Experiencing the box

Wow. Time flies when you're trying to finish a master's degree. And of course now that I'm in the final crunch of it, I turn back to here for more writing. I really need to keep writing here. Honestly, I turned away from this blog for a while in the hopes that I really didn't need to continue it. But the fact is that there is just *too much* to unpack when it comes to trying to be a woman of any shape navigating this world.

So tonight, I'll talk about "the box". In theatre, "the box" is a term to describe the basic "type" you are when being cast in a show. Some common types are things such as "ingenue", "romantic lead", "character", etc.

Basically, the type that I fall into is "character". Now honestly, I find character parts to be pretty interesting and fun to play. You usually get the good jokes and tend to have a character with more dimensions. But the idea that what emotions, events, and people I am able to portray on stage is determined mainly by how I look and not by my skill, quite frankly, pisses me off.

What really bothers me is that in most of these plays (and honestly, I'm not vouching for quality, but quantity here), the "romantic lead" has the main requirement of being thin and pretty. This is the character that falls in love, gets the girl or the guy, and is usually the person whom the entire plot of the play revolves around. "Characters" play the goofy side-kicks, or the villainous foils to these romantic leads.

Now I'm a firm believer that much of the learning to live our lives we do is through reading, hearing, and seeing stories about other people trying to live their lives. So what am I learning from these stories? What have I learned from these stories? I've learned that if you're pretty, you'll fall in love and get the guy. If you're not pretty, your personality will win you friends, but not lovers.

This year, we had a showcase performance for agents and industry professionals. The idea is that you get your two minutes on stage, and these professionals decide if they want to work with you in those two minutes. This means that you have to choose your box well and fit into it perfectly, because they're not really looking at you...they're looking at your category. So when it came time for me to choose what to sing, the choice I made had very little to do with my singing ability at all. In fact, the directors were encouraging me to not let my voice be the center of that, because it's a very difficult voice to box in and can fit in multiple categories quite comfortably.

But my body type is pretty clear and can only really fit into one category. So what do you think was the deciding factor in what I would be performing in this showcase? It made me feel pretty worthless and made me wonder why I do this at all.

I really thought that I had grown beyond a lot of that during this year. I really thought that I could set those stereotypes aside and not hold them as value placers on me. But now that I'm dealing with the world of casting, I'm finding that not only are these all getting thrown back into my face, but now I have to decide if I'm going to be actively perpetuating these stereotypes by trying to get work in the land of stereotypes (theatre, that is).

So now I've got some decisions to make about how I'm going to be working in this field where how you look is probably the most important factor. I'm also going to have to acknowledge that I've taken too much of that box on board. Thinking that I'm not going to be the girl who gets the guy because of how I look...thinking that my place in the world is at the side of other people who are way more pretty and way more amazing.

It honestly isn't fair to anyone, no matter how they look, to think like that.


(if I get comments, I promise I'll write often)

Perceiving change

In the last couple of months, I've had issues with my clothes getting too big and not fitting. Even though I've had this hard evidence of change, I haven't really perceived any changes in my body when I see myself in the mirror.

But recently I've started to see some change....just those moments of looking in the mirror and thinking "Yeah!"

Those moments are great motivators. But in a much bigger way than the carrot and stick motivator. (the carrot being a thin beautiful me)

This kind of motivation is based far more inside than outside. It's seeing your true self and wanting to nourish and water it so that it takes over all the other parts that aren't yourself, but still cling to you like barnacles on a dock. It doesn't feel so much like changing myself as uncovering myself.

And with that feeling, decisions get made for different reasons. In fact, they don't even feel like decisions at all. Being healthier just feels like the natural way to go rather than a sacrifice.

I imagine that it won't always feel like this (especially those bloated days before my period!), but it does feel like a fundamental shift is happening very slowly, but surely.

The path to sexy

Truth be told, I don't think there was ever a time where I truly felt sexy. I'm not even sure what it means to be sexy. But it's easy to see how this inability is getting in my way as I'm faced with dating.

(*and as a little update, I've been seeing a lot of the boy from Oz, and the more I see him the more I like him. Yet we're still in the talking and walking together for hours and hugging phase- nothing more. Matters get even more complicated as he may have to move back to Oz if he can't find a job soon)

Anyways, I'm trying to figure out exactly what feeling sexy means. I think it has something to do with feeling desired. And right now, I can't see how I could feel desired shaped as I am.

I think that might have a little bit to do with the fact that I went clothes shopping this weekend. Seriously- clothes shopping sucks. Here's why:

• Continually having to undress in front of a mirror, constantly witnessing your flab.
• Seeing clothes that look great on a hanger, only to see you ruin it by attempting to put it on.
• Constantly finding stores that don't think people of my size should get to wear cute stylish things.
• Generally feeling like an ugly person surrounded by lots of cute people.

