#self-image tw

[soledad-archer]

Hate Me Today || Salt

Running away. That was the only thing Sol was good at. It felt like she had been running her entire life. Some problems Sol confronted with anger, but the real problems? The real problems made her run away because she was too scared, too sad, too hurt, to face them. She had run away from Loxley on the field and now here she was running away from Piper. All she did was run and it was downright exhausting.

 Adrenaline could only take her so long and eventually Sol had to stop so she hid in a small space between a large statue and the cool wall of the castle. She curled up and hugged her knees as she cried. The last thing Sol wanted to be doing was crying but she just couldn’t stop herself. Loxley hated her. He hated her and there was no going back. She had lashed out and now she couldn’t just take it back. She fucked up and ruined everything. Sol felt so small and scared. She felt like she was back to being the scared little 10-year-old hiding in sandy alleyways. She felt the hatred bearing down on her and her heart felt heavy. It was terrible to feel like not a single person in the world loved her. She wasn’t even sure anybody even liked her, not even Tami or Sonder. And if they did she was certain she would blow it all up sooner or later anyways and they would join her and everyone else in their hate. Sol was grateful everyone would be too busy at the after party that they wouldn’t be wandering the halls because as much as she tried she just couldn’t control her sobs.

@giggle-me-this

[glitchwitch-the-gynoidbitch]

Body positivity ultimately fails those it theoretically should do the most good for precisely because it implies that self-hatred comes from flaws in how the individual interprets their personal experiences. Victimization at the hands of cultural beauty standards, alienation from desire, and constant external reinforcement of internalized self-hate are all rendered irrelevant because the way out is found in learning how to condition yourself to be willfully unaware of how your body is perceived by others as well as how you desire your body to be perceived.

As a trans woman who is not the slim, fit stereotype that I’m told I should be living up to, one for whom attempting to pass is an act of pure hubris, whose body is considered hideous and disgusting by every dominant narrative about the way a body should look, body positivity is a waste of time for me, because at the end of the day, all it is telling me is the reason I still feel vile and ugly is because I’m just not trying hard enough to not feel that way. 

That’s a cruel fucking joke.

No, for me, I’ve survived this long by engaging instead in a sort of radical body negativity. I hate this body, I wish I had Caitlyn Jenner’s bank account so I could pay highly trained professionals to plunge into me with scalpels and tubes, but I don’t and so all I’m left with is how to turn that hatred into something more productive. So, I preoccupy myself with that hatred, pick it apart, interrogate it, even bask in it, and most importantly I learn from it. 

I now know the reason people hate to see a body like mine is because it reminds them of death. My very shape forces people to consider that what I am is a universal possibility, that anyone’s flesh and bones can warp to form this object of revulsion that they choose to abject in disgust. And this realization, a realization that body positivity would have done its best to hide from me, makes me feel powerful, it makes me feel strong, and when all is said and done, that is what something like this needs to do, make you feel stronger than whatever it is that’s grinding you into the dust.

[womanistprincess-blog]

today was pretty nice overall but it was kind of a bad self-image day……like i wasn’t rly thinking about my body i just felt v ugly and exposed

[scyphozoic]

FUCK

(I really wish I could stop wishing I were afab, like I really wish I never felt that way ever but I feel it all the time and the smallest things bring it up and it's a constant battle just to not hate myself for it)

[tvwolfsnake]

[shadoedseptmbr]

The best thing about hair is that it grows back :) If you’re going to play, play all the way :D

And you know...objectively I KNOW that.  And when my kids are thirteen, it'll be one of my mantras ;D.  But...for a fair few years, my long, wavy goldish, reddish brown hair was about the only thing I thought was pretty about me. It was certainly the only thing anyone ever complimented me on and the only thing that people went out of their way to notice.  It kept me from being...invisible, perhaps is the best way to express the feeling.

Now, I have a better self image and I have people in my life who remind me I'm valuable.  But that little niggling voice in the back of my head is telling me that I shouldn't get rid of my one thing.  Or that there's no reason to make a spectacle of myself, just because I'm feeling a bit matronly.  

And that's probably far more than you wanted to know...but, on occasion, it's helpful for me to acknowledge these things.