"Liberation!"

This week I decided two very important things:

1.) It's high time I introduce shorts back into my life; and,

2.) The pressure for women to shave their legs is misogynistic. And a pain in the butt. So, feministicly, I decided I'm not going to do that for awhile. (Also, think of how cool, artsy, and thoughtful I'll appear!) Thank goodness my Croatian blood does not include dominant dark hair genes.

I feel good about both of these; the title of this post might make the reader think that perhaps these might be rather freeing decisions, and that's very true. I've been thinking about the human body, mine specifically, in terms of them being our mode of interaction with the world. Think about it: God decided to bring together various elements into entities that are nothing more than lumps of flesh and blood, and breathed life into them. Life not simply understood as the sudden flow blood cells through ventricles, but as the many parts assembled suddenly became a Whole Being. Something that Is, not simply exists. Something whose brain could not only send information through its nerves to direct the lenses of the eyes to gaze at the heavens, which sends the image back to the brain, but also wonder. I am my body, and my body is me: I am known by the image of my self and the presence of my body to others. I am made to know my Creator through shivers that run down my spine and the pulsating of my heart when I sense something that I know I cannot through my senses.

So, in my many attempts to understand the audacity of property and the necessity of expropriation, I think too of my body: how odd is it that we will constantly step out of our bodies to look at ourselves, cast judgement (often with great anxiety) on what doesn't look like what we think it should look like, and attempt to arduously manipulate the individual parts of it, so as to reflect something (or someone) that isn't us. I am constantly trying, but mostly just wanting, to look like someone that isn't me! How absolutely preposterous is that? And I know it all comes back to the mindset upheld by the social consciousness that our value lies in how we are perceived, mostly by strangers, who have never spent a moment in conversation with us to know who we are.

I know that I have always believed that I won't be loved if I don't look a certain way, never mind the rest of the whole that constitutes who I am. And I've realized this is just so silly! Who is not going to love me because I have cellulite on my inner thighs, or some baby padding around my waist? I wrote this in my journal last week in the midst of feeling rather self-conscious about my upper arms:

I was just thinking about how absolutely ridiculous this statement would sound out: loud: "You know, I would like you, if your upper arms better reflected the currently cultural standard of leanness and muscle tone, achieved through a strict diet and rigorous exercise. You're really great, though..."

Beauty is a gift of God for our eyes to see and our hearts to feel. People are beautiful, and are gifted to us by the grace of God. The moment we start valuing our bodies as just pieces of flesh and bone that we can manipulate to look like something else, we loose not only a vision of ourselves, but we also fail to rejoice. The moment we fail to recognize people as beautiful gifts of God, we fail to rejoice. So, when I wear shorts, and choose to not live up to a ridiculous cultural expectation of smooth legs, I am liberated--made free to rejoice.

Instead of transcending ourselves, we must move into ourselves. Tell the image makers and magazine sellers and the plastic surgeons that you are not afraid. That what you fear the most is the death of imagination and originality and metaphor and passion. Then be bold and LOVE YOUR BODY. STOP FIXING IT. It was never broken.

--Eve Ensler