from a partner, and there are more ways to derive sexual pleasure that does not involve the privates. I found it heartbreaking that some disabled individuals give up on their sex lives because they believe that there is no point in trying, “nothing will be the same.” And that is when Mitchell Tepper steps-up and encourages people with SCI that their “sexuality is their responsibility.” These people learned more about the spinal cord-injured bodies and embraced their disability. Evidently, disabled people in wheelchairs tend to have a more difficult time finding a sexual partner than abled individuals; most of this is due to the stigma around disability and sex and partially due to self rejecting before they can even try. Self rejection is a problem that we need to tackle. We (teachers and professors) need to teach about pleasure and sexuality in order to shine a light on this topic of sex and disability and hopefully reduce the stigma and misinformation around disability and sex.
Upward Spiraling Out of My Body Dysmorphia
trigger warnings: body dysmorphia, suicide, mentions of disordered eating, illness
If you remember what your body looks like, I think you’re one of the lucky ones. If you don’t, then I’m not so glad this is what we have in common. Coming from an older West Indian family, my body was always a discussion. No matter how many soccer practices I showed up to, salads I ate, nor how well I did in P.E. class, whenever an aunt approached me it was always “You’ve gotten bigger!” Even throughout my adulthood my body has gotten bigger. I know I’m big, but I wish they knew that I didn’t need to be reminded every second of my life.
I think it’s important to note that I wasn’t always fat, but I still struggled with food and dieting at a young age. Having to deal with cholesterol issues during elementary school was the start of my long, relentless relationship with food. I remember sitting in the doctor’s office with my uncle, his eyes glazed over, listening to every word my pediatrician said. My relationship with food not only originates in this moment, but also with my family’s history of heart disease, diabetes, and many other debilitating diseases. By the time I reached high school, my uncle had a coronary angioplasty, stent insertion, triple bypass heart surgery, and several other surgeries for various kinds of cancer. He never wanted me to suffer like he did.
For as long as I can remember, my uncle micro-managed everything that graced my plate. There were even times we fought at the dinner table so he could see whatever takeout I’d brought home. The stress of bringing home any form of food that he would scrutinize started to transfer into other aspects of my life. In middle school I discovered how uncomfortable it made me feel to eat in public spaces. In high school I even went as far as to become the library aide so I could escape the daunting task of consuming food in the adolescent-filled cafeteria and tried my best to retreat back to the library every lunch break. The library was my safe haven, a place of structure for the moments where I felt the most vulnerable. This is still a habit I have today, I always look for security.
It wasn’t until my senior year of high school that I started my first romantic relationship. He was beautiful, smart, and even had a piercing on one ear that was the jackpot of my teenage girl fantasies. Being with him was the first time someone told me I was pretty. For someone that had only dreamed of having a boyfriend, that meant the world to me. I naively thought that feeling would last forever. As the pandemic raged on, and quarantine forced us into our isolated nests, there became an evident strain on our relationship. Still, we continued to stay with each other. I never noticed when his demeanor changed or that I couldn’t fit into half of my jeans anymore, or even that I was getting bigger than him. I made a huge mistake. You know that horrible mistake people make when they get lost in a relationship because they already have constant bodily validation? Yeah, that one. I gained the “happy weight”, I let myself go. People hate happy weight because being fat makes you feel empty and alone after a relationship. Nobody thinks that you’re attractive anymore and it feels like now there’s this huge responsibility that you have to get back to when you were skinnier. I fucked up.
Coming out of that relationship I became extremely depressed. I moved back in with my family, back to a space I never felt secure in. Endless nights spent scrolling through Tinder, a space where your body is always being perceived, felt completely invalidating. I was a completely different person. And I didn’t feel that way because I had loved and learned valuable lessons about navigating relationships, but it was because I was fat. Everytime I looked into the mirror, a devil appeared on my shoulder pointing out every flaw on my now monstrous body. It’s like my ego had turned against me.
