Body Talk: A Monologue

I was recently part of a show put together by The Actor’s Table of Eugene. At the encouragement of the organizer, I wrote a monologue to perform, and 100% assumed she’d say it was too rough and needed some work before it could be in the show.

However, a couple of weeks later, I was on the slate. Well, shoot. Now I actually have to do this thing! The first time I read to the group of actors in the program, I was shaking with nerves. But when I was finished, the response was overwhelmingly positive.

I decided to publish the monologue here. It’s something that is important to me and I want my blog to incorporate our relationships with food, including the harder parts. So, here it is.

Body Talk

I want to talk about my body.

For the last 30 plus years I haven’t wanted to talk about my body at all. I preferred to pretend it wasn’t there. It seemed easier that way, after all the discussion you hear about women’s bodies and the debates and the proclamations of shame and what have you. I didn’t want to get caught up in it.

It’s complicated to talk about bodies, which is why I’m always avoidant. When I tried as a teenager I got a lot of dismissal, liars telling me I’m not fat, as if that was supposed to be helpful and not a validation that the worst thing I could be was fat. I got the concerned, “I just want you to be healthy,” comments, I got a lot of uncomfortable silence. The real punch to the gut, though, was hearing my mother say, “You’d be so pretty if you just lost 15 pounds.”

Luckily enough I never got bullied. Not about my weight. At least, not to my face. But I know what girls say. I was one.  I put in my share of cutting words about other girls. Because we learn to reflect what we hear. We learn to internalize that the only good woman is one who can maintain virginal moral quality and still manage to be appealing to men. Anything less must be shamed into a place of silence and invisibility.

So why now? Why do I want to talk about it when I’ve been ignoring the whole issue for decades? Well, I realized something recently. Avoidance is not the same as being okay with it.  Ignoring my body is not the same as loving it. That being silent, in many ways, is participating in the misogyny that still prevails in our culture, even in the age of #selflove and #metoo. I need to speak my truth.

And the truth is, I don’t love it. I want to, I understand I should, and that’s the goal. But the truth is, right here and now, it’s a sack of potatoes I could do without. Just kidding, I can’t do without potatoes.

In some ways, the self love movement has made it worse for me, because not only do I have shame for being a 250 pound lumpy sack of potatoes, but now I feel shame for not loving my my lumpy potatoes, for not celebrating the life giving vessel that it is. I give a high five and a hug to all women who have managed to love themselves inside and out, and if the plus size acceptance movement has helped you love yourself, I am truly happy for you. And I don’t want it to not exist. But what about those of us in the middle, who are ready to speak our truth, even if our truth is darker and uglier than “I love my big body”? I want to make room for us too.

Because talking about things we are ashamed of makes it a little less shameful. Because if I ever want to find compassion for myself, I have to be honest about where I am. If I can say out loud, “this body of mine is heavy, and slow, and lumpy, and I don’t like it,” that’s at least something to work with. Rather than living in a world where I tell everyone I’m fine. The meaning of fine these days is “I’m a hot mess of self loathing and anxiety but I don’t want to bother you with it.” That’s not helpful, right?

I want to talk about my body, because I don’t want to live in a world anymore where we have to hide bad feelings.

I’m ready to live in a world where honesty is not an act of bravery. I would love to live in a world where speaking my truth only means love and understanding. And I’m here to offer that to anyone willing to listen and be listened to as well. I don’t love my body today, and that’s okay. I’ll keep working on it, because I can now.