A body is not a shell

I’ve never been particularly attached to my body. I neglect it, hide it, use it as a coat rack. It has always felt like a thing I inhabit rather than something that is me.

It’s not a terrible way to view a body. Somehow I’ve managed to escape most of the torment of being a woman walking on earth. I don’t hate it. Don’t wish it were different. Of course it helps that it’s an entirely average body. Medium in height and weight and scar tissue.

I tend to think about this cathedral of skin and muscle and calcium phosphate as a place I’m squatting. A shell I crawled into, and will one day vacate. It’s more bacteria than human cells. I don’t take care of it like I should. But I do floss. And I have fun putting glitter on its outside.

I once messaged someone on a dating app, “We are all lichen!!!” A nod to a study about the more than human selves we are. “Are we?” They replied. “Do we enslave algae?” I deleted the app for the 100th time (but also, yes, we do).

A while ago my friend Lauren and I were talking about what we would do if we were offered the chance to be X% smarter or X% thinner. I would take the brain every single time. I’ve always wanted to be perceived as smart. I’ve made my entire identity about what goes on in my head. I religiously wore my bike helmet growing up. I’m terrified of long COVID. Would I still be me if my brain were different?

Would I still be me if my body were?

I’ve never really wanted anyone to look at my body. Clothes, sure, but not the actual body. Definitely never anybody to look at it and say, “She’s hot.” It felt like an invitation to violence. Perhaps I didn’t escape the torment.

Now that I’m older, past the squishy, vulnerable time of one’s teens and early twenties, it feels less risky to be perceived as a body. I’m trying to convince myself mine belongs to me. That it is me. That to be perceived as attractive is a compliment, not a threat. Basically, I’m trying to be hot.

I don’t really know how to be hot. I thought maybe I’d change my style, but I kind of like to dress like a kids show’s version of an art teacher. And I don’t think being hot could mean abandoning the things I know I like.

I think somehow I just need to give it all its own worth. Accept my thighs and wrists and ears as inseparable from myself. Accept the whole package of my being as something that I and others want to care for. Want to hold and love and protect.

I think probably most people have already done this. I think I must have been too busy shaping my identity with words to really consider it. What it means to be a body. What it means to be a person and not just a brain.

None of this will stay the same. Skin will sag and memory will atrophy. I will never know, not really, who I am. Will never know what is me and what is a microbe and what is a 2005 Tiger Beat quiz. Will never know if maybe I’m all of those things at once. But I do want to try.

I guess I should finally get that many-years-COVID-delayed annual physical. I should wear the low cut dress to the botanical garden on my birthday and refuse to cross my arms. I should let someone tell me I’m beautiful without deflecting to my clothes or yellow eyeliner. It seems like maybe it’s time.

It also seems like it’s going to take a lot of practice.