I didn’t want to live in my body anymore. I thought I was nothing without the comfort of another person telling me I was good enough. I can’t say that I never feel that way today, but I’ve worked on it. I’m not about to go on a spiel about how much it matters to love yourself, nor about how self-love is a journey and not a destination… but would love really be worth it if it meant that I had to be skinny, athletic, or fit any of the aesthetic qualities guys on dating apps wanted? Probably not. But I want to be better, because I know that the moments in between these feelings of doubt and despair are much more important than these superficial views of my body. Though, how I never saw myself changing is still a phenomena to me.
In the end, I’m still trying to upward spiral out of this feeling called body dysmorphia.
If you self-sabotage, clap your hands *clap clap*
If someone complimented me, they obviously didn’t mean it. It was a social experiment, a tease, some witty inside joke I wasn’t a part of. Especially if it was a male, they wanted to express their male dominance because they’re insecure about their masculinity. I’m a ‘mere object’. They wanted something from me. They have an ulterior motive, with a million strings attached. These are some of the subconscious thoughts that run through my head when I am complimented for something. The sheer audacity of feeling good from someone’s compliment felt narcissistic. I’d honestly rather be criticized. I had to humble myself.
In Citizen by Claudia Ranken, she writes about how “the physical carriage hauls more than its weight”, in other words how our bodies hold more weight than what is shown on the scale. The weight means trauma and experiences we gained through being a conscious, breathing being. Growing up, I was always taught that if anyone had done a nice favor for me or complimented me, they wanted something. I kept this ideology in the back of my head, like a sticky note I would reference each time I interacted with someone. Over time, I amassed a couple hundred of these notes which eventually turned into a know-it-all heavy weight I lugged around when navigating the real world. “Cute outfit!” a stranger said. “Nice try.” I would think to myself. “You’re not getting into my head that easily.” “You’re so pretty!” Another would exclaim. “Lies.” I thought again. I knew how pathetic I was. I wasn’t conventionally attractive. The phenomenon of having this toxic belief ingrained in my brain destroyed every ounce of self-confidence and feelings of worthiness I had throughout my childhood. It was hard for me to sustain relationships with my friends without these thoughts creeping into my mind because why would they want to waste their time with someone like me? Did they want something? Are they playing the long game?
Eighteen years later, I still have an internal debate whenever I receive a compliment or even a simple praise. The guidebook is etched deep within my brain, so it’ll take quite some time to reverse its effects, but I’ve learned to accept these thoughts and let them free. My friends are friends with me because they value who I am and appreciate my presence, not because they have a secret agenda (unless they do…just kidding). People give and receive compliments because they genuinely had a reason to. So, when someone compliments you on your drip, take it with pride! Make an effort to throw one back. Spread the love!
Kat: Thank You
Regina: So you agree? You think you’re really pretty?
omg you’re so big!
TW: Body Dysmorphia
I hate how much I hated myself. Like it sucks not wanting to be in pictures, not wearing a piece of clothing because it doesn’t flatter you, having to take breaks from social media because you are exhausted from comparing yourself to everyone else on the internet, I could honestly go on about the endless amounts of things I skipped out on because of how I saw myself. In a world where straight, higher class men set the standards for literally everything and everyone, I fell into the trap where I thought I had to change my whole entire being. This is because our society has fantasized a certain look for a “woman.” small, tiny, dainty are just some of the nonstop chatter that would repeat in my head telling me that this is what I had to look like, and I didnt look like that. As a result of this, I started to under-eat and overwork my body. I had successfully fallen into the never ending vicious cycle. This was the start of how I changed my view on working out. I always went to the gym to be smaller. I wanted smaller calves, smaller arms, and a small waist. I wanted to feel “dainty.” When I say I used to overwork my body I was not kidding, like I went to the gym twice a day, everyday for hours. Because I was so scared of gaining weight I would not replenish my body at all, it honestly got very dangerous and out of hand for me.
However, I started going to the gym with friends, and they would say things like “yo look how big my muscles are getting” and they were excited. It genuinely confused me, why did they want to get bigger, but it was all because they had grown up with a different experience. They didn’t view the body as something that needed to look a certain way, but as something that needed to be taken care of. These types of relationships started helping me change my experience and view on my own body.