It's also funny how the number on the tag can really change how you feel about yourself. Shopping at H&M is seriously depressing because all of their clothes are smaller than normal, so you have to get bigger than normal sizes.

But back to sexy. While I'd love to think that sexy is just a state of mind that can be achieved, I have to wonder about what role a partner has in myself feeling sexy. After all, sex with myself is great, but gets a bit boring. I think there is something about being desired that inherently fills the object with sexiness.

Hmmmm...that's a problem.

Where to look for it?

Attractiveness is a strange and tricky thing. All things around us send us the clear signal that being an attractive person is either something that we are or something that we aren't. But that's not how it really works.

Being attractive is something we do or something we don't.

Lately I've been noticing the need in myself to seek out some sort of stamp of approval from my friends. I find myself wanting them to tell me I'm attractive enough to be dating or attractive enough to be liked by someone. I want them to give me a seal of attractiveness so that I can feel more confident as things get further along in my dating life.

In the past, I would have asked this of my friends, but nowadays, I know how pointless it is. The thing is, I remember friends of mine bestowing this seal of attractiveness on me, and it not making any difference at all.

I hate compliments. I especially hate compliments about how I look because it is very difficult for me to believe them. So honestly, it wouldn't matter what kind of stamp of approval I'd be getting from my friends, because I wouldn't allow it anyways.

So here's a nice catch-22 to be caught in: I want my friends to give me positive feedback on how attractive I am, yet I won't believe that feedback or allow it to make me feel good.

So how do I figure out if I'm attractive or not?

A while back, in my course, we were split into groups and sent around the city of London to practice stage presence and stage absence. For these exercises, we as individuals would have to find ways of being around people and making them look at us, or being around people and making them not look at us. The trick is not to take the easy way out, such as finding something absolutely outrageous to do, thus ensuring the agape stares of strangers.

Of course practicing stage absence is easy. We do it all the time in life (especially more so for those of us who live in big crowded cities). I find it's very easy to hide and disappear. In fact, I've developed many elaborate methods of hiding that are so tricky, people don't even know that I'm hiding. I hide behind intelligent conversation, I hide behind singing. When I'm leading large groups of people, I hide by keeping the energy focused on the group. Then I don't really have to talk about me. I just share quips and stories elaborately designed to cover the me that's there while entertaining those around me. This is why I'm so great in large groups, but suck at intimacy.

Stage presence was much more challenging. It's easy to have stage presence when you're playing a character on stage because you have that character to hide behind. But quite frankly, while it's still stage presence, it's not very good acting. A good actor has an ineffable quality of being fully present on the stage, with their whole selves.

So authentic stage presence comes down to one thing really: believing in yourself enough. If you believe yourself, people see it. If you don't, people don't see it.

Back to the streets of London, practicing this. Stage presence in this sense was very hard for me to do. Or at least hard for me to hold onto. I had moments of being really there- "in the zone", and then it would slip away as my head kicked in again and reminded me of all those personal myths that I carry around. But those times when my head of myths was not in control were fantastic.

Just like the moments of movement and dance during the core training were fantastic.

Just like the moments on my dates with the boy from Oz where nothing was in my head but the good time I was having.

Just like the moments when I'm singing a song, or playing a piece where I'm there, but not there.

So this is why attractiveness isn't something a person is or isn't. Just like self image, it doesn't exist in a stasis. It can't just be there on it's own. You have to do it. You have to actually do it.

It's just that we've been convinced that it's out of our control or that it comes from external places. Lots of industries and people make money off of attractiveness this way.

This is why lately, I've seen that need resurfacing to ask others about my attractiveness. I've gotten out of practice at doing attractive, so I look for it elsewhere.

I don't have it all figured out yet. I still have real issues with feeling attractive or thinking someone could be attracted to me, but at least I have a foothold now.

And who doesn't want to feel attractive?

Revisiting the personal myths

After going back and reading what I wrote a couple of weeks ago regarding personal myths, I think I can safely say that naming them was good thing.

They don't feel like truths anymore. I think they are indeed starting to lose their power.

I'm curious...

Create your own visitor map!

the fickleness and changeability of self perception

After a few weeks of faithfully attending the fitness classes that we've been running on our course, I missed out an entire week due to major essays that were robbing me of sleep and health. It's been interesting to see how steadily my self image has been declining since that lack of exercise.

