Radical Self Love

     I have a confession to make: I don't always love my body. In fact, I've devised some sneaky ways around ever having to think about it. I don't own a scale. When I go to the doctor, I step on backward and tell them I don't want to know. I can't know. To know is to fall down a horrible shame spiral of body hatred.
     I'm fed up. I'm sick of living my life in opposition to my body. I'm tired of feeling negative toward this body that has treated me well. It's lived and it's loved and it's brought me from there to here. I'm tired of feeling anything but awe at the things my body can do.
     The personal is political and our bodies are both intensely personal and politicized, meaning that the conscious decision to love ourselves is an inherently radical act. I want to make the commitment to just love myself. Even when it's hard, even when it's not fun.
     In that vein, I'm looking for stories, photos, etc. from people about their struggles, successes, whatever. I want a variety of voices. Tell me about your struggles and triumphs. I'll talk to people working in the fitness industry, trans* people, menopausal women, young people, old people, fat people, thin people, and on and on and on. In exchange for your stories, I commit to allowing myself to be vulnerable and honest about myself and my relationship with my body. Together, we can open a frank dialogue about bodies, and learn how we can love ourselves and treat ourselves kindly, even when it's difficult.

From the Mouths of Babes, Through the Eyes of Body Shame

     I've been spending a fair amount of time at a preschool for work. It's been mostly great and has certainly been helping my recently overactive biological clock (that's a different blog post altogether). Today, though, something happened. On the playground, lining up to go inside, a little girl, not in the class I'm usually with, started talking to me:

          Little Girl: "I like your tattoo on your foot."
          Me: "Thank you! I like your glasses."
          Girl: "Thank you... why is your tummy so big?"

     I sat there for a second, feeling like the wind had been kicked out of me by this tiny creature who surely meant no harm. My mind raced. I couldn't let her see that I was upset, I couldn't give her any of my standard lines for adults who make inappropriate comments about my body, and it wasn't the right time to turn it into a teachable moment. Finally I said something along the lines of, "That's just how my body is." I felt good about my answer, but still really shitty about the question, and by extension really shitty that I'd let the innocent comment of a three year old ruin my day and self-confidence. I certainly wasn't winning any body-positive feminist awards.

     So there it is, another great example of how my theoretical living and actual reality don't always mesh. If you ask me, I'll tell you that everyone should feel good about themselves and there's nothing inherently better about one body over another. And I really believe that! But when I turn that in on myself, it's suddenly a whole hell of a lot more difficult to feel good. What's strange is I almost never feel negatively about other people's bodies. I can absolutely live my feminist truth when it comes to other people. Which may be why having a kid point out my faults hurts so badly. I like to pretend that other people don't see the same terrible things I see about myself. I don't like to be faced with the fact that my body is visible to the world, and the world has opinions about it.

     I used to be better at letting it roll off my shoulders. I didn't bat an eye the time a man oinked at me as I was leaving a gas station. In college, I took a concrete, positive stance when confronted with the fact someone had referred to me, at a party, in public, as a "fat girl." They were being intentionally mean, and I can move on from that. I was able to let it go because I knew they were trying to break me down and that assholes like that deserve exactly none of my time.

     Today was different. That little girl simply hasn't learned about tact and what kinds of things aren't nice to say to people. She had no agenda. She simply had a question. A small, innocent question that sent me into a spiral of body shame.

   

Meghan Trainor, Faux-Empowerment, and Pop Feminism

     As of this post, I've had Meghan Trainor's "Dear Future Husband" stuck in my head periodically for weeks. I assume the very act of writing this post will ensure that will remain the case for many weeks to come. In many ways, I'm ok with that. Trainor has proven herself to be a harbinger of near perfect pop-confections, with her throwback sensibility, beat-driven catalog, and "don't give a shit" attitude, all wrapped up in a tiny, blonde, white package. She's cornered the market on the not-really-that-subversive fuck you anthem.

