Ending the War: Refusing to Hate Your Body as a Radical Act
About three years ago, I wrote these words, "when you're disabled, refusing to hate your body is one of the most radical things you can do." I was talking about selfies, and what I have come to term,
I was talking about disabled people reclaiming the narrative of our bodies through grassroots representation.
I was talking about pride.
I was talking about being disabled and unashamed for the world to see
I was talking about all those things, and posting smiling selfies, but I was at a tenuous place in my own journey of self-acceptance.
Today, those words that I wrote three years ago popped up in my timeline, and I felt compelled to share the rest of the story, because refusing to hate your body goes beyond the selfie.
Refusing to hate your body goes beyond being disabled and unashamed, and cheeky not tragic.
Refusing to hate your body means learning to stop apologizing for the space you take up.
Refusing to hate your body means nourishing yourself, even when it's hard.
Refusing to hate your body, does not mean loving your body all the time, or even at all. It means accepting that your body is yours, and you don't owe anyone an explanation for why it is the way it is, the size it is, the shape it is.
When I wrote those words three years ago when I called refusing to hate your body "radical," I knew what I was saying in the deeper parts of my story, but I wasn't quite ready to give it voice.
Today is different.
Today I'm going to talk about why refusing to hate my body is such a radical statement for me as a fat, disabled woman.
I'm going to try to be honest, and show you the scars, take you behind the scenes of the smiling selfies into my journey.
For as long as I remember, I had a contentious relationship with my body. Being born with CP, meant that in the eyes of the world, my body was broken. From the very beginning, I was given a body where something was not quite right. Instead of letting my body be, I tried to force it into the nondisabled boxes created by society. I was ashamed of my wheelchair, even though it was bright pink and adorable. I hated my walker, but I was determined to use it, and secretly above all else, I was determined not to be noticed, not to be different, not to be too much.
As I got older and bigger, I was constantly reminded, usually by professionals, how my body, and in particular its size impacted others. I was told in so many implicit ways that my body would never be my own. Since I needed help, my body existed for public consumption, and it need not be an inconvenience to others. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get small enough, and so I found myself constantly worrying, hating my body once again for failing me, for failing to meet other people's expectations.
This is the part of the story I usually don't tell, but today I am going, to be honest.
I've starved.
I've binged
I've purged.
I've destroyed my body from the inside out, distorting it to fit in other people's boxes. I've done all these things, but it was never enough, I was never enough.
Whether it was my legs that wouldn't work right or my stomach that just wouldn't disappear, I was always at war with my body.
I bet this is the part of the story where you expect me to wrap it all up in a nice neat bow, tell you how I found self-love, and now I'm totally fine with who I am. That would be a really lovely story, but that's not the truth.
Refusing to hate my body is a choice, and a radical one in a world that tells me I am broken in so many ways, but it is a choice I have to make every single morning, every single afternoon, and every single night.
In learning not to hate my body, I had to learn to focus my energy, my anger, my frustration outward, on something other than myself. This is why understanding systemic oppression is so vital for marginalized people. Before I understood ableism' and fatphobia, for example, I spent my whole life believing I was the problem that needed to be fixed.
Now I know differently.
I know that refusing to hate yourself is a challenging and radical choice, but it's also the only choice if you want to do more than just survive. When I say using to heat your body is one of the most radical things you can do as a disabled person, that is because refusing here body is refusing to see yourself as the problem.
I refuse to hate my body anymore. I refuse to apologize for existing. I refuse to break myself and my's soul to fit into society's oppressive boxes.
.I made the hard choice and choose to accept myself as I am. I make the radical choice of declaring that I am enough, and I keep fighting.
I hope you do too.
Image description: black text on a white background reads, "when you're disabled, refusing to hear body is one of the most radical things you can do." The quote is attributed to Karin Hitselberger
