I think about the privilege I have every day. Even though I am a minority, I fit today’s beauty standards, I am financially well off, I have never had or needed a job before, I get an allowance, and I have a body that gets me everywhere with ease. I become aware of this privilege every day and everywhere I go because I always realize how much easier I have it then others. After watching the documentary Aftershock, I became even more aware of this to the point where I was telling the people around me about this documentary and what I was shocked to learn. Even though I am a minority as well, I am treated differently because I am not specifically black. When watching this documentary, I realized that there are many black women who feel worry and fear when they realize they are pregnant. Not because of having to provide for a baby or a having a changed lifestyle, but a fear for putting their lives in the hands of people who do not care for them. This is a feeling I can only imagine, as there is a high chance that I may never experience the same fear as a black women when she gets pulled over by the police, or when she finds out she is pregnant. When I advocate for myself, I am more than likely be heard than a black woman. And this is a sad fact about the job fields that are meant to help everyone indiscriminately. Because I have grown up privilege, I want to continue learning, sympathizing, and empathizing with others so that I can treat others with the kindness and respect that any other person deserves.
As a woman, growing up you were most likely taught to be careful with your body. Don’t be promiscuous, be weary around boys/men, don’t let anyone touch you, etc… Despite any precautions or teachings, lectures don’t keep us from whatever we will experience in life (good and bad). Sooner or later our bodies are experimented with, picked, prodded, poked.. if you will.
Now that the time has passed, I look back at times that I treated my body as if I did not occupy it. For the lack of a better way to say it, I fucked around and found out. Once I found out that my body could in fact reproduce, I was in such a bad mental state I laughed it off because I already knew what I was going to have to do. My recklessness had caught up to me and I didn’t care because duh, I was being stupid of course this would be the outcome…
Since no one knows who I littleham2 is I guess I can announce without shame or guilt that I had an abortion when I was 17. I was In an emotionally abusive relationship and he got me pregnant. Although I knew the logical thing was to get an abortion, going through with it was very hard because I had no support whatsoever. My mom is very catholic, so I did it behind her back and I knew my older sisters would be disappointed so I also kept it from them. I was ashamed and guilty, I still feel disgusted sometimes.
Regardless, it goes without saying that I do not regret the decision I was able to make on my own as a minor. Without my autonomy, without that 6 week and 2 day period of secrecy my life would not be what it is today. I wouldn’t have left my ex, I wouldn’t be in school right now, and I know for a fact I would not be happier than I am now. I would be a stereotype in society. A poor hispanic teen mom with a shitty baby daddy. Plus that baby probably would’ve been ug*y. I try to keep a lighthearted mindset about this experience– at least when I talk about it to others because I don’t want others to pity me or look at me differently. I am not proud of it either, but I will never regret it. I am in charge of my body, yes this is true, but I wish I didn’t have to worry about it in the degree that I do. It is so cruel to say that I wish I couldn’t have children. I would love to hand someone my perfectly working womb for free if it were possible.
I have been on two types of birth control since my abortion. First the pill, now I’ve had an IUD for almost a year. Despite all the stupid side effects, modern medicine is crazy. I’m like 99.99999% protected, but I am paranoid. I don’t get my period due to my IUD which is beautiful, but this also makes me worry. I think a lot of us have heard horror stories of IUD babies and cryptic pregnancies. I DO NOT NEED THAT!
I am scared of getting pregnant again because I know that I will have access to an abortion which is something I have the privilege to say. Not that there’s anything wrong with easy access to medical abortions, I simply don’t think I could handle the experience twice. Girls all around in underdeveloped countries don’t get to have the autonomy a lot of us in the U.S have. Did you know the youngest recorded mother was 5 years old? That makes me want to curl up in my moms arms and cry. How could a baby possibly want to be a mother?!
There are a lot of mother’s in society that wish to not be mothers anymore. There are also some shitty one’s that simply don’t deserve to be mothers. We cannot forget the ones that are taken advantage of and denied a choice. Motherhood terrifies me. I don’t think I’m strong enough, I am loving, but my patience is thin, and my anger burns bridges. I am not strong enough to do what my mom did for me and my sisters. I am not as strong as the mother’s in my family.
