I've been thinking a lot about bodies lately. Specifically, my body. I'm working on a project for school dealing with body and identity, which has made me consider the way I think about this body that I've been inhabiting for over 20+ years. In my experience, I've found that my body has never quite been he way I wanted it at the time I wanted it to be that way. As a skinny, scrawny, short little kid, I remember being envious of my childhood best friend who starting wearing a bra loooooong before I ever had to consider one. I was jealous that my toothpick little body wasn't keeping pace with the more adult figure of my friend. One summer, the ultimate injustice, we both wore two-piece bathing suits. We looked extraordinarily different in them.
Flash forward a few years. My body caught up. By high school, I'd become hippy, to put it politely. I developed that curvy shape I thought I wanted when I as 13. But I didn't want it anymore. By 16 or so, I remember already feeling the pressure to be thinner. I was a "chubby" cheerleader in high school. Not actually chubby I don't think,but I certainly felt that way. A flat stomach has not been a part of my make-up since I've been in double digits, and probably never will be. Now, as an adult, I've got a short, rounded frame, and can never seem to budge the scales more than a few pounds. Once, about five years ago, I had a nasty run-in with a man at the grocery store, who mistook me for pregnant. I cried for hours, and was depressed, honestly depressed, for days afterward. As an adult, no matter how much weight I lose, I'll always have to contend with a somewhat absurd waist-to-hip ratio, that I and everyone (including my father the tailor) likes to poke fun at. I'm a curvy girl, sort of soft all over. I'm not a fan of the gym, and rarely run, unless something massive is chasing me.
So what's my point? That I'm not skinny? That spandex is not a part of wardrobe? Tangentially, yes. But that's not really the crux of this entry. I've been thinking a lot about my attitudes toward my own body with respect to what I ask it to do, which has led to some curious revelations about myself. I'm a performer. At various times in my life, I've been/still am a singer, a dancer, an actor... at risk of sounding very artsy-fartsy, my body is an instrument. And as a performing artist, I rarely perform without my body. No matter what character I play, I take my own body with me, for better or for worse.
This has been on my mind a lot with respect to dance. As a child, I took pretty much every style of dance offered in my small town. Not really a ballerina type, I got into cheerleading in junior high, and actually loved it, even though I always felt a bit like the ugly duckling of the bunch. I fell of out of dance until my sophomore year of college. Under the guidance of the brilliant Jan Hyatt, I fell in love with modern dance. For the first time, a dance teacher helped me to see my particular body as a strength, not something to be worked on, overcome. Jan helped me to see myself as a grounded dancer, and helped to discover a vocabulary that felt right in and for my body. For the first time, I really honed in on a sense of body confidence, predicated on what my body IS and not what it is not. Sure, being skinny and teeny tiny might be nice, but my body can do other things. I danced a piece in a concert my senior called "Cassandra" with two other performers, each of us very different in lock and style. My part was the earth-bound, grounded, more primal section of the piece, and I remember feeling like it was choreographed just for me. My body was the right body to dance it. That's such a lovely feeling.
Post-college, I've dabbled in burlesque, much to my parents' chagrin. But I have to say that it's been an enlightening and emboldening experience for me, one I sorely needed after moving to New York City. If modern dance taught me to see the capabilities of my particular body, burlesque has helped me to love them. At first, I was afraid. I was terrified that I wouldn't be good enough, pretty enough, and that stupid word again, skinny enough. I relied on the glamor and illusion of burlesque to create classic acts that made me feel beautiful. And that was awesome. Hiding coyly behind a feather fan in a gorgeous sequined dress with absurd fake eyelashes etc. Then, something in me got bolder. I started creating acts where I encouraged, nay downright forced, my audience to laugh at me. I had found the confidence in my body to allow a roomful of people to laugh at me in various states of undress. To me, the brilliant part of all of this is how I feel, onstage, with a laughing crowd in the palm of my hand. I've never felt more beautiful in my entire life, because I feel not just physically pretty, but also emotionally secure and confident. For me, that's what beautiful is all about. Granted, when I shimmy my shoulders, lots of things on my body jiggle. I'm short, with chubby legs. I could go on. But I won't, because that's not how I feel onstage at a burlesque show. During my five minutes of glory, I am the most beautiful woman in the room, no matter if I'm covered in stage blood, or wearing a pig nose, or dressed up as Betty Slocombe. I feel secure in this body of mine, and have, as a late 20-something adult, come to love it, jiggly bits and all.
Recently, Ive become fascinated in trying out other forms of movement on this body of mine. I am a bellydance enthusiast, hoping to get better at it, not for performance-sake, but for my own personal edification. To me, bellydance is all about embracing the things that current American standards of beauty try to take away from me. When I do a belly flutter, my belly really flutters. Because I have one. To American popular audiences, that's probably not appealing. But to me, it's amazing and makes me feel like a million bucks. Like burlesque, bellydance gives me a sense of confidence in my body, because of what MY body can do. This is of course a very reductionist analysis of these forms of movement; I'm just trying to make some sense of these particular points for myself.
It's so odd to me, as I never really think of myself as a person whole lacks confidence. I've always been fairly secure in myself, and in my self-worth etc. But underneath that, even for me, there's a fair bit of insecurity in my own skin. For me, the way Ito deal with that has, unconsciously, been through developing a movement vocabulary based on the unique capabilities of a body like mine. While I love hearing my boyfriend tell me I'm beautiful (and he does, often), there is a great deal of power to be harnessed in occasionally seeing it for oneself. I'm grateful for the opportunities I had in my life for this kind of positive growth, and for the people who've been supportive of these pursuits. I like liking my body, and hope to be able to do so for the rest of my life, and want that for every girl and woman I know.
Love,
TGI
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