The Saturday Rumpus Essay: The Fat Girl’s Benediction
Why couldn’t I accept my body for what it wanted to be? It’s what I harped on the rest of the world to do.
Posts by tag
bodies
156 posts
The Full Moon
We started small, a quick flash in the locker room or on the basketball court after school, any time we wore pants with elastic waistbands. But soon the asses were everywhere.
The Last Frontier of Empathy
Not just eating disorders, but mental health in general, I think, is probably the last frontier of empathy in our culture. I’m not a journalist, I’m not a scientist, and…
The Rumpus Interview with Elisa Albert
Elisa Albert discusses her new novel, After Birth, postpartum depression, childbearing, and the misogyny of modern medicine in pathologizing the normal processes of birth and the female body.
Counting Bodies
The violences that women fear and the violences that women carry are violences of objectification, of involuntary disembodiment. The transformation of a human into a thing.
Hand-Operated Shearing Instruments
There are a lot of performance issues when it comes to scissoring. Everyone’s tried it, at least once. This is what I tell people when I have this conversation after two or three beers. It’s a lesbian rite of passage.
Bionic Man
My father’s penis is a great hairy walrus. I am three and my parents have decided that it’s high time I take a shower—no more of those coddling baths.
The Rumpus Interview with Elizabeth Scarboro and Lidia Yuknavitch
Both Yuknavitch and Scarboro, whose books echo each other in interesting ways, were willing to talk with me about this question of what to do with memoir, and much more.
“My Shazam Boobs”
“I celebrated my tits with him, with all of these people. Hot bras, clingy T-shirts, sexy lingerie shopping forays. Must I abandon celebrating my tits in order to avoid mourning…
The Muscle of Beauty, The Body as Protest
We are not ashamed of our bodies – we are not afraid of them. We will celebrate their tremendous power. We will dance in honor of them, in churches or on the steps of Capitol Buildings or in front of cameras.
My Body, My Machine
I run so I can inhabit my own body. I run so that in moments like these, when my lack of power in this world becomes more violently apparent, I can feel the strength of my own body, enough to ignore provocations, enough to know alone that I could destroy both of those men if I wanted.