Queer Body Power: Finding Your Body Positivity by Essie Dennis
This book brought both sense and hope. The book brough clarity through the reflections and the patterns the author brings out, but importantly, it brought me connectedness through the reading the author's personal experiences, and quotes from interviews with other folks through out the book. I appreciate that so much.
Connection in our queerness is everything. 203
On the difficulty of finding space for self-love and self-care within the societal expectations of capitalism:
During those times, I was so utterly dissociated from my body and I was afraid to focus on it because, if I did, I didn't know what I would find. I knew I felt ill but I pushed myself to my limit just to survive, and there was so little room for self-love or self-care. At least, I felt like there was no room for self-love or self-care. I was wrong about that. No matter what, there is always space for kindness and self-soothing. There is a societal expectation that we can only be kind to ourselves when we are happy, when we are no longer struggling, when we are successful by a capitalist metric; that perhaps we just don't deserve a break from self-crit icism or self-hatred, because we are not yet palatable enough. Maybe if we find a way to assimilate into an upper-middle-class, white, cishet paradigm, we can start having bubble baths, eating tasty food and treating ourselves, but not yet. 'Right now, the outside world is too harsh and cruel, I would think. 'I just need to get through it, then I can breathe again.' (45-46)
On showing up:
We shouldn't have to dim our shine to be palatable to others. 177
Makeup has no gender. We paint ourselves like we paint self-portraits. Upon our skin we find our art, we live in colour, shape our identity. 178