     Feminism is having a bit of a moment in pop music. There was Taylor Swift finally admitting that not only is she a feminist, but a proud one, and there was Beyonce performing in front of a huge backdrop that simply said: FEMINIST. And there was Meghan Trainor's body-positive hit "All About That Bass." After the disaster that was last year's consent challenged Robin Thicke hit "Blurred Lines," this could have been the breath of fresh air we'd all been waiting for! Of course, fun-ruining feminists like myself couldn't just let Trainor's song be. Despite her assurances that "every inch of you is perfect, from the bottom to the top," we had our reservations about what the media was hailing as a new, woman-friendly foray into pop feminism. 

     Any of you who know me, whether in real life or online, know that I *love* pop music (in fact, you may recall I wrote a full post about that last year). I can turn the critical part of my brain nearly all the way off when it comes to catchy music. But something about "All About That Bass" stuck in my craw. I wanted to sing it loud in the car, unconcerned about body politics for omgjustoneminutejeez, but... it was not to be. So here I am, once again ruining something I could have loved with my own particular brand of joy-sucking analysis. Here we go.

     Let's start at the beginning, shall we? Possibly the biggest complaint I've heard about "All About That Bass" is the critique that the song's so-called body positivity exists within the context of male gaze and heterosexual expectations of love, romance, and sense. Even her mother in the song tells her, "Don't worry about your size...boys like a little more booty to hold at night." Aside from the inherent weirdness of a mother telling her daughter what boys like in bed, the idea that the positive feelings we have toward our own bodies are validated in terms of the acceptance of a sexual partner is laughable, dangerous, and simply nothing new. There is no revolution in believing that one's body is acceptable because a lover accepts it. While gaining the acceptance of a partner can absolutely be a transformative experience for many, at the end of the day, true self-acceptance centers on a love of self, divorced from desires and expectations of others. By framing body positivity as something that we do to catch men, we're still basing our self-worth on heterosexist ideals and male gaze.

     The counterpoint of the "boys like a little more booty" issue is that it's a divisive sentiment. We've all seen the movie, tshirts, bumper stickers, etc, that say "Real women have curves." It started out as a proud battle cry of non-waify women who undoubtedly just wanted to tell the world that they exist and have value. Soon, however, we began to realize that when we claim "real women" are defined by any single attribute, we're also saying that those women who don't have said attribute aren't "real." There is no such thing as a real woman. A "real woman" is, essentially, someone who identifies as such. Period. 

     Finally, "All About That Bass" posits that an additional universal truth of femaleness is a hatred of our bodies. 

                    "I'm bringing booty back/

                     Go 'head and tell them skinny bitches that/

                     No, I'm just playing I know you think you're fat"

     There's so much to unpack here I'm almost unsure where to start. I'd like to take a quick moment to point out that only white people seem to really believe that "booty" is having its moment right now for the first time. I'm a white lady myself and don't feel qualified to speak more on that, but let's just all remember that booty never really went anywhere, even though white people are just now getting on board. 

     Now that we've got that out of the way, let's talk about this assertion that "skinny bitches...think [they're] fat." What a sad revelation. It's a little unnecessarily aggressive to even mention the skinny bitches, but it disturbs me greatly that Trainor brings the song's relevance to thin women by assuming they also believe their bodies are unacceptable. Even women whose bodies fit into the hegemonic ideal believe there is something wrong with them. That's not ok. 

     Her most recent single (and the one that's been slowly burrowing its way through my brain for the past few weeks) is "Dear Future Husband." There's been a fair amount of Buzzfeed-style hullabaloo surrounding the song's video, in which Trainor lives in a colorful, stylized, 50's throwback. If you haven't seen, pull up YouTube and give it a watch. I'll wait. Ok, back? Great. See, I actually like the video. I think there are parts of it that are, in their own pre-packaged, commercial way, kind of critical of gender essentialist values, particularly regarding gendered distribution of housework. If nothing else, the images send a clear message about how Trainor sees herself within a patriarchal framework of what it means to be a wife.  

     In my estimation, the greatest part of this song is the second verse:

                    "You got that 9 to 5,

                      But, baby, so do I,

                      So don't be thinking I'll be home and baking apple pies.