Full-blown autonomy is important. Societal, cultural, and religious pressures are all factors that affect the decisions we make or don’t make for our own bodies. It’s the reason most of us don’t openly talk about our sex-lives and the reason why we might feel shame for wanting pleasure. We’re not supposed to talk about what are bodies can do, it’s shameful and can make you look “easy.” Women are supposed to control their sexuality until it is requested and young girls are supposed to remain naïve, pure, and untouched.
Society is fucked, so today I will pray for the women and girls of the world. For their autonomy and bodily rights. For the moms trapped in abusive relationships. For the women and girls with intellectual disabilities that are treated as asexual beings. For the asexual women and girls who are over-sexualized For the women and girls with crippling anxiety about motherhood and pregnancy. Even for the crappy moms, so that they can find the resources they need to face their reality.
During class we talked about the medical attention and care that is not consistent across the board when it comes to the pregnancy process of women of color, specifically black. As a male I cant really relate to that from personal experience outside of the two successful sea sections that my mom went through with my siblings. What I will talk about however is the times of my life where I personally was misdiagnosed with something that was never present. Inconsistency and failure of medical procedures across the board doesn’t only extend to the pregnancy process but other aspects and avenues of medical support with people of color. The amount of times I was falsely diagnosed with Glaucoma is criminal. Throughout my years switching from medical provider to medical provider, the only thing in common that always came up was Glaucoma whenever it came to my eyes, without thorough testing of any sort. Out of all the doctors I have ever visited there was only one that properly was able to find out what was wrong with my eyes. As a backstory, growing up, I’ve always needed glasses ever since the age of 3-4. As time past by my vision and eye sight started to dissipate as I got older to the point where I had to get new prescriptions every time to accommodate. Any person of the field after hearing that is going to automatically diagnose it as Glaucoma but that was never really the case. The one doctor that was able to get it right informed me that it was something biological that I was born with. It turned out to be that I was born with a set of enlarged optical nerves in my eyes which was the cause of my poor eyesight. As a lot of people don’t know, if you have an enlarged optical nerve, it blocks more light coming into the eye which causes eye vision to dissipate. After all these years dealing with this abnormality and still dealing with it today, it also raises concern to me that my problem isn’t necessarily labeled a disability. As we’ve talked in class, depression was one of the topics that we tossed around as being a disability or not. With me, I wonder how blind I have to be for it to be considered one in the sense that whenever I fill a medical waiver or form, everything else shows up except anything eye related. I find it crucial to wonder this because if I fill out a form for some type of medication that might have affects on me and my body, how am I supposed to trust it when the medical form before taking it includes all of the health questions, but anything eye related in terms of what side effects it can cause. To me this just highlights yet another problem that is prevalent within the medical field and how it took one out of a bunch of eye doctors to actually take their actual time to monitor and diagnose the abnormality that I had.
The notion of child free women and the newly visible prevalence of them, often sparks intense debate amongst individuals in which women, their bodies, and their choices undergo intense scrutiny. Those who object to this notion often perpetuate the narrative that making a choice to not bear children makes one selfish and that the child free choice is one individuals will regret making once it is “too late”. Such arguments inherently equate the ability to reproduce with the responsibility to do so, which undermines the position of reproducing individuals in society and undercuts their access to personhood. This narrative continues to vilify women who choose not to have children and pins the phenomenon of a declining global birth rate on individuals who are making a choice that best suits their wants and needs.
Thinking that having children is a certainty for any person who is physically capable of doing so, further solidifies the grossly incorrect idea that everyone should have kids. Though, having once been children themselves, many can attest to the fact that not everyone is fit to be a parent. There are those that often shirk their responsibilities in this role and grow resentful of their children.
Additionally, even if reproduction were an obligatory part of the human condition this would logically require unwavering access to quality reproductive health care, which is not the case. Maternal mortality remains a prevalent issue globally that stems from insufficient and bias structures and often times a lack of access to quality care. In pressuring individuals with reproductive capabilities to reproduce and to do so within the confines of systems where they are actively harmed exposes that this issue has never been about safety or care for community. There is great irony in coercing women into having children and then not giving them a safe space to do so or enough time to heal, then further placing the burden of this choice on them by placing the responsibility of the family’s emotional labor as well as physical labor on them. Such considerations are often why women are hesitant to have children in the first place and this is only further exaggerated when their quality of life diminishes from the load of all they must do.
