| True
To My Body
Kati Morris
 I
love my body. I am a big woman in a sea of women
who starve themselves to the point of death. Yet
I am comfortable in my own skin. I love that I
do not fit stereotypes of beauty, and that I can
be proud of this. I love that I can challenge
the definition of beauty and know that I am powerful.
I feel the inner-energy of my very life force
giving me strength.
I am beauty. So why am I so
conscious of what I eat? Why do I shop for clothes
that have a “slimming” appearance?
Why do I get angry with myself when I think that
I have not exercised enough? Why is the blame
always on me?
Am I not worth society’s
second glance if I can’t put in enough effort
to primp and prime myself into a cookie cut, Barbie
doll pinup? Can I not be loved by both men and
women without there being a question of why someone
would find me sexy?
Do we trap only women and girls
with these stereotypes? Are men and boys not limited
too? What happens to one who dares to challenge
these assumptions of beauty? Do they fall isolated,
like a social pariah? I know that I have. Even
in my strongest hours, I have felt alone in my
struggle to attain “beauty” and acceptance.
The hardest, most difficult
moments come when the words of disdain are from
the ones closest to us. When my mother called
me fat at age 5, I began panicking. When my dad
tells me that I should lose weight at age 23,
I feel betrayed. Yet somehow I expected it. I
never thought that I would hear the words out
loud; but silently, they were always there. In
every look, gesture and thought, I knew that I
was not good enough, even for my own family. To
learn this can be devastating to someone who is
trying to accept herself.
So how do we begin to change
the tide before it drowns us? How do we teach
children to love themselves? How do we teach adults
to respect one another? I don’t have the
answers to these questions, but what I do know
is that we have to do it together. We cannot wait
for one person to solve all of our problems. This
is not a mathematical equation – this is
reality. The reality, that in every day life so
many people remain hidden and silent behind their
make-up or shame.
Kati Morris is a former student
of Santa Monica College, and currently a student
at University of California's Riverside campus.
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