this is just something that’s been on my mind lately. i don’t know when we decided that all things must be Celebrated, but it was probably around the same time we became aware of all the Great Injustices of the world, like abandoned puppies, and kids with cancer, and sexism and homophobia and ableism and racism and so on and on ad nauseam. i wasn’t around for the first perception of the Great Injustices but i did exist on tumblr in ~2009, so my attendance was by proxy, and you know how these things go.
are women severely disadvantaged as a whole in society? it follows that all women are good and pure and wholesome and can never do any wrong. men on the other hand have historically had All The Privileges, and therefore it follows that they all Suck, and will Continue Sucking Until The End of Time. then there’s all the other stuff: all people of colour are beautiful, all disabled people are beautiful, all gay people are beautiful, all fat people are beautiful, e t c
it’s a bit much, though. they are empowering messages at the beginning, and they do come from generally helpful places, but they also are undeniably a bit Much.
i realised this really recently, but i don’t really want to be beautiful. i’m overweight and have been all my life so, you know, conventionally speaking, i’m not. which means via tumblr logic that i Am. the rhetoric has always been that the conventionally unattractive or the undesired must be restored to their rightful status by being aggressively considered attractive and desired in turn.
when i was in year seven, a girl in my class whom i really admired said to me, “you’re really pretty for an indian, you know,” before making a pitying comment about my unibrow. i remember standing in front of the mirror that evening and staring at the unibrow in question. it’s the first time i remember really thinking of my body as an extension of my self. it’s the first time someone had commented on my body as if its appearance in some way belied all the things that were in my mind. it was one of the first times i had thought of myself as indian, pretty, and unibrow.
these days when i look in the mirror i try to see all the things i know and all the things i want to know. it’s not very easy, because recognising my body as an extension of my self (as it No Doubt Is) means constantly battling between “oh my god i am so ugly who allowed me to exist” and “fat is beautiful! brown is beautiful! unibrow is beautiful!”
it took me years to realise that i do not want to be beautiful. i don’t want all the restorative justices that my body apparently demands. there is a strange peace in middling. i like it here. i wear what i want, and sit how i want, and behave towards the many hairs on my body with careful indifference. sometimes i make a derisive comment about the way i look and That’s Alright, because it has no bearing on my abilities, and also it’s nice sometimes to be able to laugh at myself. it takes the pressure off of the constant positivity that existing is supposed to be.
a happy side effect of middling is i’ve begun to take more selfies of Just My Face, As It Is, in an attempt to document the Simple Condition Of Being Alive