When I look back at photos of myself, I see a puppy whose paws are too big for his body, arms and legs too long, and hands and feet too big. In elementary school I was a pretty tall kid and that tallness came with pride, when transitioning to middle school however the pride was slowly stripped away. My height, although advantageous on the surface level, left me open to ridicule in other areas.
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For a good chunk of my life, I have wrestled. It is a beautiful sport in a vacuum, but there is an ugly side when it comes to weight classes. In wrestling, there is a very common practice known as cutting, which is basically losing weight within a certain amount of time. Oftentimes, this is a short term cut within a few days in which one has to think about the physical weight of the foods and drinks as well as things like water retention and fiber. I had played other sports when I was younger, but when I got to high school I didn’t quite understand just how much wrestling would be omnipresent in my bodily life, specifically surrounding food. With something like tennis, my diet would simply be whatever my mom made, or what we ordered when we went out. Once I had to start watching my weight to make sure I was in the right weight class for the team, my diet started to shift. Especially when we would be close to matches, and I would stress the whole (fully dehydrated) 24 hours before weigh ins. Immediately after weigh ins, I would go rehydrate and fuel up with foods like Cheerios and honey to give me quick energy. Even with all of these things in mind, we still had to go out and wrestle right after this starvation. We were expected to perform at our best after depriving ourselves of nutrients to make an arbitrary weight. I think it is interesting that this extremely physical sport inadvertently turns the body into something that is purely focused on one thing.
When the fall semester started, I was determined to go to the gym consistently and start running around my neighborhood. I started doing all this research (Tiktok rabbit holes) on what type of exercising I should do to have my body look a certain way based on my height, weight, and schedule. I looked into Pilates classes, good running shoes, and certain meals to eat.
Read More: The Gym is an Award ShowDay 1 came in my 3 split weekly workout schedule, and I was ready. I had a list of exercises to do and a meal plan. However, that morning I started to have a bunch of anxiety. My outfit didn’t look like the cute gym clothes on social media, I had on an old family reunion T-shirt and too small leggings. I had this fear that what if I forgot how to do the exercises properly and someone looks at me and thought I was stupid or could tell that I was new to this. All these thoughts started rushing through my mind to the point where I ended up doing an at- home YouTube workout instead.
Looking back, I realize my anxiety was deeper than just exercising. It was more about how I thought other people would perceive not only my body but how I decided to move it. Social media has created an image of what someone who goes to the gym is supposed to look like, from the clothes they wear to their confidence level with using the equipment. I started comparing myself to that image before I even arrived at the gym.
This experience showed me how culture and societies expectations can shape how people view us and how we view our own bodies. My fear of being judged changed how I experienced my body and my comfortability level of exercising. The gym did not feel like a place to “better myself,” it felt like an award show where everyone was watching me. Fast forward to today, I still do have the fear and overthinking of going to the gym. But rather than not go at all I look on the app to see how busy it is before going. I’m not sure if that’s progress but at least I made it to being in the building.
Freshman year of college all my friends were men. The majority of them went to the gym regularly and would always talk about their weight. Most of them were trying to gain weight. They would talk about how they are 150 lbs and this is the heaviest they have ever been. They would be taller than me but I would still weigh more. I started telling myself I needed to weigh less than this 6 ft man or I am going to be fat.
Continue readingTW: Mentions of body shaming, eating disorders and rape/SA.
“Have you tried losing weight?” “Maybe you should get on a diet.” “The pain would go away if you were smaller.” These are all poor excuses that people When going to the doctor as a bigger person, there is almost a preparation internally that is done to face the same two statements.
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Being born female has always felt like a curse to me. Although I do love presenting femininely, girlhood, and feminism, femininity always felt like an objective that I could never, ever reach. Growing up, I was surrounded by ideals of what a “real woman” should look like and act like, but none of them ever felt like me.
Read more: Femininity, Fluidity, & FaloodasToo often, women & afab people of color, specifically black and brown people, are hyper masculinized by society. Many of us experience gender dysphoria at a young age without even realizing it. In a porn-sick, pedophilic world, we are often told to shave our legs or that we won’t be desirable if we are not petite. We are groomed into believing that compliance with these unrealistic and patriarchal beauty standards is the only way we can be loved or accepted.