I started to see my perspective change and view my body in a different way depending on the environment that I was in. Being in the gym, a place where “you’re getting big” and “look at your gains” is the biggest compliment you can get that completely changed my ideology of my own body. I found myself yearning to get those kinds of compliments and over time I also found myself not wanting to be called dainty, but strong. I wanted to be strong and healthy. The gym changed my definition of “attractive,” it was no longer under-eating, basically depriving myself of my nutritional needs, but to fuel and nourish my body. To care after my body so that I could show up, be present, and take those pictures i had once shied away from
In conclusion, my phenomenology with my own body was destroying myself. I was not able to see myself worthy of nourishment and care, more as a machine that needed to constantly look perfect. I was so stuck in that mindset that I was destroying myself without even consciously trying to. Going to the gym and picking up the weights changed my perspective of my own body. My definition of myself changed when I changed to a different environment. Before going to the gym if someone had told me I looked big, I’d be devastated, but because of how the gym changed my mindset, i have been working on taking it as a compliment.
“I’m Not Racist, I Have a Black Friend”
For years, I have heard everything under the sun when it comes to being one of the “only’s” in my group. As an adopted and mixed biracial child (27-year-old kid at heart currently), who lived in the mountains of Maryland as a teenager, coming to grips with how the world might view me and my curly-headed naivety was rather unnerving. I came to understand the reference of being the token black friend that allowed for the N-word pass or in other cases, being the only black friend in the class, group, seminar, etc. These experiences heavily shaped my perception of what it means to deal with race.
Personally, I am under the belief that Racism and Phenomenology go together and proclaiming to not see racism or ignoring the effects of racism on our current/past generation(s) is just downright sad. Phenomenology, or in my opinion, the study of the first-person point of view, can contextually be used to define how one person may “feel” in multiple facets of life. Regarding racism, are we to ignore any subject or mention of race, because it did not directly relate to our own lives? Or is race completely made up, and another reason for people to divide themselves from another individual or group?
The biggest change in my feelings of being different, and knowing that I was one of the only’s, came to me when I first heard the N-word, with a harsh r, referenced by a classmate in 9th grade. While it wasn’t said to me directly, it made me immediately focus on the issues behind the people who cannot or will not, for the lack of a better term, filter between what is racist and what may just be an awkward-ass conversation. Being raised within a school that was predominately 95% white was different, but fitting in and being myself was never an issue for me. Hearing the term, “I’m not racist, I have a black friend!” or “you’re not a black person, you’re white” was all predicated-on ignorance and a lack of socialization. I didn’t understand at the time, the importance that we placed on color, but I know what I experienced can be directly linked to misguided views and the sum of young adulthood. Looking back, it’s comedy. Which leads to my understanding of what phenomenology is. Color me shocked after spending at least – 30 minutes thinking deeply about what this long word could be condensed into, but I think the first-person point of view is a great example of what this study means.
When it comes to my personal experiences with racism and bigotry, I feel as if the instances I experienced as a child paled in comparison to others. While extreme to some, I would classify these lessons as just that – lessons. I fall somewhere beneath the idea of creating your own destiny and acknowledging the effects that racism may have had on our entire society. Personally, these instances did not break me and made me even stronger. Hell, now that I am slightly older and have experienced a gumbo-sized stew of diversity in Texas, race means nothing to me. We’re all different and accepting people as different is the key.
As a child, I “felt” as if what I experienced was profoundly true. Even if I was the black friend, call it racist or not, what did that other person feel when they muttered the N-word? If it was of no malice, it’s hard for me to take that comment personally. If I meet someone from a completely different location, that had a different lifestyle than I do, how can I not look at them and wonder where their family tree stems from and how that influenced them today? Asking these questions and looking deeper could 1000 percent be me overthinking, but I think that’s exactly what the study of the phenomena is; putting yourself in another person’s perspective and “feeling” (or at least attempting to understand) why they feel the way they do. Hoping for awareness, I have faith that talking and sharing our experiences as a society can aid in the attempt to ensure blatant racism does not continue to effect generations to come.
Escaping the Competitive Dance Mindset
TRIGGER WARNING
Discussion of eating disorders, self harm, and body image
Unruly Bodies 