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November 2005
True Body Project
Special Thanks to ArtWorks
Water Mothers, by Juliette Rawe
The Yoruban goddess of the ocean is a woman named Yemaya. They say she saw her reflection one day in a still puddle of rain and was so proud of her beauty that her belly began to grow, and from her womb, with a great swell, came the ocean. Yemaya saw her reflection in the clear, salty African waters and gave birth to the fish and all other creatures of the sea. Then, they say, after she had given birth to the rushing rivers and the deep lakes and the crouching streams, she gave birth to woman. She laughed and smiled at her beautiful daughters, holding wide her arms to them. And so it is that woman will always find her home in the water.
How She Learned to Swim
She learns to swim with her breath sucked in at first, her ribs pinched up nervously. I can’t float to save my life, she says to us, shaking wet paintbrush ends of her hair. But she lets us stand in a swimming ring around her, giving advice. Throw your shoulders back…pretend to stick your bellybutton to a star, up there... She hesitates and then trusts us with a careless shrug of the shoulders. We each put hands under the surface and hold parts of her there, watch her breathing with her eyes closed and her shoulders bowed behind and her back inverted but beautiful, like the body of a bent violin. We let her go so slowly the water is confused and holds her. We let her go and just watch, and we will all try to remember later how she learned to swim.
Secret Colors
I hear the lapping of the liquid tongue against the shore make a song with the lake frogs, Girls, girls, like a lovingly admonishing mother rubbing sunscreen on shoulders. Martha claims the water body, and Sissy and I watch her seriously, trying to remember what pushing off and claiming the water with twirling joyful toes felt like, back in our dirty fingernail days. I can tell Sissy is muddling it, floating backwards in a thought, watching Martha being beautiful. She is beautiful with thin dark hair and a soft chin stretched up toward the sky, arms up and full of shouting.
When Martha reminds us of that time back before we were old, before the pantyhose and the hair straighteners and the eyelash curlers, it is a deep plunge into cold water from our boat of dutiful seriousness, our girl gone quiet. My cousin is still young, still wearing her womanhood like a necklace lopsided and half on the shoulder. She doesn’t know yet about the up-and-down looks and the slithery cool words and what it means to be old.
Martha shouts, Hello! Hello! looking way up at absolutely nobody. Sissy laughs, and then I laugh, and then, slowly, she awakens the colors in us, the silly colors we are secretly proud of. Those shake your bones in the daylight and laugh too loud at sunset and stay in the water until your skin is blue if you want to kinds of colors. And we start to shout, Hello! Hello! up and over the sides of the lake and beyond the frog voices and we laugh at the colors in the clouds for a little while.
Iroquois legend says one day Sky Woman came across a giant tree while exploring the cloud plains. Beneath the roots of the tree was a hole and, as Sky Woman peered into it, cruel winds swept her body over the edge. She fell freely with only her winged friends to watch as she plunged deep into an endless body of water. Sky Woman held her courage with her breath and searched for the surface. Instead, her hands found the shell of a turtle and a floor of thick mud. She quickly began to pack mud around the shell. The ball of earth grew as beavers brought her mud and birds brought her twigs and leaves and Sky Woman molded the sphere with her body so that we might have a solid place on which to walk next to the oceans.
Floating
We knew she didn’t have breasts anymore, but we didn’t know what that meant. She showed us in the kitchen, smiling patiently and lifting her shirt in a casual, tired arc over her head. We drank our juice and ate our salty summer cheese crackers and saw it meant confusing hollow spaces where something began and something ended and no one was quite sure what.We dripped grape juice down our fronts and watched her laugh around the tiny kitchen at the stupid things we said and tried to make things better that we were staying to play cards in the basement instead of going to the pool. She didn’t move her arms a lot then. We got the idea maybe she’d been cut so her armpits were floating in her skin.
But she liked swimming and right after she got the implants and her extra-support-bra bathing suit, we went back to our favorite place. We floated first and she still knew how to do everything right. Like how to spread your shoulders and tilt your back to make a bridge bubble over the water where she could hold us and keep us from bobbing into a wall. She could still dip her chin into the pool, blow air into a sudden magic bouquet of bubbles. She could still energize the water, kick her feet in a quick fury, making the water surface eat itself over and over. It’s all the same, she said, when we were worried, just how my breasts float. She dipped down into the pool to show us and we laughed and she laughed and it was good not to feel so hollow anymore.
