per Erin’s request, here is my letter. Read it, then go write your own. You have until Sunday. This is important.
_________
Dear Body,
I learned to love you like I come to love most things: slowly, and with an abundance of trepidation. When we came into this world together, we were already at odds, you (literally) had to break to let me out. These days, I’ve slowed down a little bit, and we keep up with one another better.
You are my constant. When I can’t depend on anything else, I know I can depend on you. You are, literally, larger than life. You enable me in a way that no one else could - to be brash, to be brave, to speak up and act out. It got so easy to be shocking once I realized everyone was already looking at you.
Body, you are mother-fucking EPIC. You grow hair like no one’s business, and it’s really damn fancy. Your left arm is super-power strong for inexplicable/sexy reasons, and I really love it when you whoop ass at arm wrestling. Body, your shoulders and hips hold it down and turn it out. You can take the hard knocks and keep on going. I really appreciate that, because you know that if you couldn’t I’d still be pretending it was all okay.
Our favorite things about each other are always changing, that’s pretty much the beauty of a life-long love affair, but I have to tell you something. Body, you leave and receive a mark better than most any other body I know. I adore the feisty, consensual marks you leave on other people’s pretty bodies because your mouth is so amazingly chompy. Your blood vessels pop and your skin welts up in really fucking beautiful ways. Your bruises are my armor these days. They are proof that right now, I can only be hurt in the best of ways. The ink that lives in your skin is vibrant, and you suck it in and heal it up because you know how important it is to me for your skin to say what I need people to see.
Body, I’m glad that we’ve learned to fuck all the haters, even when it’s hard. You’ve taught me lessons about taking it slower, and caring for myself. You impress me with your bendiness and stubbornness in yoga class. I know you got that obstinance from me.
Let’s keep learning from one another, constant lover, until we’re so tough that nothing can touch us.
All my love,
Jessie Dress
Dear Body,
Sometimes, I marvel at your ability. I mean, in those moments when I am really aware of what you (I, we) are doing. When I am walking with or without calf pain, or during fucking when my cunt is stretched open and full in the most indescribable way. Like when my hips ache until I rotate them, almost dancing, feeling my limbs and pelvis twist and settle. When I stretch and I can feel each and every bit of my spine, breathing. Like when my heart beats, my lungs draw air.The things you doing every second are so amazing and sometimes so teeny, that I have the luxury of forgetting. Thank you for letting me along for the ride.
Thank you for the ache in my muscles that remind me to push harder, to give you a break, to get stronger. I love you for that. Thank you for cleansing fevers and menstrual cycles and ejaculations. I love you for that.
I make promises to you that I do not keep, but you are still here. You must love me so much that you have not been shy about letting me know that you and I need to form a better system of solidarity. I like to think that I know how to listen to you, from palate to lymph nodes, womb to ankles, to all the places I’ve been pierced (thank you, for hanging in through all that). But sometimes I ignore you, wishing for something “better” and I’m sorry.
You put up with all the shit that I eat that does nothing for you: black iced coffees with splenda, sriracha, oysters from questionable fisherman’s trunks, sour frozen margaritas, meals of deep fried dough, ice cubes crunched between my teeth.You put up with all the times I didn’t eat.
You put up with all the dark times. You were pliant under my mess. Thank you for being giving when all I needed to send myself over the edge was an inch of resistant. Thank you for being resistant as fuck when I was trying to destroy myself. When I try to destroy myself.
I love you for the everyday. For the countless mascara wands jabbed into my eyes, and I can still see! For dealing with the dozens of cheap ass shoes that I bought in my youth (I’m still paying for that, but I can also, still walk). I love you for the tits, tummy, and ass that you sprouted. For the hair that grows back no matter what I do to it. For the bounce, shimmy, jiggle, shake, grind. I’m still working on loving the weak calves and wide-ass feet we have, but it’s a journey.I love you bunches, I really do.
In liberation and ferocity, Yours,
AfroTitty
it took me almost a year after i first posted the call out for body love letters, but today i finally wrote a love letter to my body. it was really cathartic and beautiful and important and i am so happy i finally did it. while the body love letter zine project is still in the works, i wanted to create more space for others to submit body love letters because i feel like its so much about the process of writing the letter. if you feel inclined to send your body some love you can submit here or on the glitter politic website.
Dear Body,
I have something to tell you, but you probably already know what I am going to say. As you probably remember, about a year ago I put a call out for people to write their body a love letter for a project I was working on– but I couldn’t bring myself to write you a letter. I never told anyone about it till much later because I felt ashamed. I was unable to write you a love letter because when I sat down to write I realized I didn’t know who you were to me yet. Realizing that I didn’t know you, that I was mad at you and that I had neglected you severely for many years of my life was really hard for me to come to terms with. I often talk about how I am on a journey of self love and realizing that I had been ignoring you was hard to accept. I am truly sorry. I feed you well body, but we both know I often went on cleanses and ‘detox’ diets for the wrong reasons. I wanted to make you smaller, less noticeable, I wanted you to take up less space. I was still an activist, a feminist and an outspoken fatty but part of me resented you and the pain that living in a world that wanted me to be at war with you had caused me. My inability to control you has been a hard thing for me to come to terms with, but learning that you need space, and care and movement and nourishment in ways that are rooted in love and not fear has been life changing. You buck off any attempts to be contained and feel best when I trust you and your ability to let me know what you need. I haven’t been able to write this for so many reasons until now. One of those reasons is because I wasn’t actually existing in you, I was living in my head, tolerating you and pretending you weren’t there. Once I started to move and to really spend time looking at you, we started to connect more. All of my life I have been told that people who are fat and/or socialized as women are weak, and realizing that was THE BIGGEST FUCKING LIE EVER in terms of our journey – allowed me to come back to you again. I remember feeling so scared and unsure when I started riding a bike again five years ago because I wasn’t sure what you could do, or how far you could go. Once I just began to trust you, I realized that you could take me as far as I believed in you, and together we went on some beautiful bike rides and even a bike trip to a gulf island. Together me and you have climbed mountains, swam across lakes and paddled rapids. We bleed, cry and come together and there is no other body I would rather be doing that with. Working through my fear of ‘not being able to do it’ and starting to trust you and where you could take me has been hard, but so beautiful and healing for me. Body, you make the earth move, you take up space and lets be real – you can fuck people silly and throw people around in a way I had never dreamed you’d be able to. Once I stop being scared of you and started to let you do your thing in ways that honoured your strength and trusted your ability to make people feel good , we started to really get along. Feeling you get stronger and trusting that strength has been such a joyful experience. I love you so deeply body, I love the way you curve and bend and dimple. I love your folds and your softness and the way you take a fist. I love the way you tell me when things are wrong, and I love you for forcing me to listen. I love the way you hold yourself and others, and I love you for never giving up on me, and letting me come to love and trust you slowly, cautiously and on my own terms. It has been a long journey, and we are not even close to finished. I promise to always remember (as I have before) that love will open up spaces of much more beauty and possibility than fear.
Majestic
