the art of getting by

pug date

This post goes harder than any post has ever gone before.

my problem with a lot of body positivity / progressive beauty culture stuff is that it focuses on expanding the definition of beautiful rather than deconstructing the idea that physical beauty indicates worth. my difficulties with living in a body (and therefore with living, period) often come back to the fact that no matter how tightly i control my body, i am viewed as either object of disgust or object of desire (occasionally both simultaneously). i can never be neutral. i can never be subject. my difficulty with existing would not be assuaged, at least not for long, by winning the game of “beautiful.” winning is not the same as having agency or personhood. we don’t need to change the rules of the game. we need to stop playing.

you don’t need to be beautiful to have worth as a human