Long ago, when Egypt was new, a river of strength and beauty was born from the heart of the goddess Asqet. The Nile goddess held the river in the muscular curve of her arm, cradling great waters as one might a beloved piece of fabric. With great care she laid the river into the earth, winding its curves from the arid south to the windy north, sharing the water as an eternal gift of inspiration.
Bathing Poetry
For me, life began in the kitchen sink, smelling fresh as new goat’s milk soap, plunking against sides with the cooking pots and coffee cups. Life began with Grandmother’s heart babbling soft words into my ear, liquid songs whispered through mornings with glittering glass wind chimes. And even now I step into the waterfall of my cleaning ritual and listen carefully. She is still there, speaking bathing poetry.
The Water and the Sky
We let her go after breakfast—Emily, Mary, me skipping pebbly pebble up the beach, palms open as starfish. It is easy, like blowing an eyelash, gray sand slipping through the fingers, wind helping.
There is no question why my grandmother wanted her afterlife ashes sprinkled in the swooping crystal waves of the Gulf Shore. The ocean is my grandmother in the way that it hums an enchanted song of ancient sadness turned to joy, or in the way the ocean reaches with all corners of its being for that silken dreamer’s sky.
Emily says, Remember the robins? She kept the robins safe, the porch geranium nest. We wanted to touch, to hold, but she shooed us until they flew, left pale blue in the flowerpot. She gave us the shells, told us they were sky pieces. We remember and take another handful and another and throw for the air and the water.
My grandmother was a full woman, reeling with a beautiful abandon. I try to find a portrait of her in some dusty corner of my basement, my albums, my mind that tells her story. But the seashells in my drawers and her sandy scarves and the haunting call of the water voices tell me where to find her. In the secret and eternal embrace of the ocean.
The others stand back, arms knitted. It’s like they’re worried to find the seashells in the sand, the bone in the wing. And we tell them, Come on, it’s easy. And she is. Easy. Like flying for the first time, easy like after breakfast, easy like wind under the arms of sand. Our Gran, in the water and the sky.
The Ungirl Manifesto, by Rachel Williamson
As I write these words, I am sitting in a room that is loud with the incessant chatter of girls. They speak with the rapidity and ferocity of birds in an aviary. I love them all. Yes, I am madly in love with twelve other girls.
Now, don’t get your panties in a wad. I don’t have any desire to kiss them or anything like that, but I truly do love these young women. This connection with other females is new to me, you see, so I’m quite enamored. But before I begin to tell my story, I just want to make a few things clear. This is not me explaining myself or even trying to come clean. Most of all, this is not fodder for a Lifetime movie, so don’t get too misty. And while I am very certain of what this is not, I have yet to decide what it is. We’ll talk later.
I was born an Aries, supposedly fiery and passionate. And in my short life of seventeen years, I have met many people who have brought out the vivacity I occasionally have to offer. With the exception of a certain few, most of those people have been males, and some of those people wish they had never brought out anything in me at all.
I’ll start from the beginning.
Nancy, whose name I could not pronounce and was therefore called “Nanny,” became my babysitter when I was a few months old. Nanny had two teenage children, Melinda, who was sixteen when she became my surrogate big sister, and Steve, her older brother, who became my surrogate brother. All of their friends were other crazy teenagers who let me play their video games and thought that it was cool that I had imaginary friends of my own. Even when Nanny died when I was six, they remained my family, apart from the one I already had. Even now, Melinda is a huge influence on my life and an example of what a girl should be; independent, strong-willed and gorgeous, without the makeup and skin-tight clothes.
When Nanny died I entered first grade, having just left the kindergarten class where I was the only girl ever to be put on the chair at the far end of the room. I appeared to be having some trouble being socially acceptable. I cut holes in my dresses that I found so hideous. I got into fights on the playground, but I got upset if I ever hurt anyone. I just couldn’t stand being made fun of. I would talk incessantly about my recently deceased Nanny, grandfather and dog. It wasn’t a fun year.
I despised the one female friend that I had because all she cared about was how many Barbies she had. She called me what sounded like “racial” because she was missing her front teeth and, because I knew what “racial” referred to, I thought she was calling me some sort of bigot. There was a boy in my class who would follow me around on the playground shrieking, “Rachel! Rachel! Do you want to play cars?!” Sorry, not interested. I was all about my kindergarten buddy, Zack. The first time I went over to his house, there was another boy there who thought I wasn’t man enough to play war. In response to his sexism, I punched the boy and chased Zack around until he agreed that I could in fact be a soldier.
