GLITTER POLITIC

innerfatgirl:

this morning i was looking for my swim suit bottoms for a lake trip we are going on later today and i yelled ‘WHERE THE FUCK ARE MY BOTTOMS?!’ and Ashley Aron, from her room across the hall yelled “UH, I’M RIGHT HERE, I’M NOT SURE ABOUT THE OTHERS THOUGH’ 

and then i ‘fucked’ her over the bathroom counter with my clothes on. it was an ‘instructional tutorial’ about how to get the most leverage/force out of your, uh, bang.

HAHA

role model behavior

As I was walking down the street today I heard someone talking loudly on the phone. They were talking about how they were gaining weight, and the emotion they used to describe this was serious panic. I think panic is a normal thing to feel when our bodies change, especially if they change in ways that go against mainstream ideas about what is sexy, valuable or beautiful. We are taught all of our lives that there is beauty and excellence in stability so when we recognize our bodies are unstable, shifting, changing, that can be really scary and hard to process and accept. This is because bodies are not supposed to be weird or out of control, but the truth is that they are. Bodies are amazing, weird, messy, strong yet frail, rigid yet extremely adaptable entities that basically do what they want. We spend a great deal of time and money trying to contain our bodies through normative regimes like hygiene, exercise, and clothing. We are taught that if we just work hard enough, if we continue to persevere, eating and exercising through our hatred for ourselves that one day we will be rewarded with a ‘perfect’ body. I probably don’t have to tell all of you that ‘perfect’ is bullshit capitalist mythology fed to us in the hopes of making us better consumers, right?

Me and my bod, we have a tumultuous relationship at best. Pretty much all of my issues in my life somehow involve my sturdy, soft, and strange body. I have tried so hard to contain my body, to control my body, to make it feel stable for myself when the rest of my life felt like chaos. I have spent a large chunk of my life doing fucked up, hurtful things to my body that made me feel small and ugly so that I could feel like I had some control.

Here’s the problem with that: my body is an of out of control, off the hook, can’t stop wont stop, big, hot, bodacious mess. It is going to do what it wants and it reacts especially negatively to any attempts to be held down or contained. It is desiring of love and care and it needs those things really fucking bad because I have spent many years denying it those things when it needed them the most. I mean, lets be real here, our bodies all sag, break, shrink, bulge, jiggle, wrinkle, grow and die - all the time. I think that part of my journey of self love is realizing that there is immense power in accepting and loving the unstable, changing, bouncy contours of my body. When I do this, it is a reminder that love will take me to much further and interesting places than fear.

-Majestic

I just found this on Ashley’s computer and I thought it was really beautiful. She wrote it a few months ago, but sometimes I am still surprised by how much heartbreak smarts, even as time passes. I love that I have people who challenge me to feel my feelings with honesty and courage. Thanks Ashley.

********

Majestic and I are both strugglin’. Man, are we hurting right now. We are both suffering extreme losses and a complete re-fabrication of our lives, really an alteration of the molecular makeup of who we are. It’s interesting that we experience that together. I rarely see Majestic around other people. Most of our friendship takes place at the breakfast table, the dinner table, in sweatpants, or in hotpants. Majestic is one of the toughest bitches I’ve ever known. They are so strong and bad-ass, and even though they doesn’t always see it as authentic, they are kicking the shit out of their heartbreak and gently stroking its hair at the same time. Tough as nails.

Last night they said to me, “Fuck, I am pretending so hard right now. I didn’t know I could hurt this badly. I almost never cry, and sometimes it comes out in the most awkward moments.”

I was reminded of an experience I had a couple summers ago, when I got severe food poisoning. I was shitting black rivers for weeks. More than once, I had it coming out of me at both ends. At. The. Same. Time. I had lost all control. It was terrifying, but at the same time, a little bit liberating too. I mean, either I was going to have to take a disgusting, loud, repulsive, embarrassing crap in public…or I was going to shit my pants. I mean, those were my choices. So I let go.

I think sometimes we get emotional food poisoning. We’re thrust by some catalytic event into a public bathroom and the only choice we have is to just explode. Letting go of that control is really scary because people stop seeing us as pillars, we stop seeing ourselves as pillars. We become human and touchable in those moments. We are exposed, bare, vulnerable, and there is not a fucking thing we can do about it. Learning to embrace emotional pants-shitting is super important. And finding someone who will do it with you is an unimaginable gift.

Thanks for letting go with me, Majestic.

- Ashley

remember that today is the last day to send us art for the Body Love Letter Zine Project

*click here for more info

[TRIGGER WARNING: EATING DISORDERS]

There is a person, right now, who is realizing their body is not wrong, disgusting, or broken for the first time in all of their 37 years on this planet. There is a teenager, who has reclaimed the word ‘fat’ - now using it as an adjective, embedded with 15 years of self-love and survival. Right now, there is a 78 year old, a 46 year old, and a 12 year old, staring at their bodies in the mirror and seeing nothing but sexy, hot, ferocious, UNSTOPPABLE. There is a person, right now, reading the story of another and realizing they have not spent 24 years struggling with disordered eating alone. There is a person, right now, who is wearing booty shorts 2 sizes too small ON PURPOSE. There is a person, right now, who has started to make a point of telling themselves daily that they are strong and beautiful, as a way to heal 19 years of ‘incapable’ and ‘ugly’.

Sharing our stories of struggle is incredibly vital and important, but it is also important to share our stories of resistance. When we illuminate the change that we are creating (as well as our struggles), it is easier to see that we are not alone, that we are moving through this self-hatred that sometimes feels like concrete, that we are destroying the systems that tell us which bodies are attractive and valuable, and which bodies are wrong.  When we make our struggles and resistances available to others, we create space for self-love to creep in to the hearts and minds of those around us. After a while, self-love starts to spread like wild-fire, rapidly transforming the body hating landscape of dominant culture and creating more space for all bodies to experience love and value. What is more badass than that?

Sometimes even the smallest, or simplest acts of resistance can seem like the hardest. Just remember that all of our struggles are different and that we are doing what we can. There is no ‘right way’ to begin to love ourselves, and there is room for all of us to exist where we are at. If you can’t take action today, there is always tomorrow, next week, next month, etc. Just keep trying, and above all treat yourself with gentle compassion and kindness because the fact that we are even contemplating these things is a powerful act.

- Majestic Legay

* I wrote this after I read this [tw eating disorder] because realizing I wasn’t alone in struggling with (and resisting) disordered eating was so fucking relieving and transformational for me. When I read this, I thought “yeah, this is their very important reality, but the author is erasing the ways that these people resist. what about the ways that we resist? we should share that also”