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? 

Activism Ideas Vol. 2

A week ago or so, I posted some ideas for activism based upon 3 different levels including micro (personal), mezzo (interpersonal/organizational) and macro (global/societal). Here are some more ideas for you to get out there and spread the messages about loving yourself and your body to the world!

Micro-level:

Find your own gratitude practice

Staying in the present moment is one of life's challenges and great pleasures. At times we can all get caught up in future or past and skip over the present moment. When we stay in the moment we fine-tune our process of deep listening to the wisdom of our body and the wisdom of our soul. Your gratitude practice may start with just noticing your body as it is now! Close your eyes and scan over your body starting with your toes, up to your knees, to your hips, your chest, shoulders, down to your elbows and finger tips, back to your neck, your face and your hair. See your body through what it provides for you: the ability to move, to interact with others, to work or create, to play, to love, to stroll or to run! Follow up your scan by writing a couple sentences about what you noticed and what you are grateful for. There are many ways to practice gratitude for your body which include and are not limited to: cooking a special meal, meditating while hiking through nature, journaling, having a conversation with friends. What is your gratitude practice?

Mezzo-level:

Post-It Activism

Get a book of Post-its and write on each one (or as many as you want) positive messages that you want to spread to strangers in the spaces that you visit! Examples are:

• Love your body!
• I love your smile
• You are beautiful
• You are loved
• Riots not diets! (a personal favorite) 

Post them where ever you want! On doors, on mirrors in bathrooms, on magazine covers in a book store (bonus points to those who sneak them into to diet books and "change your body" mantra type books!), on telephone poles, on ATM's, on fruit stands, be creative! I once came across one on a telephone poll in Berkeley and it brightened my day! You never know what might make the difference to someone struggling with self-love. Put your message of self-love out there!

Macro-level:

SPEAK UP (on the Internet)

The internet is a vast landscape full of possibilities to speak your mind and speak your truth. Post comments on blogs, ask questions, go to websites of harmful products or who promote harmful messages about people's bodies and click on "contact us". Let people know about Health at Every Size. They may not already know about how messages that work to increase health for all people are much more inclusive than messages that promote healthy behaviors for people who are in privileged bodies. Speak up about how messages make you feel. Speak up for others who may be afraid to. Comment, post, write, message, speak up! You may not know what could come of it, so why not try? Spread the word that loving your body is important for all people of ALL sizes. Spread the message that everyone benefits from loving themselves!

Mixed Heritage

In my day job as a social worker, I am on the Cultural Competency Advisory Board which is made up of mental health workers, consumers (clients) and consumer advocates (people who work for community based organizations). As part of this board we come together to work on special projects in order to improve the way that our services meet the needs of diverse populations. One of the projects I am working on exploring how services could be better delivered to people with "Mixed Heritage".

Part of this project is coming up with some experiences that us 'mixed folk/biracial/multi-ethnic' people face on a daily basis:

• What are you?
• Is that your mom/sister/dad/brother?
• You don't look _____(insert ethnic group here)
• You're only 50% (or whatever percentage you are)
• That's a great mix! (When someone finds out what you are)
• ::::Squints at you really hard::: "ohhh, now I see it!"
• Do you live in _______ ? (insert a city or region that has a high population of diverse people in it)
• Why do you act white? (or another group that you do not identify with ethnically or culturally)
• Check only one box: African American, Asian, Latino, White/Caucasian, Native American, OTHER

Being who I am has greatly influenced how I feel about my body and even more so because I have had to come in contact with the above statements many many many times in my life which makes me think about how I appear to others. This is not just for mixed folks. Social location affects all humans. Let me explain:

The way that I look at the world is based upon my personal and individual social location.  Which means that different aspects of our personality, identity and position in society afford us a unique take on the world and affects how we see each other and ourselves.  

My social location: cisgender female, 1st Generation Filipina, 2nd Generation Puerto Rican, heterosexual, raised in the SF Bay Area. 

Social location can also include: socioeconomic status, educational background, language/dialect spoken, political affiliation, religious affiliation, sexuality and more!

My experience as a "mixed heritage" person is not independent of how I feel to be a Filipina-Puerto Rican woman, or Filipina-Puerto Rican woman social worker!

Ultimately our identity and social location is a HUGE influence in how we view our bodies and ourselves. As I think about all the negativity that one can experience being a "mixed heritage" person (like confronting the above statements daily), I think about also all of the beauty in not being able to fit into ONE box:

• unique perspective
• the ability to navigate through different circles and cultures freely
• the choice to identify how you want to, not only how you're seen to the world
• the love for and value of DIVERSITY, not only in your family, but your partners, your community

What is your social location and how does it influence how you feel about yourself and your body?

My Parents

Myself, My sister, My Mami

My sister and I 

Me and Papi

Me and My Lola

Me and Grandma

Happy Friday!