This alienation often made me feel like I was a monster, much like how Stryker compares the trans body to Frankenstein’s monster, where both are labeled as “unnatural” creations rejected by society. Even the most natural and feminine part of myself, body hair, was turned into something to be erased. Body hair, a normal sign of maturity, was made to seem masculine, ugly, and unnatural. That made me feel both “not feminine enough” and “not masculine enough,” even as I came to understand myself as genderfluid. I found myself trapped between two conflicting thoughts: one that punished me for lacking male traits, and another that shamed me for not performing femininity “correctly.”
These beauty standards also erase intersectionality, especially when it comes to South Asian bodies. Generations of colonial trauma, famine, and labor have shaped our bodies in ways that defy Eurocentric ideals. Yet we are still told that our features, our curves, our body hair, and our skin are flaws to be fixed. Our oppressors wound us and then teach us to hate the scars it leaves behind.
For me, reclaiming my gender and my body means rejecting those expectations. Like Stryker’s “transgender rage”, I’ve learned that my frustration can become powerful, where I refuse to be molded by standards that were never made for me. My gender exists in the space between what I was told to be and what I choose to become.
The Muse’s Misfortune
To be a muse is to be worthy. To be a muse is to be beautiful and talented, chosen and seen. To be a muse is to be exhilarated and exhausted, honored and objectified, proud and pornified. There cannot be one state of being without the other, so long as there is one being to perceive and one being to be perceived.
Read more: The Muse’s MisfortuneIn some societies, perhaps, it is possible for a muse to exist without the constant fear and awareness of their own and another’s presence. In patriarchal and sexist cultures, however, the muse faces an internal and external threat of surveillance, and therefore sexualization. “(Patriarchal and sexist) society defines woman as object, as a mere body, and… are in fact frequently regarded by others as objects and mere bodies” (Young, I. “Throwing Like a Girl: A Phenomenology of Feminine Body Comportment Motility and Spatiality,” p. 153-154). For feminine muses, they “learn to live out (their) existence in accordance with the definition that patriarchal culture assigns to (them, and) are physically inhibited, confined, positioned, and objectified” (152). The definition becomes internalized, which then manipulates and forces women into being more feminine- more submissive, docile, small, quiet. “Women often approach a physical engagement with things with timidity, uncertainty, and hesitancy… (They) lack an entire trust in (their) bodies to carry (them to their) aims. There is… a double hesitation here. On the one hand, (women) lack confidence that (they) have the capacity to do what must be done… The other side of this tentativeness is… a fear of getting hurt… (They) often experience (their) bodies as a fragile encumbrance, rather than the medium for the enactment of (their) aims” (143-144). The subordination of feminine beings is at the root of patriarchy, and it grows as more minds and bodies accept the notion that feminine and masculine categories cannot intermingle. The stronger the patriarchy becomes, the more ‘natural’ it seems that feminine bodies are weaker than masculine bodies. In reality, women “have more of a tendency than men to greatly underestimate our bodily capacity,” as well as the relentless pressure of being perceived as a muse, which results in under-performance.
Illustration by me of a vial of “Activator” from the film The Substance with small green hand prints.
The Substance is easily my favorite horror film to come out this year, and probably my favorite film regardless of genre to come out of 2024. It executes common horror tropes beautifully while offering a combination of fresh new ideas that haven’t felt explored in the specific way Coralie Fargeat, the director, addresses them. The film’s plot and general message are also incredibly relevant to politics of Desire and how physical attractiveness is measured among different groups of people.
Continue readingWho 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
Keto,
Maybe that’ll help
Paleo,
Couldn’t hurt to try
So many failed attempts
To lower her BMI
How can I tell her,
That a number
It doesn’t define her!
The scale, the scale
What does it say?
FAT, it says
But in numbers,
It judges.
Why must we care
What a metal box
Has to say?!
Why do we care
About the numbers
At the end of the day?!
The world says
Those numbers matter
The world says
Those numbers decide
They have more say
Than we do,
In our own lives
It shatters my heart
The look on her face
As we snack on chocolates
While she eats ice chips
Sugar-free,
Fat-free,
And low-carb
That’s her life
My BMI,
That number
It’s way too high
UGH
How can I tell her
That number is futile
Tell me now,
Does the BMI know
Of the babies
You’ve born?!
Does the BMI know
Of the PPD
You’ve overthrown?!
A number cannot measure beauty
So why,
Why does it bring tears to your eyes?
A number cannot measure beauty
So why,
Why must the matter
Overwhelm your mind?
I tell you you’re perfect;
But my words
They are fruitless,
It is only numbers
That get through to you,
The same numbers,
That judge you