                      I never learned to cook,

                      But I can write a hook.

                      Sing along with me,

                      Sing-sing along with me."

     It has everything I would look for in a song about seeking a long-term, egalitarian partnership. There's the acknowledgment that Future Husband is employed full time, and an equal acknowledgment that she is too. Then, there's the clear statement of her expectations of mutual contribution to domestic upkeep. And then, in what is probably my favorite line of this whole damn song, she announces her own talents when she tells us she "never learned to cook, but [she] can write a hook." Sadly, this verse is maybe the only not terrible part of the song.

     When anti-feminists scream about feminists not really wanting equality but actually wanting women to be superior to men, I imagine the rest of this song is how they envision that feminist utopia. First of all, Trainor is trading big in "happy wife, happy life" bullshit. That phrase is up there with "boys will be boys" on the list of colloquialisms that make me want to smack my head against the wall, because it's not really about cultivating a happy, healthy relationship. It's about appeasing your wife because if you don't then she'll be crazy (and we all know bitches be crazy, yes?). 

     The third verse of the song is probably the clearest example of this idea come to life:

                    "After every fight,

                     Just apologize,

                     And maybe then I'll let you rock my body right [Don't worry, more on this later]                        Even if I was wrong,

                     You know I'm never wrong.

                     Why disagree?

                     Why, why disagree?"

   

     Friends, I want to begin by explaining what a hard time I'm having even beginning to deconstruct this mess of a verse. It's so antithetical to everything I know and hold true about life and love and monogamous partnership that the first time I heard it, I may have cringed and gasped audibly. Conflict is an avoidable facet of relationships. Committing to a partnership can be hard, and it's normal and necessary to have disagreements sometimes. A hallmark of a healthy partnership is the ability to fight smart and, more importantly, compromise in mutually beneficial ways. When I hear someone brag that they never fight with their partner, it's a huge red flag to me. This is not to say that there isn't such a thing as too much fighting, or that all fights are created equal, but an absence of conflict does not indicate an absence of problems or disagreement, it indicates an absence of communication. 

     Now, to get back to the line we didn't talk about, about she'll maybe "let [him] rock my body right." There are also several other instances of Trainor using sex as a bargaining chip to get what she wants packed into this three minute song. This is not a new idea, rather its roots are in the belief that woman aren't sexual beings and don't enjoy sex, thus they do it as a sort of marriage tax. By extension, if women are disinterested in sex and only do it to be nice, it's of no consequence to withhold sex until certain conditions are met. I'd say that's a pretty terrible, manipulative thing to do, and also related to some serious communication troubles. 

     Finally, the icing on the cake comes tucked at the end of a chorus about two-thirds of the way through the song. It starts out the same way as every other chorus, then ends with "and know we'll never see your family more than mine." It comes entirely out the blue. Literally, there is no talk of family before or after. It's just this random line apropos of nothing, like a tiny, calculated, dysfunctional relationship power play. Meghan Trainor clearly wants Future Husband to know that her needs come first, forever.

     I don't think that Meghan Trainor is intentionally a feminist nightmare. In fact, I'd imagine she truly believes she's empowering. And if her words are making young women feel better about their bodies, or more willing to speak their minds, that's a great thing! But the trouble with pop feminism is that when you take what may very well be a distinct feminist message and feed it through the capitalist machine, oftentimes what comes out is a fuzzy, pseudo-politics. The patriarchy has no incentive to produce popular cultural narratives that legitimately challenge a status quo that keeps maleness and whiteness and hegemony in power. This is why we must be ever vigilant in critiquing the media we consume: the very act of analyzing popular culture forces us to confront the systems in which damaging images continue to thrive. By talking about it, we can move toward creating more legitimately progressive media. 

