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Last year I went into the woods for a week. It was a tent in a fancy campsite, and every night before bed I could go to a communal area to eat s’mores with people I don’t know. I had been looking forward to this week for a long time. I packed some shorts and shirts, a bonnet, some books for reading and some coloring books, my laptop and notebook, snacks, my skincare and toiletries, and my makeup.
Yes, I did pack makeup, even though I wasn’t planning on interacting with many people at all. I love makeup and I enjoy putting it on. I wear it for me - most of the time.
When I got to the campsite and lugged my things to my tent, I felt a wave of calm wash over me. It was so quiet. My house is full of people, and the city itself is full of noise - cars, electric hums, far away music. But in this tent there was nothing but the chirp of a bird or the buzz of an insect.
My voice was the first to go. Then my face.
I quickly fell into silent routine. I showered, put on an arrangement of the few shirts and shorts I brought, covered myself in lotion and sunscreen, and made myself some coffee and some breakfast. Then I would sit and eat while reading a book. Then I would nap. Then I would write some and walk around the woods. Then I would eat again and read some more. I would color in my coloring book. I would write. I might even take a second nap. Sometimes I would hum to myself just to feel the mechanism of my voice and know that it was working. At night I would make my way to the communal area to eat and talk with other campers. I would try not to freak out about how much bees also wanted s’mores. These little conversations with other campers were usually the first words I had spoken all day. Then, as it got dark, I would make my way back to my tent to watch the stars and sleep.
In the silence other words were easy. I read two books from cover to cover (with my ADHD becomes increasingly hard as I age). I finished my book proposal and a few essays. I wrote out a creative plan for the next year.
I didn’t put the makeup on once. Mainly because to do so would have made my numerous naps more complicated (I absolutely cannot sleep with makeup on my face if there’s any chance I’ll get makeup on my pillow. If I’m perfectly still on my back I can sometimes get in a quick nap, but it isn’t comfortable and my son says that I look like a corpse when I nap like that). I walked around with moisturizer and sunscreen, rubbing my face with abandon and not worrying about what I had just done to my blush or eyebrows. I had no ideas what facial expressions I was making as I read, what it looked like as I laughed at a joke I found in the pages.
There was no mirror to be found other than a three inch one I brought in my makeup kit. So when I dressed I put on whatever fit the weather and was most clean. And with little fanfare, for the first time since I was about ten years old, my body began to disappear.
I remember when I first had an observable body. When I went from being a kid who ran through life only aware of limbs as they scraped on tree trunks or tried (and failed) to do cartwheels in the grass. A kid whose body size was only discussed in relation to the pants that were already too short or the new jacket that was needed for a new season to a girl with a body. A body that was growing and changing, and not in a good way.
My body stopped being the thing that carried me through adventures and started being something that others could approve or disapprove of. It became an object of scrutiny.
“You need to watch her,” an aunt told my mom when she thought I couldn’t hear, “she’s getting too old to be cute chubby anymore, she’s going to be fat.”
My body was always just a little too big, and always threatening to be way too big. I was given warning after warning of what would happen if I didn’t get my body under control right now. I would be unhealthy, I might even die. Even worse: nobody would want to marry me.
By adulthood I moved in and out of “chubby”, “plus-sized”, and properly fat - where I have pretty permanently resided since my mid thirties. But even in my thin, obsessed over every bite I took mid-twenties, my body never returned to me, never became neutral, never became something I didn’t have to be aware of every waking day.
I remember one day in my late twenties realizing that I didn’t know how I looked until I got on the scale. I would stare in the mirror and think, “have I gained weight?” “have I lost weight?” “am I fat today?” And I wouldn’t know until I got on the scale. The scale would give me a number with which to see myself through others’ eyes. Every morning I would pick out an outfit I loved, put it on, look in the mirror, and have no idea how I looked until I went and got on the scale.
