Ditching the Sweaters

After months of summer, and days upon days of wearing sweaters to work IN 90 DEGREE HEAT... I decided that I am going to ditch my sweaters. I have decided that I will no longer be ashamed of my arms.

When I wear sweaters to work in the summer I sweat, I'm uncomfortable, I essentially boil and melt the entire day. The only reason I wear them is to cover my body, especially my arms. Arms that are fat, jiggle, have cellulite, and that I even considered altering my wedding dress for (thank goodness I didn't!).

I have been such a "good fat girl". Hiding behind extra clothes in order to be accepted or to to shrink or to not call attention to them. I am the only one who is making active choices in my day because of my hatred for them.  I am the only one who suffers from these choices.I am the one who comes home and immediately throw my clothes off to seek respite from a day spent uncomfortable and miserable.

Cover up now dear! 

They'll never notice the size of your arms under that sweater!!

Well, I'm done. 

From now on I will wear sleeveless shirts with abandon. I will raise my hand and point to there, there and there without apologizing, without trying not to jiggle. I will make choices on what to wear based upon what feels good to my body. I will free up mental space for focusing on my job rather than my internal heat rising uncontrollably during the day.

This week I realized that I had engrained the hatred of my arms to the point that I was willing to physically suffer for it!! I left myself with very limited options, shirts that I have looked at while getting dressed and thought, "nope, I can't wear it if I don't have a clean sweater to go with it". 

This week, I decided I was too fed up to continue like this.

Week one of ditching the sweater= it was glorious. The first day I wore a pale peach sleeveless collar shirt (one that I wouldn't have dreamed of not pairing with a sweater!). Boy was that a change. I felt great all day! No sweating, making wardrobe adjustments while in the safety of my car, or blasting AC to adjust to the heat I experienced while wearing a sweater. It was a great feeling. Best part was that the earth kept moving. It was as if this great revolutionary Body Positive moment occured and no one noticed! No one commented on my arms or even knew what I had done, but I felt amazing in my body. I felt free!!

But then... dun dun DUN! Nipples.

Oh my beautiful nipples.... that show through my shirts, a lot of the time. I didn't even notice them before, because I had lived in the safety and the confines of my sweaters and cover up's. Now they are loud and most certainly proud as they show also, with abandon.

I'll admit, the nipple issue is a complex one. I yearn for a day that I can be fat freely in the world and a day that I can be a woman freely in the world. Where they intersect is still a highly risky (to the rest of the world) act. There is so much stigma and crap given to fat women joyfully inhabiting their bodies.

But let me tell YOU: there is nothing more freeing and radical in the world. 

With my large breasts and my fat arms, I command attention. They're here and they are a part of me. I will no longer cover up to satisfy someone else's comfort. FYI My breasts came with nipples. Nipples I will use someday to feed my children. There is nothing sexual about their mere existence. Whether they are inside a shirt or NOT, they are not inherently sexual or provocative. Because you can see them, does not mean I am aroused. They have: nothing. to. do. with. you.

But the staring. 

What if people stare?? What if they say asinine things like, "it must be a bit nipply!" "are you cold?" "headlights!"

Whereas some people wouldn't mention the sight of my arms, they may be disgusted by my nipples. And the truth is, that my own internalized shame around them is part of what made me don so many sweaters in the first place (dual purpose!). I remember the days when my sister and I would try on the same shirt and when I put it on, I was told (and believed) that on me it was "sexual" or too "sexy" because of my size and my breasts. This is precisely how we measure and compare women's bodies. If one has fat it is "too sexual". We question if we can "pull it off" or if it is too "revealing". Likewise, nipples are thought of completely differently based on size. Nipples on small chests are thought of as cute or not noticeable or disparaged as "bee stings". None of this is right, either end of the spectrum.

I will defy the status quo and not apologize for nipples showing through my shirt. I will work on my internalized shame around their existence, and not perpetuate the part of me that loathes attention given to them that is unwarranted and unauthorized. I will love them as I do my arms and allow myself to fully inhabit my body.

Anytime a fat woman goes out in public and does not apologize for her size, apologize for her gender or gender expression, she is doing a radical act.

<read fat and you can insert thin, tall, etc.>

Anytime a fat woman goes out in public and does not ask others to make her acceptable before she speaks, dresses, or goes about her life, she is doing a radical act. 

Anytime a fat woman goes out in public and loves her body, just as it is, that is a radical act. 

Let's go Love Guerrillas. Let's start a revolution.

#freethenipple #sleevelessandfearless #loveyourbody #loveguerrillas

Greetings again, old friend

It's rainy outside and I'm listening to Billie Holiday. Perfect recipe for some self-reflection and compassion towards myself.