I'm starting to feel fat in my clothes again, even if the increasing sagginess of my clothes suggests otherwise. And of course, this makes me feel less able to look good in general, which then leads to more feelings of being not attractive, blah blah blah.

The physical feelings spill so easily into the mental and emotional realm. I'm even finding a lot of the hope that I've been riding on with my current crush sort if dissipating (for no reason at all, really- the boy from Oz is still in Oz and won't be back for another week). But it really has nothing at all to do with him.

Of course, when you hit a point like this, it can easily and dangerously slide into a downward spiral. You know the spiral- the one where you grab chips more often than not because that's what's going to get you through the day. Where a nice chocolate dessert becomes a necessary tool to feel better. And where the inevitable guilt merely serves to encourage you to give up.

So what is this telling me?

I think that self image cannot survive in stasis. It's not something that once achieved, remains solidly in place for all time. I think self image is a never ending process. A dance between myself and myself, that needs me to keep moving and growing in order to feel good. It needs to be fed constantly.

So I've been in stasis, and it's been making me slowly slide backwards. But this is good news. Mainly because I can see it. If I can see it, and if the reasons are clear, then I can do something about it. And I think it's just as simple as attending more fitness and dance classes.

I also just got a membership to the pool near the school. I'm gearing up to go swimming there if possible....but then again, that means getting over the thought of being seen in public in a bathing suit (GAAAH!), and that's a WHOLE other post for another time.

Core training and dance

Wow

Wow

Wow



Today was a very physically active day...

We started the morning with fitness work and muscle conditioning, then worked on a lyrical routine. Doing the lyrical dance was fantastic for me. Lyrical, as opposed to other kinds of dance such as Jazz or Ballet, does not rely so much on counting and specific moves. It's more about the body moving through space and about the body embodying the emotion and moving with that. For me, it was very liberating. I don't have a lot of dance technique, so consequently, when I am trying to attempt the same moves as Suzie Q. Dancer next to me, I just look like crap. Not because I am crap, but just because I don't have the technique. Either way, the result is more cringing at myself in the mirror (and you may remember that there is already much cringing to begin with).

But with lyrical dance, I'm able to feel the moves more, and get inside my body as I'm moving. Boy does it make size irrelevant really quickly.

After a much more full day of classes, performance workshops, etc., we had a three hour class in core training at the end of the day (6PM to 9PM!!!). I came into the room already exhausted and not really wanting to be there.

This class was not what I expected. This isn't like Pilates core training or the like. It was much more basic than that. It's a technique that uses contact improvisation and mixes it with acting principles such as actions, communication, listening, etc. All I know is that I experienced my body in a way that I had never experienced it before....I was leaning on people, giving weight, being lifted (!!!!), and improvising physically. This technique is a lot about basic communication with the body and nothing else. Breathing as you lean on someone and they lean on you, pulling, pushing, lifting, and all sorts of craziness. I felt 40 pounds lighter when I was in the middle of this play.

But the amazing part wasn't about how I felt in my body. It was about allowing my full physical self to be present with a partner. It was intense. Touching, moving, asking, giving permission, playing, giving, taking....all laid out there in the physical body.

It was like looking at human relationships and boiling them down to their most basic non-verbal elements and living inside them.


It made me realize how much of myself I tend to hold back in any relationships with people. Especially with my weight issues, it makes me not want to burden others. This was mirrored in the work we did tonight. At one point, when I was supposed to give my weight to someone else, I was holding back because I didn't want to be too heavy for them. But that act of holding back actually made it harder for my partner to shift his weight and to move and communicate with me. He needed me to be fully there in order for us to dance together.

Boy ain't it funny how art mirrors life???

More thoughts tonight: Personal myths

Ok, I seem to be full of thoughts tonight.

Of course my mind keeps wandering back to the Boy from Oz...despite his extended holiday (meaning I haven't seen him for a week and he's not coming back for another two weeks), I find myself more and more smitten with this boy.

I figure him being away for three weeks allows me sometime to reflect on the personal myths I hold about myself and how I might undo these myths.

The thing is, I've just begun to realize how much these myths have been ruling my life without my really knowing. And these myths certainly can hold a lot of power. For instance, these myths have prevented me from dating or having a real relationship for pretty much all of my life.

(yes, I've never had a romantic relationship or any real experience in romance at all)

So I'm going to risk being overly self-indulgent (I guess this blog is a bit of that anyways) and just take a moment to list the myths that I have been holding as truths in my life. These are all myths that still hold a certain amount of power for me, but I hope that by naming them, perhaps I can start to wrench myself from their control.

