I’ve been thinking a lot about bodies lately. I’ve just finnished Susie oprbach’s book of the same name.
I’ve also spent the last few weeks doing feildwork. Using my body as a body, digging, getting dirty, not caring bout how I look or how I am presented to others. It felt good. Liberating even to have a body that’s just that a body that belonged to me, that wasn’t being judged by what it was wearing, how fat or thin it was, how ‘appealing’ it was to others. It was such a relif to get up, put on muddy clothes, and set off without bothering how I look or what my make up is like or if I look fat, or if I look fashionable or whatever.
I have a body that works, it does what I want it to with minimal complaint and I am so amazingly lucky to have that. Yet why do I never feel at home in my body? Or when I do I’m reminded that I shouldn’t be getting complacent, I could loose some weight, I could buy new lotions and potions to do whatever pseudo sceince is in at the moment. Pep up my petitdes or whatever.
I honeslty think that these last few weeks where I’ve been digging all day and too tired to do much else has been the first time in a long, long time I can remember being at home in my body, feeling like it was MY body and that I didn’t have to worry about what other people thought about it. All those things we spend so long wprrying about and trying to erradicate, sweat, dirt, just didn’t matter.
1 Comment
September 29, 2009 at 3:05 pm
I liked this a lot. It gives me a real sense of one of the basic attitudes of feminism.
What you say is true. The moment you forget about your body as an object on display it reverts to being just you. Approaching old age provides the completest experience of that. Once painfully self-conscious about how my body looked, I don’t care much about that now. I just focus on keeping it healthy, and on heading off its occasional aches and pains.