Eventually I realized that this was not a healthy way to start a morning, and I got rid of my scale. But when you are fat, the world can be your scale. You can see numbers flash in your reflection as you walk down a busy sidewalk and glance at a store window, or in the eyes of those who observe you. I am not just fat, I’m tall and fat. I take up room that people say I’m not supposed to take up in all directions. I don’t fit in a lot of places, and I haven’t since my teen years. I haven’t ever been able to enter a waiting room without having to size up the chairs. I’m constantly ducking under things, squeezing into things, avoiding things that can’t be squeezed into. Sitting on airplanes while trying to will my body into the most still and compact form possible.
When I walk down the street, am I walking or am I lumbering? When I sit down, have I pulled my shirt out so it’s not clinging to rolls? When I cross my arms, am I slightly holding them out from my body so they don’t flatten and widen across my chest?
It takes so much time and energy to have a body in this world. Even as I’ve gotten older and have less and less interest in being seen as desirable by anybody except my partner. Even as I’ve insisted on wearing what I want. Even though I can now look in my own bathroom mirror at my naked reflection and genuinely love what I see, I’m always aware of how my body is seen and judged by others and that changes things.
But the woods were different. I had no clue how I looked all day, and there were no mirrors or store window reflections to tell me otherwise. I saw almost nobody until the evening, and I was aware that I would likely not see any of those people again.
Something about the hours and hours of quiet. Something about the evening campfire light and copious amounts of chocolate and marshmallows. My body returned to me and stopped being a body. For most of the day I was only aware of my body when I felt my leg muscles activate as I walked through the woods, when my stomach rumbled or I got a mosquito bite.
Each night I showed up at the campfire rested and relaxed. I sat were I was comfortable. I talked with strangers and couldn’t see my reflection in their eyes and instead focused on their engagement with my words.
I didn’t know this was happening at the time. I didn’t realize how much was different. I was just existing in the most whole way I had existed in a long time.
My last day at the campsite, I decided I wanted to go into town for a meal. I had my usual morning in the tent and walking through the woods, then I got in my car and drove a half hour to a diner. I had a lovely lunch of tacos and a daytime margarita, a great way to end a week away. Then as I went to walk back to my car I caught a glimpse of my reflection in a shop window. Oh no. It was so much. So much compared to the other people walking next to me. And I was just walking around in casual clothes, no makeup on, not watching my posture, as if I had the body for that sort of carelessness. I remember thinking, “did I look like this, all week?”
It was then, as the pressure of having a body crashed back down upon me, that I realized how special that week had been. How nice it felt to be a ghost in the world for a while.
There are times I want to be seen. Where I want to share the creativity of my clothes. Where I want my unique combination of features to exist in the world and be recognized. There are times where I want to love how I look and I want to be loved in that same way by others.
But there are other times where I want to run away to the woods forever. Where I want to remove my body from public commentary and secret it away to a gentler place.
I cannot move to the woods. My life and work exist outside of there. And my partner cannot spend more than 48 hours in the wilderness without becoming very cranky. So I’m trying to create little moments for myself when I can reclaim what is mine. I’m insisting on walking through my garden every morning in my robe and bonnet, checking each plant that I’ve raised from seed, ignoring anyone who walks by. I’m walking the trails any day it’s not raining and staring at the trees while I notice how the breeze feels on my arms. I’m trying to create at least one moment a day where it’s just me and my body, and I’m trying to appreciate it when it happens, instead of just mourning the moment when it’s over.
We’re told over and over again to hate our bodies. And eventually some of us do. And the further we are from the “ideal” body, the more we are told to hate it. I but I think most of us don’t really hate our bodies - in fact, I think most of us spend a lot of time feeling sad for our bodies than anything else. What we hate how exhausting it is to be seen and judged every single day. We hate is how the world takes our bodies from us and turns them into something that could be hated.
Some days my body is mine. I wish I could say it is every day, but it’s more moments than anything else. I am a person in this world and even though I’ve figured out how to care more about how the sun feels on my face than how I look in a group photo, it doesn’t mean that I’ve figured out how to not care at all. And I don’t beat myself up about that. I don’t tell myself that I shouldn’t care. Because it’s not my job to not care what others think of my body. It’s not my job to battle the entirety of our misogynistic, fat-phobic culture every day. It’s my job to love and care for myself and it’s the world’s job to mind its own damn business.
