Skip to main content

I Jiggle When I Dance: A Poem

TW: Fat (reclaimed), eating disorder recovery mention, obesity mention, body image issues mention

 I've been posting a lot of poetry lately because that's the content my brain has been able to produce, but I'm going to try to get some regular content to you soon. In the meantime, there is far to little fat positivity on this blog, as I grapple with my own eating disorder recovery, obesity, and body image issues. In that vein, I bring you my new fat positivity poem, "I Jiggle When I Dance".

I Jiggle When I Dance

When I dance

My stomach wiggles side to side

Even after I stop moving

 

The movement of my breasts

Is really obvious

And I’m learning

Not to try to hide it

 

My feet on the floor

Would make creaks and thumps

Except

 

If I move my lower half

My joints scream in pain

And I have to stop dancing

 

So I dance with the top of me

Jiggles and all

And I’m learning to be free

 

To love myself more freely

To live in my fat body

And to dance with my eyes wide open

 

I jiggle when I dance

Because I am fat

And fat bodies, fat stories, fat lives

Are beautiful.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Autism and Teaching English

In many ways, autism makes me a good teacher. I explain things clearly and systematically. I keep detailed notes on each student because I have to do so to remember. I have formulas for everything and provide data-based feedback on student progress after every lesson. It also makes me a good English as a Second Language teacher. I pinpoint specific, recurring issues in students' speaking (accent, pronunciation, and oral fluency) and take a structured approach to addressing these issues. I do the same with academic writing (structure, grammar, vocabulary, spelling, coherence and cohesion). However, it makes me a lousy literature teacher. I'm good at poetry, but stories are not my thing. I take them at face value. It's hard for me to see symbolism behind the words. A story about talking rabbits ( Watership Down ) is, to me, just about the talking rabbits, and I'm totally into the narrative of those rabbits. I also cannot empathize with character emotions unless I...
Post a Comment
Read more

Pulling Myself Apart: A Personal Essay

TW: Dermatillomania, trichotillomania Healing isn’t a binary measure of “already overcome” or “still suffering”. It’s a journey or a spectrum, and I still enjoy my life on that journey. -Ezekiel-Bethany (Zeke) I was 12 years old, smushed between 2 bookshelves at the back of my seventh-grade Advanced English class, the cool metal pressed against my skin. It was social time, and the movement and sounds from the other students were an overwhelming blur. I was autistic, but I didn’t know it yet. I also had trichotillomania. In distress, I grabbed a chunk of my hair and pulled it out, dropping it to the ground. And another. And another. No one paid me any attention, and I assume I stopped once social time ended and the students went to sit quietly at their desks. Trichotillomania is an impulse control disorder. It causes me to pull out the hair on my head and other parts of my body and be unable to stop, even when I want to. My trichotillomania started when I was a pre-teen, and it m...
Post a Comment
Read more