What you have to understand about me is I did not play with the girls on the playground. At my school, the boys and girls were separated on the playground out of habit. Almost daily there was a big chase. Boys chased the girls in mad circles around the fenced-in areas, being loud and aggressive. That’s where you found me. It wasn’t that I was looking to pick a fight; I just wanted to feel strong and free. I would not allow myself to be vulnerable and run away screaming. I still don’t. Some boys were cool with that, some boys I made be cool with that and some could not be convinced, no matter how many girls I tagged. As for the other girls, all they saw was a crazed thing in a dress racing toward them, tagging them and celebrating victory with the boys. I was a traitor to my X chromosome.
In second grade my self-esteem began to drop. One day I was standing on a chair helping my teacher with a poster when a boy whom I could not convince to accept me said, “Rachel, you have really hairy legs.” That day I began to wish I was pretty.
Considering my strong will, I don’t know why that one comment crushed me so badly. My response to him was as cool and nonchalant as a seven year old could muster, but in my head I was horrified. Just because I liked to play boy games and didn’t like dresses did not mean I wanted to BE a boy. I was just enjoying myself where I felt comfortable. Besides, what seven year old cares how hairy her legs are?
On and on it went. Zack moved away, my male counterparts began to reject me with increasing speed and I just became another loner on the playground. I played boyish games that involved pretending there was lava where the dirt should be and if you touched it you were burnt to a crisp and had to leave my tree dwelling at the far corner of the playground. When other kids dared to brave my corner, either they played my games or stayed out of my way anddidn’t interfere. I did not accept party crashers.
More fights ensued, the most memorable of which landed me in the office. A big burly boy a foot taller and a year older than I took a nice beating from me. The next day I was called out of music class. I happened to be wearing a pink floral dress with a poofy pink scrunchie in my hair. As much as I despised that dress, it saved my skin that day. My principal was disinclined to believe that I could have done any real damage. I even told him the truth, and he still did not believe it happened. “Yes, I did punch him.” “Yes, I kicked him in the leg.” He glanced again at the note the boy’s parents had sent him that morning. He shook his head. He said, “I just think it was a game that got out of hand. I honestly don’t believe that this little girl could have hurt you.”
That was that. I got a day of recess in the office. They didn’t even tell my mother, who worked at the school at the time. I found the whole situation humorous, but was offended at the same time. I mean, words like the principal used were the reason I got into fights. I could not stand for someone underestimating me because I was a girl or because of how my mother dressed me. That was just unacceptable. Fortunately, I had enough sense not to punch my principal in the nose.
Middle school proved to be more of the same until the sixth grade trip to Camp Kern. My parents were chaperoning so I got to pick who was in my cabin. It was a few days before the trip and I had one space left on my list. A girl already in my cabin was pressuring me to pick her friend whom I did not like and my mother was pressuring me to pick someone I had not seen in five years.
Now for some background. In my earlier years, I had taken ballet and tap lessons. I met a girl there who rivaled my insanity. We raced around the studio and had tickle fights on the floor. We used our ballet slippers as microphones in our weekly newscasts. She would scream, “TICKLE MONSTER!” and tackle me. I adored her, but we lost touch after ballet ended because we went to different elementaries. But in our district all of the elementaries converge in the middle school, so there she was, five years older and nearly as much of an outcast as I. With some apprehension I wrote her into my group but ended up loving the decision. The trip went well. I toilet papered her sleeping bag for fun and she thought it was funny. I guess because we became die hard friends again.
She and I both learned to be wary of other girls and so all of our friends were older boys. The boys in our grades were used to us and still hated us for all the crap we had done to them in elementary. The same thing went for the girls in our grade as well, so we upgraded, if you’ll forgive the pun.
High school became the same story, only with new and more exciting complications. My friend and I started the boyfriend thing and hung out with their friends and weeded out the ones who only paid attention to us because they wanted us to kiss them. Lame. Sometimes I made female friends as well, but they always had the distinct characteristic of individuality and an air of uncaring about what society thought girls ought to look and act like. High school continued to progress, but she and I still only hung out with our four to six person network of buddies and boyfriends until now… I’ve made contact.
This is my second year of ArtWorks. Last year I was with Kathy Y. Wilson and the Issues project. We put together a newspaper insert called “Disposable Truth” that we sold advertising for and placed in the September 8, 2004 issue of CityBeat.
This year I got on the ArtWorks website to check out the upcoming projects and was alarmed and dismayed to find out that the sole literary project was GIRLS ONLY. I’m nearly a senior and still immune to the importance of hair do’s and nails, make up and romantic comedies, clothes and trips to the mall. I was HORRIFIED! Girls? All girls? Say it isn’t so! But, feeling the need to write and knowing that it’s never good to discriminate, I got my portfolio together and went to the interviews.
