My Body Is Mine

When I was in sixth grade, I wanted to look like "Michelle." (Let's call her that for identity sake) She was the light skin girl with hazel eyes. She had reached puberty eons before either myself or the other little girls in our classroom. We all bowed at the throne of this girl. All the boys liked her. All the girls wanted to look like her, including myself. I remember looking down at my shirt, wanting boobs to magically appear and my body to change. I was short and lanky and dark skinned with dark eyes. Growing up, I personally liked my dark skin. However, it wasn't always celebrated. My dark skin, nose, and crooked smile were all a reminder of my biological father. Perhaps a painful reminder to those whom he had been affected by his violence and abuse. As a child, I looked more like him, than my mother.

I remember telling my mother, that I wanted my body to look like "Michelle's" body. I wanted to have hips and butt and boobs. She reminded me that I was in sixth grade, and that I had MY body. She said that my body would change and blossom into this womanly form that possessed curves resembling my mother, and her mother before her. I waited. My body changed. However, it remained lanky and short. Truthfully, to this day, I don't have hips and butt and curves for days. It simply is what it is.

When I contemplated doing this shoot, I returned to that 6th grade girl. What if all the women present were shaped differently than I? They were. What if, I was the only one with stretch marks on my belly and thighs? I wasn't. Prior to the shoot, I contemplated nursing while being photographed. I thought to myself, 'I will be ok nude, if I am breastfeeding, and hiding my insecurity behind my motherhood.' Was it possible for me to stand in my own womanhood, without a babe attached to my breast? Could I stand in this skin, alone? This body was carrying years of both self inflicted and environmental body shaming? It needed to stop. The fear and negative voices needed to stop. 

At the shoot, I stood with a blanket wrapped around me. Afraid to remove it. These women were beautiful. Their bodies perfect. As I continued to stand there (still with the blanket wrapped around my body), I saw these beautiful women laughing and embracing each other, as if they were clothed in diamonds. They turned to me and beckoned for me to join. I briefly tried to find a place where I fit... They quickly made room for me. They held space for me. Perhaps, they were on the same journey of reconnecting with their bodies? Perhaps they had been there before... For me, I wasn't quite sure when this insecurity began... But, I knew now is when it would end. 

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Growing up in the south, I was surrounded by curvy black women. Well... I guess one could say that growing up black,  I was surrounded by curvy black women.  Being lanky, I dreamed about the day that I would get my "grown woman" body. This "grown woman" body would include full hips that I would supposedly get after having children... Thighs that would resemble that of a brick house...and the butt that Sir-Mix-Alot rapped about, way before Kim Kardashian became a household name, The magical "black woman" unicorn that I was supposed to transform into was mysterious and wonderful... It never came.  I remember returning home to visit and being met with the occasional, 'Are you eating?'...'You need to eat  some chicken, and put some meat on those bones'.  These comments were made by family friends and family,.. all meaning well... but totally unaware of the effects of their words. Their words made me feel as if MY body wasn't good enough... woman enough. I would become low key annoyed when I would hear the term, "real women" to describe women with curves. What did that mean for me? Was I not "real" ?   Was I some female, Pinnochio, begging with my maker to craft me into a "real woman" ? 

I remember returning home to my husband and asking if I was too thin? Or should I be more this? Or more of that? Totally, missing that HE loved everything about me, and that perhaps I should begin to do the same. The truth is, the same people who were picking apart my body, were the same people who also picked it apart when I gained "the freshmen 15" many years prior.  I quickly began to realize that the more I allowed people to have a say in the way that I viewed my body, my womanhood,  the more I would begin (and had begun) to lose my power. It was up to me to take it back.

Why am I writing this? The purpose is not to be self deprecating or to lump body image into all that is wrong with the world... or to become one of those people who say "#AllBodiesMatter", because I definitely see the need to celebrate curves in a media driven by skinny airbrushed foolishness and body shaming. Curves Definitely Matter!  This post is simply to say, You never know what your sister is wrestling with when she looks in the mirror. Be aware of your words... be kind. 

ALL of our bodies are beautiful. They are different. They are all perfect in their imperfection.  I may never be shaped like Serena Williams. I may never have a body that is deemed a brick house. Beyonce may never call me to appear in her newest work of art, to simply "look back at it" ..However, my body is mine. Even as a wife and mother...My body is mine.  I embrace every dimple in my average sized booty... every stretch mark in my boyish chocolate frame. MY body is sexy... because I say so. My body is no longer up for discussion... unless I want it to be.