Female Sexuality, Power, Feminism, and the Male Gaze

     We've all heard it before. Hell, we may have even been the ones saying it: I own my sexuality. I am sexy for me. I am subverting traditional female sexuality and objectification by existing as a feminist being exuding sexiness on my own terms. 
     I recently watched a documentary called Sexy Baby, a perspective into how images of female sexuality, particularly through pop culture and pornography, shape girls' and women's self image and in turn inform their decision making. The film followed three women, one of whom was a young girl named Winnifred. We're introduced to her as a 12 year old feminist actor, performing a piece overtly critical of popular images of women. As the movie progresses, we see Winnifred become a teenager and become more and more drawn into sexuality, seemingly leaving behind the self assured preteen feminist.
     Winnifred seems to believe that she is performing sexuality in a powerful way, that she is trying on 'sexy' for herself. Is that truly a possibility for a young woman of her age? Is it really possible for any of us? First of all, as a woman well into her twenties who has successfully made it to the other side of budding teenage sexuality, I can look back and see myself in Winnifred: the desperate, insatiable desire to cultivate an identity, unique enough to stand out, but not so unique as to be labeled a weirdo; the sudden influx of near constant male attention and the realization that men now see you as a potentially sexual being; the need, crushing in its enormity, to be independent, all while failing completely to realize how dependent you still are. These are the universal truths of early female teenagedom. So here's the question: When you don't know yet who you are and what sexuality means in a greater context of objectification and near universal oversexualization, can you subvert the status quo by "owning" said sexuality?
     I don't have a firm answer to that question, but I suspect it is no. A young teenager, for all intents and purposes a child, does not and cannot truly understand all the facets of her own sexuality, much less grapple with where said sexuality fits into the enormous contextual clusterfuck that is patriarchy and society at large.
     But what about as an adult? Let's say you know who you are. You've tried on different identities and found the one that fit. You are a sexy, self-actualized woman and you are owning the hell out of your sexuality. But sexuality doesn't exist in a vacuum. Even if you're operating 100% on your own terms, if you're performing hegemonic femininity/heterosexual sexiness, you're still living a life within the patriarchy. The male gaze and patriarchal norms exist regardless of intent. So does intent matter when the results are the same no matter what? When I put on some heels and a skirt, am I still part of a greater problem?
     None of this is to say there is anything inherently wrong with sexiness. But there's something to be said about being cognizant and critical of our own roles in upholding an arbitrary, heterosexist ideal. The personal has never ceased being political.

She Loves "The Gays"

     In my younger days, I began identifying with what many might call "gay culture." I went to midnight showings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show and listened to Cher and Britney and went to drag shows. In college, I started doing drag myself (that's Mr. UT Gender Bender 2007 to you, thankyouverymuch). I had (and still have) gay friends. Coming from a liberal, feminist family, this was met with relative enthusiasm, or at least wasn't discouraged, however uncomfortable my father was with the idea of me dressing like a man and getting on stage.
     It wasn't long before I was given the title of " hag." I wore the badge proudly, head held high knowing that I, oh benevolent, straight, white lady, was an enthusiastic friend to "the gays".
     I'm here today to tell you I was wrong.
     Now hang on, before anyone gets too upset: I am 100% an ally to gay/lesbian/bisexual/trans/queer/other people. I believe in equality and I still love disco. And don't even get me started on drag as a radical statement on gender performativity (or do, I didn't get that expensive Women's Studies degree to NOT get academic about gender)! But you know what? I'm straight. It's not about me. Say it with me straight allies: it is not about us.
     I'm not a "hag." It's not ok for me to use someone else's sexual orientation as a part of my identity. Period.
     And "the gays"? Please. Gay people are not a monolith. There are plenty of gay people I don't like.  You know why? Because they're human beings with diverse lives and interests and personalities and nobody lives everyone. I can like some people and dislike others and still support everyone's rights!
     We as straight people who feel connected to the fight for equality need to make sure we're supporting people and not a pile of straw men (or women). As long as we're labeling an entire group as "the gays" we're taking part in the same kind of othering that the people on the other side of the fight do when they discriminate. We mean well, but it doesn't do anyone any good to forget that the ones who are being denied basic civil and human rights are our neighbors, our sisters, our brothers, our friends.
     By allowing this kind of attitude to prevail, I believe we're ultimately doing a disservice to those we love. We can do better. We can be better. We can listen, truly listen, to our friends and become the most effective allies we can be.
     ....and then maybe go to drag brunch.

