digitalbodies

for long i'd seen it as cage, as curse. i hid away and covered myself. i expressed it as blood, i expressed it as rage, sadness, bile, tragedy. the fear of knowing i'm less, i'm fragile, i'm not me but woman. i feared that for so long. sometimes i still do.

but something has shifted along the way. i'd always found beauty in tragedy, ruins, in shadows. why would it be any different, then? like a web of shared wordly experiences, through each woman that came in contact with me through their elaborate art of mere existance, an imprint was made into my soul, my identity, what i've always felt i was or was not; it reconnected me. it healed me.

pj harvey. patti smith. ana mendieta. jun togawa. trish keenan. dadá and maria bonita. rita lee. cecelia condit. kim gordon. keri smith. clarice lispector. coralie fargaet. miki berenyi. nise.

beautiful, or disturbing, or both. making their own worlds through art, bravery, intelligence. being seen and heard in their full femininity, about feminine experiences, about feminine subjects, feminine horrors. making of it as they can, just like me.

i take my mother's arm walking with her on the street and realise how much more i've grown to appreciate her. her talent for homekeeping, for being so elegant, for dealing with others, for decorating. feminine things i paid no mind to because i thought the intelligent one was my father with his serious programming job, with his maths. i did not see her.

i hold her arm and think of my grandmother and the two times she put her alcoholic husbands out of the house, the violence she endured from the first one, the single migrant mother she became, her work as a maid in a foreign state. her resolve, grumpiness and bravery despite it all, her armor, her grandchildren who survived her. i did not see her. but now i do. she is a femininity i internalize as tragic, incredible, moving, beautiful, painful, everything, everything - femininity is as bittersweet as life. it's why it's so beautiful.

i've ceased fearing my dresses, my small hands, my tightly sillouetted tops, my tiny figure - what once has made me feel exposed and fragile now brings me the confidence i could once only achieve when i wore an armor of masculinity. no longer. i can feel as confident in skirts as i do in long shorts. as confident in makeup as without it. my gender does not define my worth.

publicly i've struggled with my femininity. i brought so many others in my journey of discovering how to navigate something so darkly complicated, so weird and painful at times. i've grown into it, around it, under its spell, and i've emerged within it as a reclaimed asset of my life i've denied for so long because i thought it meant a label that signaled to others that violence against me was okay. i never thought of it as strength. but now i think that enduring said violence is precisely what turns it into strength.

i love femininity, and i make it be my own. no one will ever get to declare what it means but me.
it's mine, and mine alone. and it not define me - it will mirror me.