certain of my disassociated parts

BlogHer has launched a "Letter to My Body" initiative. I'm loathe to admit that I read one (1) *one* of these letters and then began composing my how dare they! post. I wish I could say that this composition was only in my head at this ill-informed, premature point, but sadly, no. I'd actually already written a whole irate, indignant rant about BlogHer's assumptions that we're all self-haters who need to embrace our Raphaelite voluptuousness before I actually, um, went to the BlogHer site. Details, man!

After reading a few more of these letters, I found that my would-be diatribe was displaced. And while it's true that many of us dislike trying on jeans, we also love our bodies. We seem to love them almost entirely in function, if only in bits and pieces of form. It seems that we women? We are deep thinkers who, for the most part, are interested in making body image easier for our sisters by being unperturbed by our stretch marks. And by "sisters", I mean *sistahs*.


I do have an affinity for certain of my disassociated parts. And I have some trouble when viewing/considering/exfoliating the aggregate. Also? I can't do the "Dear Body," thing with a straight face, but I still want to play along.

I love my size nine-and-a-half feet. I love them dressed down, naked. And I love them formal, with a French pedicure. I think the arch of my foot is sexy in heels and that the bones that run along the tops of my feet look fantastic in flip flops. I especially love them when they are bare with the hem of frayed, too long jeans pooled around them. The freckles on the tops and on my toes please me when they pop after a day at the beach.


The terrain of my legs begins with the contours of my ankle bones which look particularly appealing in low socks and running shoes, and click noisily when I flex my feet at the end of the day. My ankles, as abused as they've been, as many times as they've been sprained, still handle my off-balance, pronating walk with great aplomb, even in heels. And my calves? The topography created by that sinewy muscle that runs up the front and the bulk of the muscle at the back pleases me.


When I sit, when I pull my knees up toward my chin, there is a roundness there, on the outside of my thigh that brings to mind nude women sketched in sepia pencil. There is a hint, at that point, when my leg bends back toward my pelvis, that gives a hint of the hourglass hips I've always envied.




There are few places on my body, viewable to the general public, more sensual than the articulation of my collarbone, and the path from collarbone to ear.


And those areas not viewable to the general public? It's true that we women may miss the perk of more youthful breasts, but it's also true that we can accept this thoughtfully. I can't help but remember that my breasts nourished three human beings for more than two years in total. I recall, viscerally, the physical feeling of the milk letting down when my babies cried. I can still feel that infant pecking at my shoulder until being moved down to the crook of my arm to latch on hungrily.

In my lungs, I can remember, in fourth grade, crying until my breath came in hiccups. A classmate noticed that I had freckles on the tops of my fingers and then wondered aloud, for the benefit of all the boys within fifteen feet, if I had freckles everywhere, in that cutting way that nine-year-old boys have. As I tearfully damned all the boys in all the world, my mom insisted, as she always did, with calm reassurance, that my freckles were beautiful. She told me that her father, when he fell in love with her mother, called her Penny, because she had freckles the color of pennies. She soothed me with assurances that redheads are a rare and wonderful thing, when all I wanted to know was when my freckles would fade like hers had.


Falling in love with my curly red hair and freckles has been my hardest-fought battle for self-assuredness. Oh, what I would've given, in middle school, to have woken up one day with thin, straight, mousey brown hair and a nice olive complexion. I can't count how many birthday wishes I wasted, wishing away my freckles and red hair.

I clearly remember how much I hated looking like a lephrechan. But I also, just as clearly, remember my mom and my sisters telling me that redheads are a scarce and therefore, special breed, like unicorns. Seriously. They were words I scoffed at then, hearing scarce as peculiar and special as abnormal. Somehow, though, perhaps just through them saying it often enough, today? I love being a redhead. I love my freckles. All of them. Even the ones on my lips that I am now unwilling to cover with lipstick. I love that first bright, warm day that I spend out in the sun, hiking all day, to return home to find my freckles more noticeable and more apparent than they were that morning.

I am aware that conspicuously absent here is a love letter full of adoration and amore for my abdomen. Still eluding me is acceptance of an apple-shape, and I still come close to wasting birthday wishes on pear-shapes. However, I have come to love my somewhat large feet and my everywhere freckles, so certainly, that's progress. And here's to my Raphaelite voluptuousness and my learning to love it.