BOYS NOT ALLOWED
Last Sunday I went to watch this play called Good Body...It was touching...life-changing (kinda). I can't explain what it is about maybe I should just post the introIn the midst of a war in Iraq, in a time of escalating global terrorism, when civil liberties are disappearing as fast as the ozone layer, when one out of three women in the world will be beaten or raped in her life time, why write a play about my stomach?Maybe because my stomach is one thing I feel I have control over, or maybe because I have hoped that my stomach is something I could get control over. Maybe because I see how my stomach has come to occupy my attention, I see how other women’s stomachs or butts or thighs or hair or skin have come to occupy their attention, so that we have very little left for the war in Iraq—or much else, for that matter.When a group of ethnically diverse, economically disadvantaged women in the United States was recently asked about the one thing they would change in their lives if they could, the majority of these women said they would lose weight. Maybe I identify with these women because I have bought into the idea that if my stomach were flat, then I would be good, and I would be safe. I would be protected.I would be accepted, admired, important,loved. Maybe because for most of my life I have felt wrong, dirty, guilty, and bad, and my stomach is the carrier, the pouch for all that self-hatred. Maybe because my stomach has become the repository for my sorrow, my childhood scars, my unfulfilled ambition,my unexpressed rage. Like a toxic dump, it is where the explosive trajectories collide—the Judeo-Christian imperative to be good; the patriarchal mandate that women be quiet, be less; the consumer-state imperative to be better, which is based on the assumption that you are born wrong and bad, and that being better always involves spending money, lots of money. Maybe because, as the world rapidly divides into fundamentalist camps, reductive sound bites, and polarizing platitudes, an exploration of my stomach and the life therein has the potential to shatter these dangerous constraints.
The Good Body began with me and my particular obsession with my “imperfect” stomach. I have charted this self-hatred, recorded it, tried to follow it back to its source. Here, I am my own victim, my own perpetrator. Of course, the tools of my self victimization have been made readily available. The pattern of the perfect body has been programmed into me since birth. But whatever the cultural influences and pressures, my preoccupation with my flab, my constant dieting, exercising, worrying, is self imposed.I pick up the magazines. I buy into the ideal. I believe that blond, flat girls have the secret. What is far more frightening than narcissism is the zeal for self-mutilation that is spreading, infecting the world.
I have been to more than forty countries in the last six years. I have seen the rampant and insidious poisoning: skin-lightening creams sell as fast as toothpaste in Africa and Asia; the mothers of eight-year-olds in America remove their daughters’ ribs so they will not have to worry about dieting; five-year-olds in Manhattan do strict asanas so they won’t embarrass their parents in public by being chubby; girls vomit and starve themselves in China and Fiji and everywhere; (Korean women remove Asia from their eyelids)I think of you Pik Ee. . . the list goes on and on.
I have been in a dialogue with my stomach for the past three years. I have entered my belly—the dark wet underworld—to get at the secrets there. I have talked with women in surgical centers in Beverly Hills; on the sensual beaches of Rio de Janeiro;in the gyms of Mumbai, New York, Moscow; in the hectic and crowded beauty salons of Istanbul, South Africa, and Rome. Except for a rare few, the women I met loathed at least one part of their body. There was almost always one part that they longed to change, that they had a medicine cabinet full of products devoted to transforming or hiding or reducing or straightening or lightening. Just about every woman believed that if she could just get that part right, everything else would work out. Of course, it is an endless heartbreaking campaign.
This play is my prayer, my attempt to analyze the mechanisms of our imprisonment, to break free so that we may spend more time running the world than running away from it; so that we may be consumed by the sorrow of the world rather than consuming to avoid that sorrow and suffering. This play is an expression of my hope, my desire, that we will all refuse to be Barbie, that we will say no to the loss of the particular, whether it be to a voluptuous woman in a silk sari, or a woman with defining lines of character in her face, or a distinguishing nose, or olive toned skin, or wild curly hair.
I am stepping off the capitalist treadmill. I am going to take a deep breath and find a way to survive not being flat or perfect. I am inviting you to join me,to stop trying to be anything, anyone other than who you are. I was moved by women in Africa who lived close to the earth and didn’t understand what it meant to not love their body. I was lifted by older women in India who celebrated their roundness. I was inspired by Marion Woodman, a great Jungian analyst, who gave me confidence to trust what I know. She has said that “instead of transcending ourselves, we must move into ourselves.”Tell the image makers and magazine sellers and the plastic surgeons that you are not afraid. That what you fear the most is the death of imagination and originality and metaphor and passion. Then be bold and LOVE YOUR BODY. STOP FIXING IT. It was never broken.
I started weeping around the bolded text. Mainly I blame PMS but yea I felt it. I understood exactly what they mean. I understood what it was like to think that things would be SO different if I was thinner, prettier, perfect. What is it like to love your body? Thin girls want to gain weight, fat girls want to lose it. Short girls want to grow taller, Tall girls wish they were shorter. It's a been there, done that formula. No one is ever happy. Why? It's disturbing to watch stick-thin girls starve themselves to lose weight when I see myself do nothing about mine. Guilty, dirty, bad. Those words always ring in my head when I look in the mirror. save to say I stopped looking. Until now I can't find a single thing I can like about myself.
I used to be proud I had big breasts. That's what people looked for right? My mother never failed to remind me how much bigger my breasts were from hers. Hello? You're not part Indian, I am. it's in the genes. Not only that, you weren't stuff with a shot-load of hormones from KFC. Then y'know people start talking. I can't remember who, but then someone casually mentioned to me once that chinese boys never like girls with big boobs. They find it too (can't remember the chinese word she used) showy or something. Ok it was obvious she was talking to me. Then of course we have people like Pik Ee and Celeste saying how big my breasts were. I remember telling Pik Ee about how chickens nowadays had hormones injected in them and that's why men were developing boobs. 'Oh looks like you ate too much chicken lar.' she answered. Ouch! Thanks alot Pik Ee. That was the boost of self-confidence I needed. Of course then we got Kuan Ngee and the chinese girls in our class bitching and making fun of Reka's enormous boobs. So yea now I officially HATE my breasts.
There was this one line in the play that I remembered so well and was pretty touched by. There was this 80 year old character talking about the numerous plastic surgeries she had done mainly because her mother always told her she was never beautiful and all that crap. They she said that her husband told her she was beautiful as she was. She said that didn't count because 'He loves me'. That's what I never understand. Parents say they love you so why can't they ever say you are perfect the way you are. Half of the people on Good Body were disturbed because of their parents. Why are they so caught up in this image thing as well? Friends. What does it matter if you are bigger, smaller, fatter, thinner than one another? It is not affecting them in any way. I remember Kuan Ngee bitched continuously in Form 3 & 4 about how fat Raihan was. What does it matter to her if Raihan was fat or not. She wasn't stealing your food or taking your place. What does it matter to her? People wonder why I don't feel safe around Kuan Ngee. God knows whether she is telling Pik Ee about how fat I am or how big my boobs are.
I remember telling myself after the play I wouldn't feel so insecure anymore. This is my life, not my parents, not my friends and definitely not the guy who may or may not take me for prom. Yea i woul love a boyfriend, but I don't need a guy to tell me how beautiful I am. Well, that's what I told myself. It's not that bad as before but dreams are tempting. I would give anything to be safe, protected, accepted, admired, important and most of all loved.