I have been away from the writing/blogging scene for months. September through Jan 1 seem to be the hibernation months for me. I have also been in a leadership program which finishes up with graduation tomorrow.

One of the things that I want to re-dedicate myself to is to myself, to Love Guerrillas and this blog.

I have realized that when I am struggling, it is easier for me to hide away and not talk about it, let alone not on social media. Part of my Body Positive identity has been about being strong, standing up and being a positive leader. Up until recently, I thought that I only could offer something to the greater community if it came from a sense of being happy and having pride in my imperfect body. When sh*t hits the fan, my love for my body comes under attack from a self that is too preoccupied with everything else than checking in to say, "hi body, how are you? you are lovely as always!".

I have always known there was a correlation between times that were hard and then tendency to take it out on my body or think that if that would just improve, "wouldn't things just get better if....?". But the poor body image is a symptom of the overall stress I have been feeling. It isn't a reason for all the stress. It never is. At least for me. I would like to relate to my negative body image/critical voice by saying,

Me: "Oh, here you are old friend. I haven't seen you in awhile. 

Guess it's time for me to take extra good care of myself, huh? 

Now let me send you on your way". 

I accept that times have been hard; impacted by stress and grief and the emotional land mines caused by the passing and impending holidays. I accept that when I am stressed, I tend to not move my body and veg out watching television series. I also accept that I can move again and I respect myself to listen and know when I need both.

I accept that I have a body that I love and adore, that I forget about sometimes. I accept and recognize that I have a perfectionistic tendency to only feel a part of my valued Body Positive community when I feel strong and well. I also accept that this is only my FEAR not reality.

The reality?

I accept myself [and you!] for exactly who I am in this moment and always. I LOVE my body in this moment and all the time. I may forget to give you the attention you need, I may also bash you or become embarrassed of you at times, but I remember that I deeply care for you and love you all the same.

I am not perfect. My relationship with my body recently has been woven and tangled around current loss and guilt about not pursuing my dreams, about stress and grief and missing my mom.

All of this is temporary. 

Both the fear and loss are temporary. 

All of this can come and go in any of our lives. The greatest gift that I have been given, is that The Body Positive helped me create a base and foundation of love so I never get "so-low" that I completely forget who I am. 

An apology to my "self" seems fitting right now:

"Don't Cry Baby"

Ella Fitzgerald

Don't cry, don't cry baby

Don't cry baby

dry your eyes, and let's be sweethearts again

And oh, cuz you know

You know I didn't mean

To ever treat you so mean

C'mon, c'mon sweetheart

And let's try it over again

In renewed self-love and compassion for my body, 

Yours truly. 

On the path to my dreams

Recently, a young woman (name has been changed for confidentiality) contacted me to find out about how to weave body image and self-love into a career. It made me feel inspired to describe my journey to my current career as well as envision for myself where my career is going. I have so much that I would love to do in my life. Sometimes it is important to think about where we have been so we can start to dream about where we are going. 


Hi Olivia,

So nice to get your email! I would love to tell you more about getting a Master's in Social Work. 

Most people I know who became social workers didn't "grow up wanting to become a social worker" its something that they stumbled upon, or came upon later on in their process because they realized at some point they wanted to do something to help people and address systems of oppression or societal injustice in some way. Social work is a hugely vast field but the main thing that binds us all together is working with people and addressing social issues. 

Body image is a HUGE passion of mine! I got my BA in Politics, Legal Studies and Music and was on my way to law school when I realized that people were cycling through the civil legal system because the underlying issues were never addressed adequately (eg. mental illness, poverty, low-income, lack of education, etc.). So I began thinking about how I could help AND I wanted The Body Positive work I had been doing in high school and college to be involved somehow. 

I ended up watching the movie Precious in theaters and went home and wrote my personal statement to apply to social work school. I thought the same as you that if someone (anyone!) could show young women that they were okay in their bodies just as they were and they could love themselves, they would avoid so much pain and suffering! 

I got into social work and pursued a clinical track which prepares you to be a therapist and learn about mental health. Even within that concentration there is a lot of variety, you could work with children, adults, older adults, families, couples, students (any age), etc. I did an internship with youth and families my first year of social work school and the next year with adults because I thought it would give me a balance and I could decide from there which population I liked more.

I decided that I loved working with adults in mental health settings and working with youth and young adults in my work with The Body Positive. I never had an eating disorder so I didn't feel passionate about helping people through their eating disorders, but I did struggle with body hatred and eating problems and know I am more passionate about prevention of eating disorders. 

