Friday, April 07, 2006

Photo Friday I: Finding Something to Love

I have obsessed about this Photo Friday topic:

We live in a world where females are taught to pick apart and hate their bodies at an early age.This week I ask you to renounce any body hating that you have & celebrate yourself: your beautiful self.Please submit a photo of your favorite body part or part of your body. Along with the photo include a short love letter to that body part.
My favorite body part. The minute I start thinking about body parts, I am transported into negativity. Stomach. Disgusting overflowing I should be at the gym not writing this and stuffing my piehole with BBQ soychips. Legs. I like them okay but has that jiggly flab always been there? Even when I think of the parts of my body that I like, I'm seeing them through someone else's eyes, as objects more or less appealing to others.

My body, defective and flawed, so often the target of my rage and frustration.




And yet, think of all it does.

My heart will beat approximately 100,800 times over the course of the next twenty four hours.
Over those same twenty four hours, I will inhale approximately 28,800 times.
I will conceive of words, and somehow, they will be transformed and transported from wisps of ideas in my mind to muscles working bones to produce words on the keypad.
My kidneys filter my blood, removing wastes and diluting them with water.
My muscles lift a cat to rub his soft fur against my face, my nerves process fur, soft, pleasure.
My eyes blink to keep themselves moist, and catch the flicker of a nuthatch circling down the trunk of a dead tree.

You, body.
Allow me to be.




Walt Whitman says it so much better than I possibly could (particularly the very last section).

3 Comments:

Blogger Sandra Miller said...

Wow, Art-Sweet.

Wow.

Yes, Walt is good-- very good.

But really, you do say it beautifully.

12:36 PM  
Blogger LJ said...

okay i'm gonna do this.... come check my blog... oh i'd say in a couple hours, lol.

2:36 PM  
Blogger Calliope said...

I thought this post was so lovely. You are BEAUTIFUL.

Now pass me some of those bbq soy chips.

4:23 PM  

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