Bodies

This is a re-post from a re-post, but it is so good, you have to read it:

"women need to start talking about our bodies and men and women need to start listening to women talk about ours outside of our weight, outside of how fat we feel, outside of whether or not a garment makes our boobs/butt/waist/arms/legs look bigger/smaller/more round/’too slutty’, outside of how much we hate our nose/freckles/earlobes/nail beds. We need to talk about bodies that are visually or non-visibly disabled, bodies that started out as male bodies, bodies whose color makes them and the folks inside of them pre-disposed to violence and prejudice and oppression. We need to talk about bodies that ache from bending down to pick up a baby all day and breasts that are tender from feeding that baby. We need to talk about bodies that are menopausal, that are pregnant, that are unable to be pregnant, that are fat and healthy, that are terminally sick, that are arthritic, that are strong and capable. We need to talk about how all this obsession with one kind of body affects the women inside of all these different types of bodies. For while we are much more than our bodies and greater than the sum of its parts, we kind of rely on our physical self to navigate ourselves through the world and to be the vehicle for our ideas, theories, love, and brilliance.


Women’s bodies are up for public consumption - whether they are visually appealing to us or not. It is perfectly acceptable to fawn over and idealize some bodies and criticize and pick apart others. However, heaven forbid we talk about the actual function of those bodies and the complications of such. Society wants to talk about female bodies all day long until those bodies are menstruating, sweating, flatulating, sagging, defecating, hairy, breastfeeding - anything which gives us away as being real, human and less than the object we are expected to function as."

(check out fromlightninglungs.tumblr.com)