Alex A.

How do you feel about them currently?

My feelings about my body tend to oscillate between a raw nerve of self awareness/policing/surveying, and then a disconnection where I am not consciously thinking about my body at all-- just living in my head. So, it’s always changing.

Who would you be if you really loved your body?

I think my language would change, become more lush, soft, reverent, sensual, and appreciative. I think I wouldn't feel the need to hide myself away as much. I wouldn't be so precious with my thoughts, and/or actions. I'd be more generous. I'd be more active. I'd be more alive to the world. These are the hopes... In truth, I have no idea who I will be when I really love my body, and I doubt I'll know I've made it to that place until I have. It very well may be the thing that frees me and shows me the source of my power.

What places on your body do you hope to see differently?

The moments where I fragment my body or pick out a particular 'problem area' have thankfully lessened over the past few years. The current predicament resides in my narration of my body's history, potentiality, and essential way of being.

I decided a long time ago what it could and couldn't do, or could and couldn't accept, or become. I decided the amount of love and care it deserved, as well as the amount of punishment, and isolation. I couldn't leave it alone to grow and evolve without categorizing, and cataloging it's continued failure, or at the very least, it's deviation from the path I resigned it to a long time ago.

I also think as a tall woman, who is not by any means petite in stature, I have a hard time reconciling my own femininity with societal conventions surrounding the nature of womanhood. My size gives me the advantage of a certain kind of independence, and at the same time can be limiting if I were to aspire to the traditional roles, and practices of being female in certain relationships…And the whole thing is honestly so absurd, but very easily identifies the confusion and ignorance I hold concerning my own femininity, and the ill founded personal myth that somehow my size and stature precludes me from certain experiences or spaces or realms of interaction.

I have a presence when I walk in a room, whether I like it or not, I will be looked at, I will be seen...I have yet to accept that reality, and my hope is not to merely accept it, but to derive some sort of power from it.

How do you react, what happens, when you see these parts of your body negatively?

I stopped acting because I couldn't accept my body being seen as it is… I cover myself. I hide. The ole 'out of sight, out of mind'. I close my eyes, and I try to hug myself; try to detach the meaning from my fatty tissue. That's if I'm alone. If I'm with others, I sit out, I exclude myself. I curtail the potential experiences I could enjoy, because my body has betrayed me as something ineligible, and undeserving. Why should I be one to enjoy mobility, or exhibitionism, or basic 21st century exercises in narcissism, when I've never had the discipline and/or self control to erode my body into conventional perfection?  Even my eating disorder, bulimia, seemed less disciplined than simply deciding not to eat. Instead, I couldn't help but eat and then 'had' to throw it up...

This is the reaction I've had to seeing my body in a negative way: vicious, hyper-critical, unending lacerations to my self-esteem, worth, and right to existence in the body I have.

But, I'm working on it.

What hopes do you have that would arise when other people see these images? When you see these images?

I hope the images invite others, and incite others ( and myself) to pursue a more balanced, and integrated sense of self, a communion with the 'mind', and body. But if only one thing, I hope anyone's association with the image of my form, would be spiritually beneficial.