#body courage

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Event Post: Body Courage

Body Courage is a one-woman show staring Danielle Pinnock. In search of her own body acceptance, Pinnock conducts various interviews, asking folks about their own body acceptance or shame. In the show, Pinnock acts out individual interviews and narratives. I really enjoyed my experience here. The show covered a lot of material, from lighthearted narratives to heavier material. Each narrative was presented in a way that gave a lot of agency to the narrator. Overall, the show made the audience laugh and kept everyone engaged. Pinnock did a great job!

The main topic in this show was body acceptance and body shame. Often when we talk about body shame we tend to focus on cis women; however, this relates a lot to gender variant folks. As discussed in Clare, there is often a disconnection that gender variant folks feel about their body and this disconnection is often related to shame.

One of the narratives that Pinnock presented was of a transgender person. Through the interview, the narrator explain how they felt shame in their body, pre and post transition. This is important because it shows that trans folks can also feel ashamed after they transition because there are social expectations that are placed on them.

When it comes to representation we only see certain bodies; whether that’s white bodies, cis bodies, or cis passing bodies, and for the most part, they are all conventionally attractive. This can create a of sense of shame in trans folks because they are told to look a certain way. When trans folks choose to transition we as a society expect them to pass and cater to beauty standards. Body Courage addresses this feeling of shame when it comes to gender variant folks. 

More info on Body Courage here.

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Gender-Related Event

Body Courage is a play that is performed and written by Danielle Pinnock. The play is about Danielle’s journey of accepting and loving the body she has. Danielle grew up in a family that focused a lot of attention on the way she looked, and she struggled with her weight most of her life. So she embarked on mission to interview different types of people and asked them about their bodies and self-love. Danielle captured the essence of each the interviewees in her performance, and it was brilliantly done. I personally enjoyed the show very much; Danielle was hilarious, and just a pleasure to watch.

Danielle included gender variant folk in her interviews, which ties in closely to class topics. The main focus of her interviews were based on how one felt beautiful and how they felt about their body. For many gender variant people accepting the way they look can be difficult because we live in a binary society that marginalizes people who may look different. As someone who has struggled with weight, and self-esteem issues there were moments in my life that we very depressing. Depression among gender variant people is extremely high, and I think part of it stems from isolation from society and they way the view themselves.

Many gender variant people feel like they need to meet certain standard because of how society reacts if you don’t, which ties in with the way young women feel the need to become very thin. In our culture, thin is beautiful, and many women go to longways sometimes unhealthy ways to achieve this status. I think that can be related to the void of access many gender variant people have, and they get hormones in an unsafe manner. I am not saying the struggle is the same by any way, just that society puts a lot of pressure to look a certain way that it leads to people doing things in an unsafe manner.

Lastly, her overall topic of acceptance can definitely relate to gender variant folk. It is important to be comfortable with who are and love yourself. I also think that Danielle’s message can relay to other people looking for them to be love people regardless of sex, gender, weight, height, and color.

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Body Positivity: 

Video 4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9xirR8fhzk 

Probably my favorite of the four videos I watched. Annie Elainey speaks about finding peace within yourself. It’s not about saying you’re beautiful all the time. If you are average and if you think you are average, ok. Don’t hate yourself for it. Don’t let the hate define you and consume you. Annie talks about how there are days where you can be down on yourself and really feel the low self esteem, but that’s just one day. Don’t let the hate dominate your life and prevent you from living it. The things we see, the experiences we have, the adventures we go on are all what makes up our life and our soul. We can’t let things like societal values of body image, or a mean kid saying “you’re fat” take you down. It’s like she said in the previous video, we need to fight for our joy. There is so much of the world that we don’t know and letting a simple phrase “You’re fat” stop you from seeing it is not living at all. Being positive and accepting are key qualities we all need to have. 

Overall, I learned so much from this woman. She really has opened my eyes to the ideas of body positivity and acceptance. I learned there are so many people that have had the same feelings about their bodies that I have had about mine. i learned that it’s not about being beautiful and proving to yourself that you are beautiful, but more about understanding yourself and not letting anyone else define you. I learned we need to learn to accept ourselves and love ourselves in every shape and form. Once we start loving ourselves, it gets a lot easier after that.  

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Body Positivity: 

Video 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clGYSF_WYBs&feature=youtu.be

From watching Annie Elainey’s “Body Dysmorphic Recovery”, I can say I am definitely taking notes. Annie goes through the steps that she did in order to be above her mental illness and fight it. She talks about how she took toxic people out of her life that would trigger her BDD as well as cut out as much media as she could in her life. What was really interesting was how Annie would remind herself to stay positive. If she ever had a bad thought, she would make herself replace it with a good thought. i never thought about it in that way. When I make a critique to my body, I just end up bringing myself down and then I’ll stay upset for some time and i shouldn’t do that to myself. Why bring myself down? It doesn’t do any good for anyone. I’m definitely gonna start doing that because no one should ever be ashamed of their body.

Taking away from this video, I learned that fat phobia was a real thing where someone has a phobia or extreme dislike for people who are consider overweight. I learned that sometimes you need to give yourself therapy. You need to push yourself outside of your boundaries because at the end of the day, it’s just you and you decide how you want to spend your days. Lastly, when you do achieve those goals, or those tasks, it’s really satisfying to say that you did it and survived. This Annie Elainey is really opening my eyes.    

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In the play I attended on Thursday “Body/Courage” at the Rivendell Theater Ensemble was wonderful. It was all played by Danielle Pinnock. The strong message given is that everyone should love their body, no matter what. In the play theres many stories from different people that were conducted from interviews. Daniella focuses on issues many women go through such as, gender transition, weight, disability, illnesses etc. All the stories show how cruel society can be with one another, and it makes many people be under underpressure by trying to fit in with the rest of society. 

In the play Daniella talks about her childhood with her mother and grandma. She had a hard time accepting her body image. She developed a complicated relationship with her body after all she went through like being on diets, and having to exercise with her grandma in the basement. She later on lost 60 pounds, and all her friends and family were complimenting her on it saying things such as “look what has been hiding under there!” and telling her she looked prettier. None of this helped her be in peace with her body.