I guess I’m some kind of activist here at Wesleyan. Meaning mostly that I help organize stuff, get money for stuff, and hang stuff up. One of the things I most recently helped to hang stuff up for is the Body Image Campaign that happened and is happening right now. Maybe you’ve seen parts of it: flyers in bathrooms complimenting your freckles, pictures of shoulders and hips and hands, or quotes from artists, spiritual leaders, and internet bloggers. The idea behind the campaign is to create a campus-wide conversation about bodies, why we love them, what they do for us, and what we can do for them.
It’s an ambitious plan, but we want to facilitate a dialog—one that all members of the Wesleyan community can take part in. We created an email account for people to send in thoughts, reactions, a responses to questions that have been posted around campus, or questions of your own. We’ve been hoping that words, images, quotes and pictures that were submitted could then be hung up and used to re-start the cycle of inquiry and response. But that hasn’t happened yet. Only three people have written in since the campaign began in Mid-October, but that doesn’t mean we’re giving up. However, it does mean that I have been trying to evaluate what went wrong. Was it a matter of visibility? Do Wes students just not care or have the time? Or—and I think this is most likely—is there something about us all that makes those questions impossible to answer? Are they too hard, require too much work and introspection? Probably. And I understand that.
In fact, I feel like a hypocrite most of the time, doing the kind of activist work that I do. I am involved with FemNet, a group that is deeply invested in promoting positive self-image and sexuality through sex toy workshops, body-awareness campaigns, and radical models of consent that rely on completely open communication. But still here I am, a kid who is almost completely unable to hold meaningful conversations except through e-mails, and who can barely work up the nerve to hold someone’s hand. So who am I to tell others anything about their bodies, their relationships, or the sex that they’re having? I’m not sure.
I only know why I do it anyway; I’ve struggled with body image and identity for a long time and I’m tired of being mean to my body, I’m tired of thinking about it as though it’s something that needs fixing, and I’m especially tired of pretending that I don’t love it. I do, even though I’m not supposed to. That’s strange to read, right?—being told not to love our bodies, that being kind to ourselves is somehow a deviant or radical life philosophy. I suspect it has a lot to do with capitalism (because if we were all comfortable in our own skins, imagine how many industries would be out of luck), but don’t worry—dismantling capitalism is not the goal of the Body Image Campaign.
The goal of the Campaign, for me, is in line with what I hope to get out of most things I’m actively involved in: I want to hear your stories. I want to know how you feel about the mole on your right cheek, about the politics of your haircut, about your relationship with the treadmill in the corner of the gym. I want to know if you think that you’re beautiful. And, if you do, I want (and need) to know how you got there. And, if you don’t, I want to convince you that you’re wrong. But I’m realizing that that’s selfish—asking for you stories and not offering up my own.
I was born on moving day and didn’t have a crib for the first few days of my life. I slept in a dresser drawer. That, I think, determined the course of the next two decades of my life [almost sounded a little awk in terms of how the sentence flowed; let’s just say two decades, or you could put the exact number of years you mean]. A lot of my life has been spent in things that weren’t necessarily made for my body to inhabit: a dresser drawer, my father’s shirts, a worn, grey sweatshirt that hung to my knees every day of seventh grade. I’m also a self-identified nomad, always living with an extra toothbrush in my backpack and a wild refusal to put down roots. I’ve lived in a lot of different places, and have crossed a lot of state lines. Somewhere in there I came out as trans [briefly describe what trans ‘means’ – in journalism unfortunately you always have to assume that the reader doesn’t know anything] and began another kind of crossing, out of the ‘female’ check box and into, well, somewhere else. Trans is an umbrella term for anyone who falls outside of socially recognized categories of male and female, woman and man. It’s a word that means different things to different people, but, for me, has always meant that I operate in the world as some kind of boy, despite my anatomy. People here often assume trans is a political identity, and that the female-assigned trans folk on this campus are really just dykes trying to prove a point about the constructed nature of gender. But if that were the case, I probably wouldn’t be this invested in sharing my story and publicizing the Campaign.
