Another Body Beautiful Week in the books, what have we learned this year folks? In case you aren’t sure What Body Beautiful week is, let me fill you in. Each year the DUB sponsors Body Beautiful Week and organizes events for everyone on campus to find ways to celebrate our bodies as they are. This semester we organized a few fun and flirty events; members of our house sat in the Monaco room of the student center to take black and white photos of students with a caption they’ve written behind them about something they love about their body. For example, someone could write “I love my feet because they help me run,” or “I love my brain because it helps me accomplish amazing things.” We also organized a “Walk with SWOC,” the Strong Women of the Outing Club, to take a walk along the Saddlemire and Kip Trails on campus, and we had a Dub Club on Tuesday discussing the marginalization of bodies.
This Body Beautiful Week, our Dub Club really stuck with me. It isn’t an easy thing to openly discuss the way you feel that your body has been marginalized and oppressed, and it takes a lot of strength to delve into the details of what about our bodies we struggle to love and accept. There are intersections within our identity that are visibly marginalized, for example my experience living and presenting as a woman, as well as less visible or invisible parts of our identity that are marginalized, my identity as bisexual. I believe Body Beautiful Week serves to celebrate the parts of our identity which are visible and invisible, the things about our body we struggle with currently and what we may struggle with in the future or have struggled with in the past. Our identity is inherently linked with our bodies, and our bodies are the way we present ourselves to the world. When living in a marginalized body, we can often have the urge to present ourselves in a way that we know will allow us to be more accepted, but this can also be really harmful to the way we view ourselves. It is a constant struggle between wanting to be loved and accepted, or in many cases simply to not be discriminated against or harmed, and wanting to live our lives through our bodies authentically and unapologetically.
Unfortunately, these struggles aren’t just going to go away, we can’t dismantle capitalism and patriarchy in a single day (although we can try). While we continue to work against the forces that oppress us, we can also work to understand the kinds of things about our bodies that we love, and the things we love a little less and interrogate why that is. As we bring this Body Beautiful Week to a close, I invite you to try and find something surrounding your body or your identity that you struggle loving and try to embrace it in its full form. I’ll offer you a personal example; for the past few months I have been growing out my leg hair which I have been shaving starting from the age of 14. Historically, the idea of shaving manifested as a way to profit off of women’s bodies by making them feel as if leg hair was “unfeminine,” and that we would not be desired unless we were practically hairless. For me, the decision to not shave my legs is a way I can reclaim power for myself, even if it can be difficult. I get self-conscious about it, I get the urge to shave it all off again, and the thoughts that I’ll be more desired or accepted without my leg hair creep back into my mind. Finding ways to reclaim power and find greater acceptance for our bodies has a huge learning curve, and even something that seems as trivial as leg hair can be hard to make space for in our minds to be questioned and contested. However, even through the self-consciousness, and the urges to shave to fit the standards set for me as a woman, it is extremely empowering to be able to recognize that why something makes me uncomfortable isn’t because it isn’t beautiful or worthy, but simply because that’s what we’ve been told. So again, whatever it may be for you, big or small, I invite you to close out this Body Beautiful Week by dedicating more love to a part of you that you’ve been struggling with and carry it beyond this week. The parts of us that we struggle to appreciate are what deserve to be shown love most, and if you ever need, I’ll be at 3 University Ave to remind you.