What I do in my job is I am a mental health practitioner who works with adults with severe and persistent mental health disorders like Schizophrenia, Bipolar and Major Depression. A lot of the people I see also have substance use disorders/addictions. What I explored in social work school was how ALL people are affected by how they see themselves and their bodies. My clients who have serious mental health challenges will come to me and talk about how they hate their body. At first it surprised me because I was also the assumption that body image issues affected people who had more resources (the idea that if people had other concerns like getting their next meal, they may not have time to care about their bodies let alone hate it). But I learned that this is a universal issue! 

While I was in social work school I really began to see self-love as a universal human right and see it within a social justice lens. A lot of what you learn as a social worker is how to effect change on different levels: the individual, organizational and societal structures. Body image affects all people and in many ways that overlap with other social justice issues including LGBT rights, gender norms, abilities vs. disabilities, diversity, class, race, etc. My thesis was developing Body Positive curriculum for social work students so they could use it with their clients.

I am in the process of developing a new part of The Body Positive which I have just started and it is called Love Guerrillas. It will be an online and social justice/activism group with activism projects that people can do in their communities and share online. It has started as a blog and you can read about it here: http://loveguerrillasmanifesto.blogspot.com 

My suggestion would be to apply to social work school! Follow your passion! 

Hope my story helps!

Jessica

Time Travels...

Hello! And welcome back to The Love Guerrillas Manifesto! I have taken a break from writing to grieve, to work on some amazing projects, to learn, to travel and to sit with what I have shared over the last 15 entries. I have discovered that a HUGE part of this work is taking time to experience self-love and cultivate it. By taking a step back, I can truly be present to it! It makes me think of how powerful being witness to something is. I sat back and not only became witness to my life, but witness to self-love actualizing in different waves over the last month.

In my day-to-day life I am a social worker working with the most amazing clients and team members! One of the things I have been busy working on is a project that promotes Recovery being possible from Mental Illness. By using dance we were able to cultivate a feeling of "Happy!" that starts the conversation about how we all are affected by mental illness and to be aware and supportive to one another. What was so special for me is how everyone in the video used their bodies to move!! This video is not only about mental illness it is about creative soul expression! Click the link below to see for yourself:

Recovery is Possible!

Working in the mental health field can be very rewarding and very difficult. It is a practice for me in holding a paradox. Over this month I had to say goodbye to someone I worked with who passed away and a different goodbye to a powerful and phenomenal supervisor who was retiring. Loss in any form allows a space for rebirth and for something else beautiful to come in the space that the loss left. I truly listened to these losses and allowed myself to grieve them. What I have learned from my own grief process is that being in the moment and allowing yourself to feel loss keeps you connected to those who you perceive as being "gone". Lighting a candle and allowing my heart to break for one, sharing laughter and hugs to the other all help me keep a golden thread from my heart to theirs. 

This practice and this time is connected to my experience with my body completely and totally. Because it is my body that is the vessel that keeps all of these memories and experiences at my fingertips! I recall in my body the feelings of love, connection, hope that emanate from my heart and surround the people that I come in contact with. 

This month also saw great love in the form a wedding between amazing friends, a new family unit with beautiful children and a profound experience dancing again with one of my closest friends- a true soul sister. Witnessing love in these ways was powerful and allowed me to truly take that love in! To let the love that I saw on their wedding day, and in the eyes of my friends with their smiling children and the connection with my friend as we danced, was a practice in letting love fall across my shoulders, dance across my chest and settle deep inside my belly where I will hold it forever. 

I have a keen awareness and deep appreciation for my partner who sees me totally and with eyes of love and admiration daily for what I may struggle with, and for all that I want to do in my life. Having someone truly see me and reflect a loving gaze is so powerful and I feel that it is so needed in my life. It is as if you are riding waves on a sea alone but know that there is a vessel behind yours, there to catch you if you need help sailing.

So it is in all of these experiences that I come to a deep gratitude for the space and time to be able to truly experience them. I started to feel guilty about not writing that somehow it would be a reflection of me somehow, but what I have learned is that in this work of self-love, action and stillness is still movement! I honor the times to be still, as I honor the times to move/act. 

So, welcome back or welcome for the first time, as witnesses to my journey- in hopes that you will share your journey with me too. 

From "Difference" to Diversity

Before I knew about The Body Positive, I had an experience of my body that was wrapped up in “difference”. I had a different skin color than my peers, different shape and size than my friends, different genetic heritage that dictated the size of my lips, the color and shine of my hair and the size of my legs and feet. What I didn’t know then which I know now, which is that the beautiful differences were diversity, not fat. 

