The body is not a fortress, no matter what we may do to make it such. This may be one of life’s greatest frustrations, or is it humiliations? I spend a lot of time thinking about bodies and boundaries and how people seem hell-bent on ignoring those boundaries at all costs. I am not a hugger. I never have been and I never will be. I hug my friends, and do so happily, but I am sparing with such affections. A hug means something to me; it is an act of profound intimacy, so I try not to get too promiscuous with it.
Also, I find it awkward, opening myself up, allowing people to touch, to breach my fortress.
When I tell strangers I am not a hugger, some take this as a challenge, like they can hug me into submission, like they can will my aversion to hugs away by the strength of their arms. Oftentimes, they will draw me into their body, saying something condescending like, “See, it isn’t that bad.” I think, I never thought it was, and I stand there, my arms limply at my sides, probably grimacing, but still, they don’t get the message that I am not a willing participant in this embrace. The fortress hath been breached.
At readings, eager fans often ask for hugs and I offer my right hand saying, “I don’t do hugs, but I do handshakes,” and their faces fall in disappointment as if a hug with me is the necessary currency for their attention. Or they say, “I know you don’t like hugs, but I’m going to hug you anyway,” and I have to dodge their incoming bodies as politely as I can.
Why do we view the boundaries people create for themselves as challenges? Why do we see someone setting a limit and then try to push? Once, I was at a restaurant with a large group of people and the waitress kept touching me. It was really fucking annoying because I don’t want to be touched like that unless we are in a sexual relationship. Every time she passed by, she would rub my shoulders or run her hand down my arm and I kept getting more and more irritated but I said nothing. I never do. Do my boundaries exist if I don’t voice them? Can people not see my body, the mass of it, as one very big boundary? Do they not know how much effort went into this?
Because I am not a touchy-feely person, I always feel this light shock, this surprise, really, when my skin comes into contact with another person’s skin. Sometimes that shock is pleasant, like Oh, here is my body in the world. Sometimes, it is not. I never know which it will be.
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More often than not, I feel hopeless. I give up. I cannot overcome myself, my body, these hundreds of pounds shrouding my body. It is easier, I think, to be miserable, to remain mired in self-loathing. I don’t hate myself the way society expects me to until I have a bad day and then I do hate myself. I disgust myself. I cannot stand my weakness, my inertia, my inability to overcome my past, to overcome my body.
This hopelessness is paralyzing. Working out and eating well and trying to take good care of myself start to feel futile. I look at my body, and I live in my body, and I think, I will never know anything but this. I will never know anything better than this.
And then I think, If I am really this miserable, if my life really is this hard, why do I still do nothing?
All too often, I look at myself in the mirror and all I can do is ask myself, Why? and What is it going to take for you to find the strength to change?
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One of the many things I have always loved about writing (not to be confused with publishing) is that all you need is your imagination. It doesn’t matter who you are, you can write. Your looks, especially, don’t matter. As a naturally shy person, I loved the anonymity of writing before my career took off. I loved how my stories didn’t care about my weight. When I started publishing that writing, I loved that, to my readers, what mattered were the words on the page. Through writing, I was, finally, able to gain respect for the content of my character.
That changed when I started gaining a national profile, going on book tours, doing speaking engagements and publicity and television appearances. I lost my anonymity. It’s not that my looks mattered but my looks mattered.
It’s one thing to write as if you have no skin. It’s another thing entirely when photography is involved. I have to have my photo taken often, which makes me cringe. Every part of me becomes exposed to the camera. There is no hiding the truth of me. Often, there is video and then my truth, my fatness, is amplified. As my career has taken off, my visibility has exploded. There are pictures of me, everywhere. I have been on MSNBC and CNN and PBS. When a certain kind of people see me on television, they take the time to e-mail me or tweet at me to tell me that I’m fat or ugly or fat and ugly. They make memes of me with captions like “Typical Feminist” or “The Ugliest Woman in the World.” Sometimes Google Alerts takes me to a forum of MRA acolytes or conservative assholes having a field day insulting my looks with a picture of me from an event or magazine. I’m supposed to let it go. I’m supposed to shrug it off. I’m supposed to remember that the kind of people who would do such cruel things are beneath my regard. I am supposed to remember that what they really hate is themselves.
When I was doing publicity for Bad Feminist, I was interviewed for the New York Times Magazine. They needed a picture to accompany the interview and were not at all interested in my head shot or a random snapshot from my phone. I went to New York and had a photo shoot in a fancy photographer’s studio, where the receptionist, a tall and lithe young woman clearly modeling on the side, offered me water or coffee while I waited.
In the magazine, they used a full-length picture of me, from head to toe. I am staring at the camera thinking, This is my body. This is what I look like. Stop being surprised. It’s the kind of picture I always avoid, as if somehow, I can separate myself from my body if I am only photographed from the waist or neck up. As if I can hide the truth of me. As if I should hide the truth of me.
The photographer was charming, handsome. He and his wife were remodeling a home in Hudson Valley. I learned this because he apologized for not being able to attend my event that night. I don’t even know how he knew about my event. He asked me if I wanted to freshen my makeup, but I was not wearing any, so I just smiled and said, “This is my face.” Before we got started he asked me what music I wanted to listen to and I blurted out, “Michael Jackson,” because that is all that came to mind. A few moments later, Michael Jackson began piping through speakers and I felt like I was in the middle of a movie.