Since I grew up, I always heard of inheritance as a good thing, but the older I got, the more I realized that was a white thing, apparently. Another I was tricked into the thing I could look forward to. I didn’t have some glowing substantial thing to look forward to when I reached of age, or some secret way to get ahead of life. Instead, the system gave me nothing to look forward too. Instead, I’ve developed an inherited perception, a kind of eyesight, like a pair of enhanced goggles that force me to see double. When I started wanting to drive, it wasn’t just that teenaged excitement of independence right at my fingertips, in addition, I had a talking to that if I make one adolescent mistake, it could be my life I lose not just my license. When I wanted to go to the pool during hot city summers, instead of just relaxing into the happiness of summer fun with my friends, I was worried that my hair would be ruined, that I would be seen as the pool weirdo for wearing swimming caps and grocery bag on my head for extra protection, because they didn’t make caps large enough to stuff my hair. When my brother, who was a rainbow baby, was born, my thoughts didn’t just center on the new joy of being a big sister, it echoed the worry of parents who were concerned my mother wasn’t going to receive the proper care she needed. Would I not be a big sister for the second time? My inheritance is one that has been taken on a thousandfold and I don’t want it anymore.
I hate stepping on the scale. But I always do it. Why? I know it might sound a bit crazy, but that number determines my mood for the day. Even if it only increases by two or three pounds, I can’t help but feel like I look drastically different. It’s like I have this “perfect” number in my head, and when I’m above it, it’s all I think about. To get the number to drop, I usually count calories. But I’m realizing that this isn’t a healthy way to live although it’s been my definition of “normal” for years. I’m working on shifting my focus away from that number on the scale, understanding that my self-worth isn’t tied to it. I want to learn to appreciate myself beyond the scale and find a healthier way of living.
Race and age have played a significant role in the medical care that people experience. I have seen the different treatments people have dealt with within the medical industry. Unlike young white men, the old, other races, and genders have a significantly more challenging time making their medical concerns heard and taken seriously. My friend is an African-American woman who had a severe car accident over a year ago. After she showed me the image of her car listed below, I questioned how she survived since her vehicle was completely destroyed. Although I am thrilled she is okay now, seeing that she still has physical and emotional trauma and debt from that accident is upsetting. Doctors and police officers pushed her aside, believing her symptoms were insufficient to help immediately. A police officer was called to the scene by a bystander. The officer was not helpful and did not advise her to get to the hospital even though she had visible open wounds all over her body, which should have been taken more seriously. The police officer drove her and left her at her house as she was weak and bleeding severely. When her male African-American partner found her, he immediately took her to a hospital, but the medical staff did not take her legitimate concerns and symptoms seriously. My friend and her partner kept fighting for her voice to be heard because she kept getting worse with new disturbing symptoms. She went to the hospital often and was sent home with little help each time. The last time she visited the hospital, she had extremely concerning symptoms. While they were there, her partner pleaded, and once the medical team listened, they realized how bad her symptoms were. They flew her to another hospital for significant surgery since that place did not have the facilities to do this surgery on her abdomen. If left untreated any longer, she could have died. I was so upset and frustrated that the hospital kept dismissing her when she had many visible physical issues. Her partner would call me in a panic because he felt so helpless when trying to get the hospital to care for her. I was outraged because I understood feeling helpless since my grandmother had died from medical negligence years prior. Deciding whose lives are more important based on race, age, and gender is a prevalent issue. The medical industry is vital, and how they are trained can determine someone’s fate and leave an impact on their loved ones. The medical industry needs to improve to help improve our society’s future.
This picture above is the car that was wrecked during the accident.
Something about being used and sold like an object never leaves you. I still feel like property, I still feel like it’s my responsibility to make others happy at the expense of my own body and soul. What do I deserve? It pains me that how much I’m worth is less than a trip to the grocery store these days, like spending money on groceries just like someone would pay for a human object. Sickening. Foul. It makes me want to turn my body inside out and hose it down with boiling water and dish soap. I wish I could rip myself away from my body, let go of the somatic sensations left by ghosts. But for now I am trapped in here and learning how to live in this unruly body.
My body isn’t my weight. Food isn’t my issue. Diet culture can starve already. People need to thrive. Fat bodies are human bodies. Fat bodies are beautiful bodies. Fat bodies are capable bodies. Fat bodies are healthy bodies. Fat bodies are strong bodies. Fat bodies are normal bodies just as all bodies are just that. BODIES.
Unruly Bodies 