The National Mall got a new memorial yesterday, if only briefly. As part of One Billion Rising, Baltimore-based feminist group FORCE installed a temporary memorial recognizing survivors of sexual assault. The group greated giant letters out of a statement from a rape survivor and floated the eight-foot-tall words onto the reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial.
WHAT WE'RE ABOUT
RBI focuses on using expressive writing, design-oriented work, photography, media, research, and community input to fuel fat positive, body acceptance, discussion, and outreach. Our goal is to redefine the way we view and think about body image, size, fat, discrimination, health, fitness, wellness, mental/chronic illness, stigma, and other related topics.
We are constantly redefining our own perspectives, and therefore tend to write a lot about our personal experiences. Many followers and contributors are living with anorexia, bulimia, body dysmorphic disorder, depression, and a variety of other body image disorders or mental illnesses, so please be respectful and remember that health applies differently to everyone. Any and all potentially triggering content will be prefaced with a trigger warning.
RBI supports all races, genders, classes, and sizes. We try our best to make this a safe space for everyone. If we are not doing our job or checking our privilege, we invite you to please inform us.
Some of the artwork you see here has been created by our founder or moderators, some sourced when applicable. Please be kind enough to source this blog whenever you share it's content.
We are not health professionals. Any and all advice provided on this blog is supported only by our own research, studies, and personal experiences; nothing more.
This blog is part of the Safe Space Network.
We are constantly redefining our own perspectives, and therefore tend to write a lot about our personal experiences. Many followers and contributors are living with anorexia, bulimia, body dysmorphic disorder, depression, and a variety of other body image disorders or mental illnesses, so please be respectful and remember that health applies differently to everyone. Any and all potentially triggering content will be prefaced with a trigger warning.
RBI supports all races, genders, classes, and sizes. We try our best to make this a safe space for everyone. If we are not doing our job or checking our privilege, we invite you to please inform us.
Some of the artwork you see here has been created by our founder or moderators, some sourced when applicable. Please be kind enough to source this blog whenever you share it's content.
We are not health professionals. Any and all advice provided on this blog is supported only by our own research, studies, and personal experiences; nothing more.
This blog is part of the Safe Space Network.
Yeah, I’ll say it - this universal call to action for women of the world to “love themselves” is overrated.
Strive for self contentment, be kind to yourself, be critical of media, remain vigilant in seeking empowerment and positivity when you can, form a relationship with your body, live well by your own standards, and by all means - love yourself, if that is within your grasp.
But if you can not find self love, for whatever reason and however long, know that you are not part of the problem.
You have been affected.
Unlearning the hate is hard work, but once we learn how to dismantle the inner-workings of a society and culture that permeates and surrounds our very existence, we can stand a chance of knocking it down.
In the meantime, don’t force it - stop blaming yourself for not “loving your body” enough.
You can not possibly be at fault, when the oppressive culture we live in is the main offender.
I wound up having a conversation just now with a feminist I know on Twitter. Her point was that it was “narrow-minded” for people to reject feminism whole-cloth when there are so many different schools of it. My point is that lived experience generally trumps theory; when you are hurt by people who call themselves feminists, it is not then incumbent upon you to go and find MORE FEMINISTS who may or may not hurt you based on their interpretation of and development of feminist theories.
But, really, her point seemed to be that collaborations are more powerful than solo efforts. I don’t know how to get across to people of this mindset that a) folks are rejecting feminism because they experience exploitation and injury rather than collaboration and b) rejecting feminist label does not mean you are working alone in a vacuum to have a conversation about gender.
More and more, I wonder at the insistence of some feminists that feminism is the only context in which to have these discussions in a powerful way. I cannot dismiss the experiences and hurts of other people for the sake of a label — nor can I say that anyone not using the label is alone. There are so many people working in a genuinely intersectional framework. That framework doesn’t really have a name like “feminist,” not for everyone. But that doesn’t mean collaboration isn’t taking place.
Hell, it doesn’t even mean that collaboration with feminists isn’t taking place.
The anger and defensiveness of almost every feminist with whom I have had a discussion about the validity of people rejecting the label of feminist certainly does nothing to make me believe that the issues driving people away from feminism are being respected and addressed. Instead, it simply drives those who have been hurt by feminism further away.
So I went and looked because I don’t know why actually since it was just as ridiculous as I thought it would be and I could have spared myself the confirmation that once again some feminists are so busy defending their existence that they can’t see that no one is attacking them by walking away. You are a better one than me, because I would have asked exactly what she thought mainstream white middle class feminism was doing that is collaborative with well…anyone. I need receipts on her assertion that feminists are doing more than any other group for equality & by receipts I mean a chance to bludgeon her with facts and logic.
She was very insistent that she didn’t have time to talk about it anymore - I guess she didn’t expect argument?
It’s a position that seems very counter to what I think of as feminism actually theoretically being about - respecting the identities and experiences of all kinds of women (and I’d expand that to include people who do not identify as women as well since gender is not a binary). Like, yes, there is power in numbers. But I don’t think expecting people to stick around in feminism for the betterment of feminism at personal cost to themselves makes any damn sense at all.
And the idea that by not being part of feminism people are not part of a collaborating group at all just demonstrates a total ignorance of how people are already working together outside of the feminist movement.
The act of labeling oneself as a “feminist” should never be made an expectation or obligation. I will admit to having thought this way before, that taking on the title was like, a thing I HAD TO DO. But I didn’t - I waited, I learned, I became comfortable, and then it just happened. Maybe I’ll want to stop calling myself a feminist one day, maybe I’ll want to call myself something else, WHO CARES.
Trying to begrudge anyone the right to that process of finding their own foothold on feminism (or any form of identity for that matter) or scolding women for not doing it a “certain way” is just fucking counterintuitive and infuriating to me.
Let people find their own voice and create their own labels, that’s what I’m about.
[Image: Typographic message depicted in pastel purple and peach: “I am forever working against a culture of shame.”]
It’s been a while. Here’s a thing I made for you!
when i look in the mirror and try to smooth the lumps rolling across my body, my friends say, “stop that! you have great curves! you fill things out!” and all i can wonder is, “why is it my burden to carry my confidence?”
how can you understand when you see your own face + body everywhere, on tv and in film, in magazines and every catalogue?
everywhere i look i’m told to hate myself and yet i’m chastised when i have a moment of weakness, criticized when i’m too vain.
i can’t perfect this balance of modest confidence and i shouldn’t have to, not when i already have to navigate the world as a woman of color. i’m not even allowed the freedom to express my full range of emotions — i’m supposed to present the right representation for my race. you’ve always been an individual first, a member of your race second.
but how am i supposed to do that when little white girls just like you used to say to me, “you could be a model if you weren’t short. or fat. or ugly.”
the only thing they forgot to admit was white.
i hate having to reconcile being desired sexually because i’m asian and being aesthetically rejected for it all at the same time.
you think i should be flattered when i’m fetishized, but how can you mandate to me what encompasses “flattery” when no one has ever said to you : “wow, i love your swedish eyes” or “damn, i love white women” (though the opposite is constantly thought about women of color).
stopt telling me to feel beautiful, because when people tell me i’m beautiful they simultaneously remove my humanity. an asian beauty, never a beautiful woman.
you could never understand. you get to be beautiful and human, beautiful and whole.
It takes but a second to replace women’s health with sexual or reproductive health. It’s really that easy… and then you aren’t erasing our trans sisters.
Yes, yes, yes.