When I go, bury me with nothing but my own skin. I spent far too many days trying to outrun this thing called mine. – Anis Mojgani, Cradle
One day i’ll publish a book. I already know the title of the book; it’s the title of this blog post. It will be a story about women and only women. In the book I’ll build a mosaic of stand out moments between women – of beauty, kindness and hard edges. Right now i’m trying to focus on building this woman. Similar to AA, the first stage involves admitting the state of things. This for me has taken years. Mostly, like an ill fitting itchy jumper, the title of woman didn’t feel like it fit quite right on me. This wasn’t me questioning my biology, but more a rebellion against the trap I felt being a woman was and how much I felt I didn’t measure up. There was a lot of self-berating in my teenage years for what puberty did and didn’t bring.
I’d like to say I fell into a pattern of self love and acceptance and now i’m an overly confident twenty something year old. I didn’t. Instead, I adopted a programme of self-abandonment. Whenever I worried there wasn’t enough inches to my height or enough curves to my hips, I would ask myself how that affected the price of rice. An explanation – once when watching a mother/daughter interaction on a random tv show, the daughter asked her mother something the mother deemed to be irrelevant, the mother replied asking how the subject matter affected the price of rice. Rice being a staple food, the question fundamentally asks what impact does the thing in question have on the most important things in life.
I didn’t become a model (to the disappointment of 7 year old me) and I had no plans to make looks my revenue source so I turned my focus to filling myself in another areas. My main concern was making sure my mind wasn’t empty and I wasn’t too bad of a friend. Sounds like a healthy approach right? That’s how we should prioritise the task of building the woman we want to be (or any person to be fair). Yes, but no. My problem was I didn’t reprioritise but instead, abandoned all care and consideration regarding my physical being. I treated it more like a rag doll than something that I only had one of.
If there is such a thing as the sacred trinity of mind, body and soul, I created a disjuncture between these. My body was simply the functional element. I would feed it and cloth it (as appropriate to the weather and occasion), but I would never ask it to be beautiful or attractive. I shaved my hair (no regrets and to be repeated soon) and adopted a monotone closet. I just needed my body as a vehicle to get me from A to B. My body was not allowed to complain or receive praise. It was just there. My hope was that by doing this, my body would not influence my sense of value or emotions. Still sounding great? I am largely still uncomfortable with compliments pertaining to a physical characteristic. How the chromosomes of my parents arranged themselves is not a personal achievement (how I style my outfits on the other hand, I’ll accept that).
I remember injuring my knee and being frustrated at it for failing on the one job I gave it (abusive relationship much), but what should have I expected? I was not investing in it or caring for it. If i’m honest any change came from being exacerbated. I was tired to my bones of picking myself apart and listing all the things not quite. One summer afternoon, I was in the garden with my mother discussing beauty standards and she said something that stuck with me. I asked her how she navigated the societal pressures/ beauty standards. She said eventually you just grow tired. I stared at her marvelling at how the sun played on her melanated skin and how she seemed to have found the peace I was after. After that I resolved that I wouldn’t wait to get to tired. Tired had to be now. I had to take back ownership of my body.
The real difficulty is to overcome how you think about yourself. If we don’t have that we never grow, we never learn, and sure as hell we should never teach. – Maya Angelou
So self-ownership was telling my body to come home and that it was a needed part of the trinity. So more and more I stretched and strengthened (once in a while also put on some running shoes). I grew my hair out (to the cheers of my mum and sisters). I am still reckoning with the title that is woman, but looking back now, I realise my body was never the problem (duh). I just gave ownership of it to others. I gave them permission to determine if I was “beautiful”, pretty or sexy (more of that in part II). I am still squeezing into the title of woman, but I don’t have to wait for that realisation before I find comfort in my own skin.
THE WEEK THAT WAS:
Words of note –
How embarrassing is love
When it goes wrong
In front of everyone. —Cornelius Eady
Thankful for –
- Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – that speech
- Friends you can call when you need a prayer
- I May Destroy You – Michaela Coel
after the wilderness 