I’m in these photos, and I’ve never seen them. I’ve refused to look.
Not looking is my form of liberation, my acceptance, my “body positivity.”
I’m not looking because it doesn’t matter what I see. I will find a way to hate it, so I’m not giving myself that opportunity.
And feeling this hatred would not change anything. Neither would learning to love these pictures. Because they’re not me.
I am alien invasion dreams and symphonic metal songs and heartbreak memories and Schroedinger’s cat analogies and reincarnation intuitions. I will continue to be these things no matter what these photos look like.
Does it threaten you that I feel shitty about my looks and can still function?
That my looks are so unimportant to me, I can feel bad about them and good about myself?
That's more threatening than a woman who feels good about her body. What’s more radical than body positivity? Not giving a fuck, not even enough to glance.
Because that means the tactics used to keep us down aren't working.
I'm not immune to these tactics. I hear the hatred, the disdain. And then I get up in the morning and go about my day.
And then I pose for photos and let them go online.
I don't look at them because I know how much it'd kill me, and it's not worth it.
But the same way I'll still get up and speak in front of a crowd when I can't stand the thought of them seeing me, I'll put these photos out for everyone to see when I can't dare to imagine how they look to you, can't bare to see myself from your perspective.
Please don't be one of those men who wants to reassure me I'm beautiful, who wants to smile after a job well done helping a girl feel good about herself.
Feeling good about my body is NOT feeling good about myself. And I'm not a girl.
I'm a fierce badass woman who is no less fierce or badass because I'm insecure about my looks.
Don't you dare try to comfort me. Don't you dare make me feel good about myself. Don't you dare make me feel anything.
Let me feel shitty and let me be angry because my anger is my way of observing the world.
Feeling shitty is grasping the magnitude of the violence directed toward my body and bodies like mine.
Don’t you dare take away my right to feel shitty, my right to sense my surroundings, my right to use my intelligence.
And don’t you dare fucking tell me to love my body.
My body deserves to be seen whether I love it or not, whether you love it or not.
Don’t keep women locked inside until they love their looks.
Don’t tell us we can’t live until we can step back and see ourselves from the outside and smile.
Let us be inside ourselves for once. Let us not look for once. Let us look at other people for once, because let’s talk about that.
My sexuality isn’t what I look like; it’s what I look at.
You will not find my sexuality in these images. It’s not about what faces I make or what lingerie I wear; it’s about the porn I get off to and the way my partner takes off his pants.
And that’s fucking scary to you. Because all this time, you were thinking about me taking my clothes off, weren’t you?
That may be what’s in front of you, but that doesn’t represent me.
That image is for you, not me. I don’t exist in it
. I don’t mind these pictures being here because they’re not important. I could get fat and I could get old and I could get ugly and I’d still be all the things I’ve named.
You can’t find me in these images, so I didn’t even look.