All the differences I noticed were described to me and by others as fat because we didn’t know what else to call it. Magazines were telling us and older girls about what to wear, how to be in the world and about fat (or not wanting it), so I figured that the difference I saw had to be because of a defect in my body, shape and size and that I was probably to blame. 

As a freshman, when I first sat in the classroom where The Body Positive support group was held in my high school, I had this feeling come over me of excitement. This was where I could explore my relationship I had with my body and get new language, including LOVE for my body. This message about loving my body, insulated me from eating problems and body hatred throughout high school, college, graduate school and through the hardest times in my life. The foundation that I formed then, a powerful and dynamic relationship to my body, is one of wonder, gratitude and love. 

Being involved in The Body Positive as first a participant, then workshop facilitator and public speaker for over 12 years has been difference between me turning on myself in hard times when “difference” became known to me, and me turning my perspective and attention to wonderful diversity and loving myself and my body despite what is going on in my life. 

The love of difference is my beauty instead of “difference” as the absence of beauty. Not only do I take pride in the care and compassion I give to myself, I hold this for others in my life including friends, family and my community. My love for my body is my inherent beauty which allows me to care for myself and from this loving place see beauty and diversity everywhere I go, not difference.  

Nature's take on beauty of diversity, not difference

Love-spiration

In my work and research on the topic of self-love, body image and Size Diversity, the conversation usually gets stuck on "media literacy". By stuck I mean, it is usually where people hang their heads and say, "how could we ever change the systems in place that oppress us and make us feel horrible about ourselves"? It is where many conversations about self-love start and end. However powerful media has become, and social media- ("thin-spiration"??) talking about the images themselves doesn't help people feel better about their bodies.

If you were to show a group of women a magazine full of images of women whose bodies are contorted, photo-shopped and manipulated to sell products, it actually reinforces them rather than fights against it. This happens even when the objective may have been to look deeper into the validity of the images in order to realize they were made to sell you a product. Its like holding up a picture and saying "this makes you feel bad! Look at it and take in all the ways you will never be like this image". The focus on it alone can be re-traumatizing.

In my mental health work I have learned about working with people who have experienced trauma. The literature on the topic of working with people with trauma says that to go back and have someone describe it, look at it and relive it is actually re-traumatizing instead of restorative. What is healthier, is beginning to integrate the trauma into their experience and relating to it in a new and healthier way.

"While we cannot directly affect the images, we can drain them of their power.

We can turn away from them, look directly at one another, and find alternative images of beauty

in a female sub-culture; seek out the plays, music, films that illuminate women in three dimensions;

find the biographies of women, the women's history, the heroines that in each generation are 

submerged from view; fill in the terrible, "beautiful" blanks. 

We can lift ourselves and other women out of the myth-but only if we are willing to seek out and support and really look at the alternatives." p.277

The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women by Naomi Wolf

This quote from The Beauty Myth illustrates my point well. We need to drain the images of their power and begin to re-envision beauty that is inclusive and values us as humans with spirits and souls. What if what we saw in the media reflected more diverse and inclusive images of beauty? What if our conversation about "media literacy" was more about creating Love-spiration?

Call to all Love Guerrillas:  Resist. Fight. Create. Return to self-love!

Theme Songs

I LOVE music and dancing. I have music playing as much as possible throughout my day and I select genres based upon how I feel or how I would like to feel. Celebration to me is: salsa. Chill and mellow is: soul or jazz. Hope and love: Motown. There is so much more! As much as I get attracted to beats on the radio and start singing along, there is inevitably a moment when I catch myself and say, "did they just say that?"From perpetuating horrible messages about your body, to promoting sexist and racist stereotypes, popular radio is not always a safe-haven for your body. I am not anti-radio, but there are times when I need more from music that popular radio is able to provide.

Awhile back I started compiling a list of my theme songs. Songs that make me feel good! Songs that if I were in a movie and the camera was focused on me walking down a busy street or jumping around on the beach like this photo ^ this theme song would be playing in the background and would reflect a bit of who I am. I encourage everyone to do this! Once you have a list you can listen to it when you want to feel really great in your body! What a wonderful gratitude practice!


Here are some off my list:

• Lady don't tek no- Latyrx
• Golden- Jill Scott
• Gotta Be- Des'ree
• Dune Methane- Hieroglyphics
• Hate on Me- Jill Scott
• El Cantante- Hector Lavoe
• La Negra Tiene Tumbao- Celia Cruz
• Bitch- Meredith Brooks
• Yo no se mañana- Luis Enrique
• Dontchange- Musiq Soulchild

One day I want to compile every single body/self-loving song on the planet and host a Love Guerrilla party. Sounds fun right? 

What is one of your theme songs and why?