It’s truly amazing. The fifth week of ArtWorks is upon me and I have survived. In fact, nearly every girl here has expressed some sort of anxiety about working with all girls, and yet no one seems to be having a problem. We have all felt alienated by the image-obsessed frivolity of our gender at some point. We came here with the pretense of learning to accept ourselves, but I think what’s really going on is much more underground.
We are telling our sparse female friends about the fantastic beings in our project. We recall the details of the sexist but laughable reservations we had. Every girl here just wants to make it clear that we will not be defined by our gender, and that we won’t accept someone else’s version of what a girl should be. We are individuals, free from labels and classifications.
I have found at least one thing that I absolutely love about every girl here. It’s a subconscious understanding that we have bonds because we’ve made them. Right here, right now. No inhibitions and no reservations, because we can, not because we have to.
Before I continue, I will now explain my reasons behind this rant. It has always been my opinion that girls are constantly underestimated, which is probably why I once distanced myself from them. But these days I’ve come to understand that it’s not just my opinion, it is a fact. I’ve even gotten wind of a certain individual whom I shall not name who thinks that what we do here is pointless. “They don’t do anything for society.”
No. What we have done here has taught us more about ourselves and our society than years of social exertion. We can pass on this knowledge. The room we have occupied for the last four and a half weeks is solid proof of that. Our new found intelligence is splattered over the walls, combined with symbols of our empowered bodies. The world is too preoccupied with garbage. “Let’s pump botulism into our faces!” “Let’s transfer the fat from our lazy bums into our lips!” “Let’s eat McDonald’s every day, spend thousands on liposuction and then wonder why we suffer massive heart attacks!”
Girls and women spend hours and hours in the bathroom every day all day adding layer upon layer of makeup on their faces. They dye their hair and paint their nails and get fake tans every week just to keep up with what’s expected. Whether they do it for boys or their peers, it’s not only sickening, it’s unhealthy.
Look, if you want a fake tan, get one. If you want short skirts that qualify as more of a scarf, fine. If you want fat from your butt put into your lips, then put it there, just don’t kiss me. I’m not forbidding anyone from doing what they want, but please, do it because you want to, not because you feel like you have to. Know your true beauty before you go to the extreme. Most importantly, tell others what you know. Tell the truth. Spread the word. Be real. Chatter like a crazed parakeet!
We have to stop comparing ourselves to the people on TV. We have to stop caring what complete strangers may think of us if we go outside looking a certain way. We have to stop letting people take advantage of us and fight to look and feel the way we want. The pressure is too much. No one can look perfect and natural at the same time. Stop caring what the magazines say. Argue with the man who tells you that you couldn’t have done something because of your gender. Never be defined by what you wear. And most of all don’t listen to that certain little boy who attacks the way you look.
Be proud of your hairy legs.
Gone, by Kathryn Wendeln
as she begins to be smothered by his weight
her ribs declare mutiny and begin
to fold in, coming together like
the teeth of a zipper, constricting
the heart, the lungs—
air straggles
through her throat, resistance
does not form words.
freedom,
she can sense it, dangling
just beyond her fingertips.
she gropes for it, straining
each muscle and longing
with each bone.
they collide in their effort
and fall away—
her attempt is not enough and
her strength succumbs to his body.
with one last breath
she slides back
into herself, consoling what is left,
curling her hollow body,
head tucked, ribs and spine exposed.
her body is gone.
morning/living/evening, by Kathryn Wendeln
I imagine
learning to breathe
all over again each morning
sensing the security of the air with my lips
as the earth begins
rebirth--stretching, budding,
radiating.
I imagine
erasing mistakes with only
single line strikeouts,
keeping my eyes fixed on
what I can conquer rather
than what I fear.
I imagine
telling my body that
I am sorry,
singing myself gentle lullabies and
kissing each limb goodnight.
the construction of a woman, by Kathryn Wendeln
the construction of a woman:
a woman is not made of flesh
of bone and sinew
belly and breasts, elbows and liver and toe.
from “What are Big Girls Made Of?” by Marge Piercy
a woman is made of years
of shame, layers of flesh to blanket
how she began. she is buried under mounds of
I told you so, why aren’t you
prettier thinner sexier
happier?
a woman is made in the stripping
of this flesh, in the long process to
cajole the lies from her essence,
to pluck one by one
their greedy fingers from her skin.
a woman is made in her travels
through the blossoming, unfolding world,
the journey that leads invariably
inward;
she is made in the discoveries of
herself through the eyes of others, the revelations
that she is the world and the world
is she.
a woman is made in that moment when through
the demands of the media, the why aren’t yous and the
you are not enoughs, the disappointment
and shame of failing to be another
she is able to peer inward
and smile.
