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I first started talking about my curves in early 2015, as a topic of pride and identity. If you're curious to know how I feel about being a curvy working lady, click here! Over there I write about how I've grown to percieve my curves to be something positive and I've grown to accept their advantages in my teaching world. Now, I get to talk about playing.... wahoooo!!!! The idea of "playing" as a fat person has always worried me. I recently had a really wonderful conversation with a professor of mine about what it means to be fat, what it means to maybe not identify as fat but be identified as fat and so on and so forth. I don't think I necessarily identify in this way; that word has always been one that's hurt me and set a standard for great pain so I opt for the word juicy. In my mind, who doesn't want to be juicy? So many wonderful things are juicy; peaches, velvet pants, my favourite perfume.... hippos are juicy, rhinos .... unicorns?! Point is : I think I'm juicy, and that's cool.
It's taken and is still taking me a long time to be free enough with my curves to be able to celebrate them but en route to the party ( true playing), I've picked up a few things y. 1) Enjoying food 2) learning to cook for myself 3) how to laugh . Lastly, why I want to be 'play-ing'
1) Enjoying food I've spent enough time having a love-hate relationship with food. It is not worth it. In my next installment I'll talk about my experience with the Health at Every Size movement, but in this post I thought I'd share about how loving food and enjoying food is not a bad thing. I love the adventure of going out to eat, the atmosphere in a nice restauraunt and the occasions that surround group meals or special dates. Enjoying meals with company is such an important part of my life! Seeing food as an art form and as a sensory experience allows me to engage with food on a different level. People I love eating with include anyone that's open to trying new food and hip restauraunts.
2) Learning to cook
There are certain things I'm really good at cooking, mostly vegetarian dishes. I'm not as confident or comfortable cooking meet and frankly when I lived on campus I ate meat maybe once or twice a week. I also really like being around J when he cooks because he's both really good at it and adventurous with recipes. Salmon, chicken, magic pasta he can make it all.
Me, I can make a few really good things but particularly smoothies, bulgogi, vegi stri fry and tuna pasta are my staples.
3) Learning to laugh Yes, I'm juicy. Yes, food (namely my nonna's cooking) has a role to play in that, but it's not the only factor. So, why not have fun eating pizza? Why not crack a joke about my butt ? Why not decide that since there are so many standards I'm not meeting, to create my own? Why not laugh? Not in a self-depricating way, but in a way that recognizes that yes I live in a stigmatized body, no it's not "fair", and yet there are contradictions to how I should look left right and centre, so I might as well sit back and laugh. I think I'm grateful for the time when I (un)consciencly decided that humor was a legitimate form of communication, since it's hard to be taken seriously in a bigger body. I'm grateful for being given the mind to know that the stigma of fatness is just another social creation. Maybe, just maybe I'm grateful for being physically deviant and instead of trying so desperately to tell myself I can lose weight or I will not be 'this' at any cost. What would happen if I were just to commit to being who I am and what I look like now? What if we laugh so hard at the standards and methods of oppression and our own personal histories that we cry. We cry and laugh and eventually, together we shift the expectation of women... not just curvy ones either. We change how we imagine bodies looking like and we alter our self-hate into self-love. For me, these ideals of change began with a giggle and I haven't stopped laughing since.
4) Play-ing!
This is something I'm working on. Today I woke up to sit, to drive (sitting), to sit in class, to sit at lunch with a friend, to drive (sit), to teach (sitting), to go for dinner (sitting), to practicing (sitting) to here (sitting). This wasn't a normal day, but before we shout about excercise - when was I playing?
When did I look at the sky and the trees and the grass?
When did I decompress the stress I feel?
When did I stretch my legs and use my muscles and feel gratitude for my body?
..... I didn't.
I can't be hard on myself, but I think I can expect more FOR myself. I want to have a life where I'm play-ing every day and that's still part of the quest I'm on and that will ultimately be the party! Right now I'm going to focus on going for a walk tomorrow - long term, I think I'd like an adult tricycle! One with a really sweet seat for my big butt. Woo!