THOUGHTS ON BODY
07-04-20
Perhaps I am mostly beginning to reflect on how my body isn’t just a thing.
An image I own.
A puppet I manipulate.
Perhaps I am thinking now how my body is now a powerful tool.
A responsibility.
A lifesaving mechanism with vital instructions to follow.
I was, at first, hesitant. As any female identifying body is when being told what to do by white, rich males that seem to flood into all the positions of power worldwide. I was bitter at another display of bodies controlled, mine especially when I thought I’d worked so hard to educate myself on empowerment. Perhaps some of that bitterness still lies within me when I see this man applaud the efforts of bodies he has repeatedly endangered.
But I have once again made it my own initiative to educate myself on why my body isn’t being instructed by him, but by an entire nation of people that need me.
I feel my body is aligned with billions of others.
So I’m thinking less about how I look, and more about how I act. How my body can be used for reassurance: my smile and polite shift (two meters) to the side as others pass me on the street, my reassuring nods that I give to my family over video call, affection towards the only body I am allowed contact with.
How my body’s activity is now dictated by my own ability to manufacture a workout or succumb to the pain of an online tutorial.
How my body’s inactivity is effectively stopping the spread of a mass murderer.
In the past, it wasn’t like this. My body had become a thing of aesthetic value that I won’t bother detailing.
In the future, I intend to adopt this sense of bodily responsibility. My body is so much more than its perceived aesthetic. I recall Regina Spektor’s lyrics ‘I got a perfect body, cause my eyelashes catch my sweat’; my aesthetics are there for functionality. To do the simple things. To keep shit out the way whilst my fiery innards drive me to do the rest. Protect, communicate, act, don’t act. The stuff worth talking about.