Every Woman is Secretly in Love, by Camillia North
I think every woman is secretly in love with her lips
A soft kiss upon the smooth skin of one’s heart
Gracious and full.
I think every woman is secretly in love with her words
Rolling up her throat and dripping off the tip of her tongue
Like the last drop of honey in the jar
So sweet and promising.
I think every woman is secretly in love with her fingers
Never too thick or too slim
Dressed in diamonds or maybe just chipped pearl paint across the nails.
I think every woman is secretly in love with her legs
Coated in rich, dark fudge, caramel cream, or maybe something in the vanilla tint…
I think every woman is secretly in love with her feet
Floating across the midnight ocean, swaying in the tears of the sky.
I think every woman is secretly in love with herself
Secretly.
An Epiphany to Loving Me, by JaHe Woody
I remember how some days I just wanted to die. I'm not brave or bold
enough to actually commit suicide, but the thought of me dying in my sleep crossed my mind. Those were my really, really, really bad days. Those were the days when I wasn't called pretty; I wasn't understood by my mama and daddy. The days when school was just some straight bullshit. The days when nothing was going right. The days when I would look in the mirror and want bigger breasts, thicker thighs, a bigger booty, longer hair, lighter skin, straighter teeth, a more narrow nose, a smaller chin. I never hated my body, but I was damn close. Why I would get so close to hating myself, I don’t know. Maybe it was the constant torment and teasing growing up. Maybe it was the pain of trying to find my true black self in a school full of white folks. Maybe it was the constant comparing to little and big cousins. “Oh, Nikki you’re so pretty. Shatara’s hair is so long, JaHe, why ain't yours like that?” All of that bullshit could drive an insecure, self-conscious young black girl like me to crazy ass thoughts like killing herself. I mean, for real, that stuff had some serious negative effects on my mental state. My mind was all fucked up just like I visualized my body, fucked up.
In my mind, I knew things were going to get worse in high school. I must be psychic because they did. I hated my high school with a passion. 1000 white girls all around me. 1000 white girls who were allowed to have boyfriends. I wanted a boyfriend. I wanted somebody to touch me and kiss me. This concept seemed so ridiculous to me for because I didn’t think I was pretty enough to have a boy who liked me. This concept was also irrational because my mama was so old-fashioned and I couldn’t have a boyfriend until I was 16 years old.
My mama, whew! I didn’t want a mama during my teenage years. I wanted to
do whatever I wanted to do without any parental approval. This desire led to my discrete rebellion. I would go out with my “girls” but would then go out with the “boys” and have my mama believing I was still with my “girls.” I would lie to my mama. I would keep things to myself, that way I wouldn’t be lying. Well, that’s what I convinced myself.
Even with all of this rebellion, I still wasn’t happy with myself or my life. I still looked in the mirror and saw something I despised. Finally, when I found someone who liked this thing I despised, I gave him all of me. I didn’t need love. I didn’t need respect. I didn’t need anything but someone to say I was pretty and then touch me. Luckily, that was a phase.
Then I had a revelation. I looked at my coveted body in the mirror and realized that I didn’t deserve what I was putting myself through. I didn’t deserve self-hatred, self-rejection, pain. I didn’t deserve to think I was hideous. I was intelligent. I was precious. I was talented. I was more than just a reflection in the mirror. I was lovable and I found love. I found someone who wanted to give me love and respect. Someone who wanted to hear my voice just for the hell of it. I found myself. I began to love my little breasts, my skinny thighs, my little booty, my short hair, my dark skin, my gapped teeth, my wide nose, my protruding chin, my body. I began to love waking up in the morning and having refreshing thoughts of grasping life by the horns and riding it into eternity. I began to love not poisoning my mind with morbid thoughts of death and suicide. I began to love life, love others, and most importantly, I began to love me.
In the material published in Queen City Forum Magazine’s “The InkTank”, the author retains the copyright and all rights are reserved to the author of the story, poem, serial, or otherwise. None of the afore mentioned may be copied, reprinted or reproduced without the expressed written consent of the author.
Links
· InkTank
· The InkTank: About the Authors November 2005
· Artworks
· True Body Project
Contact Information
· jsyroney@inktank.org
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