Glitter Politic. It’s kind of like a super power. From the minute we are born, the world injects us with poison. This poison takes the form of self-hatred, fear, disempowerment, loneliness, and worthlessness. The poison has become part of us, and has corroded us from the inside. Embodying a Glitter Politic is the act of taking those parts of ourselves that feel toxic – those deeply terrifying, seemingly ugly parts – and seeing ourselves as whole. It is about having compassion for the impossibilities within and around us. It is about throwing those parts of ourselves that feel infected back out into the world in the form of beauty, like a weapon. In doing so, we suddenly have the power to unlearn, challenge, and redefine what is beautiful.
When we re-imagine, re-define, re-create beauty and share that with the world, people internalize it and it incites a chain reaction. It becomes its own virus – a glitter pandemic. When we become aware of the ways in which our world privileges certain bodies over others, and actively reject those destructive value systems, we have within us the power to annihilate beauty as we know it.
Self-love is volcanic. When we externalize our love for ourselves, we erupt love from its cold, ashy hollow and it surges forth, hot with promise, into the hearts and minds of others. Self-love collapses the imagined borders and walls we have built with the hope of protecting ourselves. It unravels the ropes that bind and isolate us from each other. Suddenly, our interconnectedness becomes profoundly obvious. Through self-love we can shatter the dominant narratives that tell us we are autonomous, non-connected individuals. Self-love in the face of fear and hate cracks open a space teeming with possibilities for connection and transformation.
It’s time for us to turn our feelings back on. Embodying a Glitter Politic is about returning to the body. It is about willingly entering a space of vulnerability, that place of uncertainty and ambiguity. This place is terrifying because it is mysterious, shifting, inexplicable. What does it even feel like to be in love with our bodies? What does it feel like to see our bodies as liminal, as shaky, as undefinable? What does it feel like, inside our bodies, to exist in this marginal place? Are we raw here? Are we scared here? It is in these indiscernible places that compassion – a recognition that in our loneliest moments, we are not alone – becomes possible. Embodying a Glitter Politic is a challenge, a call to action. It is a mission to begin the journey of engaging with ourselves fully. Only from this place can we connect, and only then can we see change.
-Ashley and Majestic
