My last quarter in massage school started.
The aftermath of the shootings in Tucson depressed me — not the shootings themselves, no, I was given no time to mourn those lives, but the near-immediate rhetoric equating, and explaining, violence with mental illness.
I’ve been gestating, and thus sleeping rather a lot.
And I’ve been spotting, and sometimes more than spotting.
…so I haven’t, so much, been writing.
We are on Day 7 of Project: Switch the Boychick’s Sleep Schedule1 here in Casa RMB, which has required that I go to bed at the same time as The Man and the Boychick2, and, now that it’s working, get up ridiculously (for me) early in the morning.3,4 Combined with a sick and OMGSUPERCRANK kiddo, this means I haven’t been having any real time to write. Or ability, when — miracle! — I do have the time.5
So, as incentive for you to stick around6 (blog redesign! more on the tagline! declarations of gender! guest posts perhaps involving lacy underwear! and so much more!), have a Cute Kid PicTM, featuring The Man, the Boychick, our teeny tiny super scraggly Charlie Brown solstice tree7,8, and Random Boot9:
It's the boot that really makes the pic
A joyous Yule or beautiful Midsummer to you all.
I have no desire or intention to police others’ bodies. We can talk about the social pressures that lead to high rates of cosmetic surgery, dieting, body hatred — but to confuse a need for systemic critique with a right to criticize individuals is one of the worst uses of feminism.
But.
And.
So.
How we talk about our bodies — our own bodies — matters. It affects how other people feel about theirs, and that matters. When we say “I’m too fat to wear a bikini”, we’re saying fat is bad, and those as fat or fatter than us also shouldn’t expose themselves. When we say “I can’t get away with going without a bra”, we’re saying to flop is not a subjective choice but an objective assessment. When we say “My hair’s an ugly mess unless I straighten it”, we’re saying everyone’s hair that’s curly like ours is ugly too.
Does that mean we have to pretend to a false enlightenment, never let a negative word slip our mouths? Does that mean we have to suppress our own truths and desires for the sake of others (always, for women, are we supposed live for the sake of others)? I cannot accept that either. We must be able to tell our truths, to take the dark things inside us out so they can be seen, to exert our rightful autonomy over our own bodies, to do as we choose with them.
How do we resolve this? Is it resolvable?
I propose this:
We start with I.
I feel. I fear. I want.
We reject kyriarchical assignments of some bodies, some ways of being, as wholly bad, or inherently good; we know better than to rely on what “everybody knows” about fat, and flop, and tresses. Instead, we get deeper: what are we afraid of? What are we reaching toward?
I feel better in a one-piece. I’m afraid people will stare at me if I don’t wear a bra. I want my hair to be straight.
Can we talk about where our senses of style come from? About male gaze and comfort in public? About the ramifications of hair choices? Absolutely. But we don’t have to. We don’t have to analyze every single choice at every single opportunity; we don’t have to let those analyses dictate our choices for fear of “giving in” to kyriarchy and all its bullshit. We can, we are allowed to, simply say “Fuck it, this is what I want right now.”
How radical is that? How much could we change the world by doing something just because we want to? What would happen if we reject the “need” for excuses, for justifications? Not “I’m too fat to wear that”, not “I ran a mile earlier, so this brownie is ok”. Just — I want to wear this. I want to eat that. I want. Sometimes, that can be enough.
You know that fabulous class I was gushing over in my last post?
Yeah, Day Three fucked my back up. Or rather, my back, injured long long ago when I was twelve, decided it had had enough and wasn’t going to take it any more, and I wasn’t going to give yet another massage, I was just going to lie on the floor and cry for an hour.
That day? Also the first of my cycle. And the spasm came while I was trying to put on my pants, so I was on the floor wearing only a nursing tank and my bright red undies1. So, that was fun2.
On the other hand, if you’re going to have a great big physical and emotional break down, there are worse places to do it than a room full of nurturing women half of whom are doulas (some wonderfully radical) and all of whom are massage therapists or massage students.3
This has happened to me before4, and it will likely happen to me again, although I’m working on preventing it. But this has me thinking a lot about privilege5, and access to medical care, and sick days, and disability, and, oh, lots of things.
Like there’s this: since it happened, I’ve seen a massage therapist, a physical therapist, and the chiropractor twice. The latter two are almost entirely covered by my insurance, and the former offers me a student discount (which I can only be because I had good enough credit to have taken out a massive loan to cover my schooling — it’s really true that the more you make, the less you spend).
And there’s this: The Man took two days off, took a super long lunch to get me to an appointment the third day, and has a job that allows him to work from home once a week so he was around again to help me out today. He’s salaried, has abundant6 sick and vacation days, and is in a class of work that allows for flexible hours and minimum oversight.
And this: when I am not up to writing, when I am not up to taking out my own damn sponge, I can do nothing but sit around and pop NSAIDs and ice my back and go to body work appointments and bitch about #backpocalypse2010 on Twitter. I lose some readers and some momentum, I miss a week of The Boychick’s Bookshelf and am five days late on a monthly menstrual post7: I do not lose my job, I do not worry about paying my rent, I do not grit my teeth and soldier through and further damage myself to avoid those things.
And then there’s how hard it is to ask for help, the socially imposed conditioning to apologize for being hurt8 that I’ve struggled with, the allowances I am given because this is presumed to be temporary, the language used to describe the incapacity9 that is today only for me and every day for others, the suggestions that it’s my own fault for not taking better care of myself, the voices10 saying that if I’m so damaged what am I doing trying to be a massage therapist… there’s rather more going on than I can identify, much less analyze. Especially as the ice pack melts and my hips start tingling and my back starts twitching and my bed starts calling — loudly, in the form of snores from my child and texts from my lover.
But I haven’t forgotten you11, and soon I’ll be back with another Boychick’s Bookshelf (and there may be a collaboration there to announce soon — stay tuned!), and a review of Flow
I’m in the midst of a maternity massage series — two three-day-weekends in a row, for a total of 44 class hours — and am utterly knackered. I’ve had so many thoughts, so many posts I would’ve given a toe1 to be able to sit down and get out, but have had to get back to class, to get even more inspiration for more posts I don’t have time to write.
So in lieu of one of those posts, some thoughts:
As drained as I am physically, my spirit is soaring. I wish I could gift some of this to all of you — touch, and camaraderie, and joy in vocation, and that yummy post-massage blissed out head space. It’s too good to keep all to myself.
May you have reason to smile, today and every day.
Illuminating the intersections of family and feminism, parenting and privilege, motherhood and marginalization, kids and kyriarchy.
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