For me (and a lot of, but certainly not all, other trans people), being trans has translated into a complicated mess of body-related anxiety. Before I had the word ‘trans,’ all I knew was that I didn’t like the way I looked in a mirror. I spent the majority of my childhood as a gymnast, and consequently, in a leotard, which didn’t make things any easier. I was always aware of my body and all of its curves and wobbling and softness just as much as any female-socialized adolescent is, and I hated it. I just didn’t know why. And as much as I’d like to be able to look back and believe that it was because I was just struggling with the dissonance that comes from feeling like a boy but looking like a girl, I think that’s over-simplifying. As a gymnast, I was supposed to be small and cute and flexible, but I was always stocky compared to all of my peers. Strength was important, but in the end it was never as important as looking a certain way. So I tried to lose weight, because I knew something had to change and maybe that was it; because maybe if I didn’t have to work so hard to suck in my gut and tuck in my butt it would be easier to smile at the judges at gymnastics meets. And maybe I wouldn’t always feel like I was faking it.
The summer after ninth grade came and I went off to camp and decided I wasn’t going to eat meat anymore. And, because I knew that the kitchen staff was historically bad at actually producing vegetarian options, that was really code for going on a salad and peanut butter diet. Which turned into just a salad diet. Which turned into something I can now recognize as some kind of an eating disorder.
I came home that summer and stopped eating anything that was made with animal products, that wasn’t organic, and that contained ingredients I couldn’t pronounce or didn’t recognize. It wasn’t difficult to claim that I was just being “health conscious,” because my mother, in theory, invests in the organic-vegan lifestyle (though in reality only eats raisins) and my father has always been content to let me eat only cheerios for months on end. But because I wasn’t responsible for the grocery shopping, all of those ‘standards’ boiled down to my not eating much at all.
I don’t know how long that lasted. It’s not a dramatic story; the ending really isn’t that climactic. I’m pretty sure it was always more about feeling ok with what was going into my body than the pounds that were coming off of it. I probably lost 20-30 pounds that summer and fall, which, on my body didn’t look very different. Or maybe I just didn’t notice. But, one day something changed. Maybe I ate cheese and remembered how good it was. Maybe I recognized that I was being a little insane. Definitely I quit gymnastics and started playing rugby, a sport where your body weight is useful, and that values power over grace in all bodies—not just male ones. So, I think I just “snapped out” of my eating issues. Well, kind of.
I still can’t eat meat. But I also don’t want to. And sometimes I still fall back into habits that are more conventionally recognized as disordered eating and self-harm, because (and this is one of those places where the ideologies I live by and the way I live don’t quite match up yet) I still sometimes think that something would be better if my body were a different shape. Also my body is where I store up all of my stress and where I try to deal with it. Sometimes that means going to the gym. Sometimes that means baking cookies. And sometimes that means eating only vegetables and coffee with soy milk. Or hurting myself, my body in other ways.
And that’s where all of this anxiety I have about body activism comes from. Yes, I adore my body. I recognize that it does some pretty amazing things, allows me to connect with the world and with people. It bends. It grows. It adapts. And sometimes it makes people want to get to know me. But despite all that, all my insistence that people should value and honor the bodies they have, I still spent $8,000 this summer to get top surgery (basically a mastectomy but to construct a male-appearing chest) and am still constantly asking myself what makes that ok? Why is changing my body in that way any different from other kinds of plastic surgery? I don’t think it is. And that’s made me reevaluate and revalue plastic surgery in this “love your body” ideology. Maybe it’s ok. I don’t know. I especially don’t know for myself because, somewhere along the line someone managed to convince me that my discomfort with my body is just a mirror of my father’s. You can always tell how happy is by how much he weighs. But that’s not the point.
Regardless of the ways I’ve changed my body, I’ve still managed to find a way to love my scars, my shoulders, the birthmark on my belly, my collarbone, my knees. The way I always wake up in the perfect position, the way something in my body refuses to let me sleep much past 7:30am, the way my legs can carry me wherever I need to go. And some people’s bodies can’t do that, so I try not to take it for granted, though I still do on rainy days and in the wintertime. I’m also learning and relearning how to share my body with other people. Sex has often been an uncomfortable thing for me because at times I’ve felt so disconnected and/or at odds with parts of myself that it was pretty impossible to be naked around someone else without panicking. And that’s annoying. For me, anyway—maybe others never even noticed.
So while I struggle to reconcile my behavior with my beliefs, I’m trying. And that’s all I ever ask of anyone—just to try. So try this: ask yourself what you love about your body. If that’s too hard, or if you think the answer is “nothing” try these: What does your body do for you? How do you feel in your body? What makes your body feel good? What about your body isn’t normally appreciated? Promise me you’ll at least think about it. And if you feel inspired to send us your thoughts in the form of a rant, a story, a poem, a photograph, or anything else, please do. The email is wesbody@gmail.com. I—and our community—are looking forward to hearing your story.
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