So here goes:

PERSONAL MYTHS

• My weight makes me not attractive enough to date or be in a relationship
• Being overweight means that there is no way I could possibly be pretty
  
• I would never be considered sexy by another guy because of the shape of my body
• Being a nice or interesting person is not enough if I am overweight
• When other people see me, it is my weight that they see first
• Being overweight diminishes my value as a person
• A potential partner would be much better off with someone who is more fit than I
• I clearly am living my life wrong if I am shaped like this

Alright, I named them. Though I suspect that there could be more lurking deeper beneath the surface.

These are the things that stand in my way at the moment. These are the things that have prevented me so many times from taking an opportunity to find love or affection. These are what I'm grappling with right now as I find myself in my current situation of REALLY liking someone and REALLY wanting to pursue something with him.

Geez...now I wonder if I'm ready or not.....

Some thoughts on performativity and body image

One of the concepts we've been studying in this theater course is the idea of performativity. Performativity was a theory applied by Judith Butler in gender development. In it's most basic form, it states that we learn to act out our gender roles based upon what input tells us. So that we're not actually the gender that we are...we're more "doing" the gender that we are.

A more practical example showed itself to me here in London: Black pointy-toed heeled boots. They're everywhere...so many women wear them it's crazy. And when my friend from New Mexico who has more hippie style than anything else started wearing them, it became clear. The constant signal is that to be a woman in London, it calls for the black pointy-toed heeled boots. So she was performative with that aspect of "doing" a woman in London.

So I was wondering, what performative aspects do we deal with in body image? What roles am I "doing" as a larger sized woman? Here are some performative qualities I think I may be reflecting from the input of society:

• Relying more on my personality than my looks
• Automatically discounting myself as a sexual creature
• Deflecting attention from myself as far as appearance is concerned
• Choosing clothes that hide the shape of my body or cover parts of my body that I don't want seen
• Not being a dancer

This is just off of the top of my head.

I'm still really trying to wrap my head around this whole concept of performativity. But I do think there are some truths to how we fill perceived roles rather than exists just as ourselves.

Just some food for thought....

Ballet class (or being the biggest girl in the room- again)

This morning, I took a ballet class given by a friend of mine on my current course. Now I love dancing, but dance classes in general have been my biggest struggle with this course over all. I did train in dance when I was younger, but then I got "too heavy" to really look at any advancement at the ballet school I was at. And if I don't get the feeling of moving up or onwards with anything I do, I tend to lose interest. So I stopped dancing.

In this course, I am the heaviest person. I see this and am reminded of this every day.

The toughest part of dance classes for me now is looking at myself in the mirror. When I see how much bigger I am than everyone else in the row, it causes a little inner cringe every time.

But something strange happened to me in this class. When the class started, I saw my big self in the mirror and did my inner cringe, bit my lip, and moved on.

But somehow between the beginning and end of the class, I shrank. I don't really know how to describe it other than that. I just didn't look as big to myself by the end of the class.

It's so strange how changeable the experiences of our bodies can be. We go through more feelings of sizes than actual sizes. Those days we feel big, those days we feel thinner.

I want to find that thing that shrank me during that ballet class and keep it all the time.

DATING!!!!

Dating is always interesting. I've been making a point of just going out on dates whenever the opportunity presents itself in this city. I don't really know a lot of people, so of course I turn to online dating.

Now there's always this nagging voice in the back of my head that questions whether or not I even have the right to date if I am not thin and beautiful.

(I should note here that for some reason, I have been equating the two. Obviously this isn't always the case, yet this still seems to be the default setting on my brain. All one has to do is look at the converse reasoning- if thin=beautiful, therefore fat=ugly)

Anyways, I have been going on dates, and met some really nice guys, but none who thrill me. I haven't gotten that flitter-flutter feeling you get when you meet someone you really like.

Well, at least not until I met the boy from Oz.

GAH! I actually really really like him. Everytime I think of this guy, I get a stupid grin on my face. We've gone on three dates, and have only gotten to the point of hugging. I would love to make a move, yet I feel that because I am not thin, I don't have the right to do so.

Basically, I have to assess first if he's alright with my size and that sucks. Now I remember why I haven't been bothering too much with dating these last five or six years.

Anyways, the whole question is tabled until he gets back from his extended holiday.

That gives me some time to figure out how much of an obstacle my body image has really set up between me and finding love.....

Let's try this again

Well, changing countries and e-mails and all seemed to lock away this blog for a bit. But now here's the fancy new e-blogger and it's time to bring this back for soooo many reasons which you will hear about in subsequent posts.

It's time to go more anonymous now too. I need to delve into stuff that I'm not sure I want everyone in my life knowing about. I'm not worried about those of you who already know who I am, and if I've referred you to this blog, then you can bet that I trust you.