The P Word

     This week, after losing a match at the Australian Open, tennis player Heather Watson alluded in an interview that she was having her period, which had a negative effect on her performance. People. Were. Shocked.

     Almost all women experience 12-13 periods a year for something like thirty years of their lives. In developing nations, lack of access to menstrual supplies and cultural taboo play an important role in the continued subjugation of women. So why is it still such a big freaking deal to talk about it? And why can't we admit that, yeah, our periods affect our lives?

     I've never understood the weird way that our culture thinks about and reacts to menstruation. How many times have you heard/seen the dumb trope about a dude who's embarrassed to go buy brand new, wrapped in plastic, unused, sanitized pads or tampons? How many of us, as girls and women, have felt embarrassed ourselves about having our periods, terrified that someone might see we've pulled a tampon out of our bag before headed to the bathroom? It's ridiculous! It's insane!

     And the cramps? The headaches? The crying? Please! It's the worst. After starting my period at 10, I was blessed with cramps that would keep me on the couch for days, unable to move. I'd get clammy and pale, looking like I had the flu. My dad, being obviously concerned, took me to my pediatrician one month. "It's just cramps. Some girls have periods like this. Take Tylenol and drink water. Some women find that exercise helps," she told me. Just cramps?!??! Exercise?!? I can't even stand up, lady! Thankfully, my parents are rational people who allowed me to go on birth control to take care of it. By the time I stopped taking the pill years later, my period had apparently settled down and I was no longer laid up for 5+ days every month.

     I was lucky. But what of the women for whom the debilitating pain never ceases? Those who can't just go on the pill to make it better. Those for whom the pill doesn't even work? How do we acknowledge their very real suffering and move to fix it without accidentally making the case that women are by nature of biology physically inferior to men? If we're out of commission once a month for thirty years, how can we be expected to hold positions of power?

     Obviously, this is untrue. Women are equally capable of leading, period or not. But it's one of the reasons I think we're afraid to talk about menstruation on a broader, more visible scale. Admitting that periods suck and that they can affect other aspects of our lives seems almost like a betrayal. We've spent so many decades fighting to prove that our uteruses don't make us second class, unfit weirdos that saying out loud that, hey, actually sometimes our uteruses are totally shitty, feels an awful lot like womanly treason.

     All of this circles back to an idea that has been very present in my life recently. I mentioned it in my previous post about cohabitating with my boyfriend: sometimes "fair" and "equal" are two different things. We do have different anatomy than men. That fact doesn't indicate anything more than just that. Our bodies are different, and sometimes we need different stuff to get us to an even playing field. Call it genital affirmative action, if you will (which you won't, because that's a terrible joke). I don't know what that looks like in practice, but I do know that we've been playing the game under men's rules for far too long. As long as maleness is considered the default, we'll be struggling to catch up. The cards are stacked against our bodies, because our bodies have long been considered deviant. So I say it's time to lift the veil around menstruation. Our bodies and experiences are valid, true, and important. Period.

I'm Afraid

I'm afraid to walk alone at night.
I'm afraid of poverty.
I'm afraid to be a parent.
I'm afraid I'll regret not becoming one.
I'm afraid to be vulnerable.
I'm afraid to be emotional.
I'm afraid of keeping my feelings inside.
I'm afraid you'll stop loving me.
I'm afraid I love you too much.
I'm afraid of being inauthentic.
I'm afraid that makes me an asshole.
I'm afraid I'll never do anything great.
I'm afraid of losing the people I love.
I'm afraid of being judged in the court of public opinion.
I'm afraid I'll make the wrong choices.
I'm afraid I'm bad at my job.
I'm afraid that I'm uninteresting.
I'm afraid that I'm a bad host.
I'm afraid they'll know I'm only pretending.
I'm afraid.