Peace & Love!

Soul Expression

Talismans

Bounty

This is beauty!

Flare

Moving Mountains

Become a Warrior

In 2009 I lead a Be Body Positive workshop in Colorado for Latina youth. In one of the activities we brainstormed all of the messages they got on a daily basis about what their bodies were supposed to look like, from their friends, family, school community, media, doctors... There were so many that I was blown away. From messages that told them to physically change their body to even one youth telling me the message she got was to be white. I remember putting up the huge posters on the walls around us and asking them how they felt seeing them all together, and of course they felt small and ashamed and hated it. So we tore them down and ripped them to shreds! In a very real way, we were refusing to be surrounded by images and messages that harm us.

A few days ago a friend was telling me about how one day without warning she started to recall harmful things that a person in her life used to say to her. Just as she started transporting back to the time in her life when she was small and those things were said, she flipped open her visor mirror in her car and said "No. I refuse to let this harm me." She told me she decided in that moment to be a warrior.

Yes! Let's try that idea on. When we begin to recall harmful messages we have received that invalidate us or make us feel bad about ourselves, let's become warriors against them.

How you can become a warrior:

• Recognize
• The purpose of recalling messages that have been harmful to you is to begin to understand your own body story. It is to shed light on what or whom has influenced you to feel about your body/size/gender. This is where we listen to our body and our hearts and see if something sits well with us.
• Resist 
• We muster up strength and use self-love to fight against harmful messages.  We turn away from the them, we tear them down, we use activism, we cross them out, we say NO.
• Create
• We share our truth, we take on messages that make us feel good, we claim our unique beauty and perspective. We change the way we interpret all messages and follow the path again: Recognize, Resist what doesn't fit you, Create new meaning.

Messages have power when we give them power. Let's fight against the messages that harm us. Let's continue to fight for Love Guerrillas everywhere!

Muscle Memory

Moving your body is a wonderful thing. It can make you strong, wipe away stress, help you meditate through life's drudgery, connect you with nature, with friends, and a deep gratitude for the body that you have.

Many people could probably relate to me when I say that I used to move a lot more and a lot differently in the past. Before graduate school I danced up to 7 days a week at a studio that I loved. For me it was about creative expression and expressing my soul through movement. I also benefitted greatly by having more energy and flexibility. Well, life took a major turn and I contended with two very stressful and important parts of my life to date. I entered graduate school, also known as: the most stressful educational experience you will endure (that you signed up for)! And if that weren't enough, while I was in my program, my mom was diagnosed with stage four cancer and died a year later.

Nothing could ever prepare me for the blow that did to my soul.

Nothing could ever prepare me for how my grief became trapped in my body and began to leech itself in the way I saw myself and in a very tangible way, how I moved. Because, I didn't. For a long time, I couldn't bear to return to my joy of movement, much less dance (for me, the most joyful). I felt so far away from the Me that I knew. I didn't feel joy, I felt sadness, pain and anger for a new life experience I wasn't ready to have and didn't want to have. My pain turned inward and I started hating my body for betraying me and my heart for not wanting to repair itself by returning to movement.

When my mom was sick, I experimented with swimming: the gentle embrace of the water felt right to me. After she died, I started walking weekly with one of my best friends who also lost her dad. The combination of walking and talking about life in a beautiful setting, just felt right.

In the 18 months since my mom died, I have struggled with grief and with finding movement that felt good in my body. As a society we don't talk about how profound the grief process is. I never thought of myself as someone who would stop dancing, or hold the belief I couldn't do something for joy alone because my life was overcome with sadness. But its a lesson for me that eventually with time, and without fighting against loss or against my body, I can remember what its like to have joyful movement again.

I recently signed up for a new gym with my partner and when we arrived yesterday something about using the machines didn't feel right to me. I looked for a Zumba class and decided, I'm going to go for it. As I danced and sweated and sang along to the songs I watched my eyes lock in the mirror, I noticed fleeting thoughts "wow, you haven't done this in awhile!", or "This is tough!" but as those thoughts came in easily, they were swiftly replaced with, "This is fun!" and "I remember this!". I shook, I jumped, I sashayed, I smiled! I left with so much gratitude for my body that remembered how to dance! I felt pride in all my dance training that made it easy for me to get the combinations, after not taking Zumba for longer than I can remember. I felt proud of my body that remembered how to move!

What I took away was this: our bodies are incredible. Sometimes we get caught in our heads or in our emotions or pain but our bodies remember who we are. Muscle memory is a wonderful way that our bodies keep our joy tucked away for when we need it. Just because you leave something (for whatever reason) you can return. What a lesson in loving your body!

My grief is not over and I continue to miss my Mami every day. Some days are harder than others and when my heart starts to rip open again I will remember moments like this. I will remember self-love and gratitude for the chance to have joy again.