Abstract
The story presented here is adapted from my phenomenological dissertation project, which I wrote as a multigenre dissertation in a format similar to a teen magazine. It is a story of bodies and girls and resistance. It is a story of an incredible group of seventh grade girls of color who embodied some kind of agency in resistance-to a phenomenon I named bodily-not-enoughness: those moments in American culture when someone or something tells girls and women we are not enough of something in our lived or physical bodies. Because this story is about lives that are not yet over, I present it in the way that stories are lived: fragmented, selectively, contextually constructed (Richardson, 1997), and with plenty of interruptions.
Keywords
Prelude
The story presented here is adapted from my phenomenological dissertation project, which I wrote as a multigenre dissertation in a format similar to a teen magazine. 1 This is a story of adolescents, not adolescence; it is a story of bodies and of girls. Like the categories just named, then, it is a story that is messy. The messiness of this story is not meant to be chaotic, like a stereotypical 13-year-old bedroom where old food grows new life and clothes are sometimes abandoned, never to be seen again. Rather, this is a story that is paradoxical and uncertain; it is beautiful and disheartening; exasperating and humbling. This story is complex in ways I never imagined complexity to exist, because it is about bodies; girls’ bodies; girls experiencing their bodies as they move through the world simply trying to figure shit out. Most importantly, it is a story of an incredible group of seventh grade girls of color who embodied some kind of agency in resistance-to the disciplined parameters American culture inscribes on bodies every day. This is not a story that is complete but one just beginning. Better yet, it is a story that never begins but always has been, “and I slip into it over and over again in different places . . . as if I too have always been there” (St. Pierre, 1997, p. 182).
Because this story is about lives that are not yet over, I aim to present it in the way that stories are lived: fragmented, contextually constructed (Richardson, 1997), and with plenty of interruptions. I invite you to engage with this text as more than “just” a story of young adolescent girls’ bodies, or even more, young adolescent female bodies of color, because the contours and meanings within this story could allegorically extend toward you, toward you seeing yourself and knowing yourself through others’ stories, reenvisioning your own life, arriving where you started and knowing that place for the first time (Richardson, 1997, p. 6). The implicit questions at the end of the text are multifaceted: they ask you to ask yourself if the story I created, what I “made up from and out of my data” (Sandelowski as cited in Clough, 1999, p. 442) appeals to your heart. They ask if you can place yourself within any of this text—within any of these bodied and embodied experiences. If I have described the multiple and fragmented lived experiences of the phenomenon I named bodily-not-enoughness in such ways that you can see yourself in those experiences, or just outside of them at least, if you can nod your head and think, Yes, I have had that, or I could have that (van Manen, 1990) then I have done my job.
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The instability of levels produces not only the intellectual experience of disorder, but the vital experience of giddiness and nausea, which is the awareness of our own contingency and the horror with which it fills us.
Writing Myself Out of Unexpected Disorientation: December 2010
Sitting stiffly, body erect, I shift around uncomfortably in the gym-provided plastic chair hoping I can arrange my legs in a way that might make them seem more muscular. It is early in the a.m.—too early, in fact, for a female graduate student in the midst of dissertating-hell to be attempting a body façade in front of a 200-pound male trainer at 7:30 a.m. in the morning. The gym has coaxed my guilt-ridden neglected body into this cold, unwelcoming chair today by offering several free services, because they think I have taken a longer sabbatical than necessary; unfortunately I agree. In order to bribe those of us who are slothful strays (and our money) back to this discourse of free-weights, fitness classes, and trainers who remind us just how inactive we are, daily emails arrive in our inboxes offering free training sessions and BMI (body mass index) readings from 20-something youthful trainers and innovative “bod-pod” fat-calculating/guilt-manifesting machines. I am practically knee-to-knee with this youthful, confident 200-pound male trainer the gym has provided for my “free consultation and personal training session,” and I can feel my stomach tying itself into knots as he pretends to scan the questionnaire I purposefully did not complete in an attempt to gain some power back after being shamed by his female counterpart just moments before during my “bod-pod” BMI public shaming.
After the anxiety-ridden experience of having to stay so completely still in some claustrophobic egg-shaped apparatus—wearing nothing but my bathing suit, nonetheless—that I almost passed out, I learned from the 5’2, 90 pound female trainer that the percentage of fat in my body compared to the percentage of muscle was “staggeringly high for my age, height, and gender.” Fantastic.
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Our bodies have become a form of work; they have shifted from historically being the means of production to currently being the production itself. Our bodies are judged as our calling cards, and we are entrusted with showing the results of our hard work and watchfulness or, alternatively, our failure and sloth (Orbach, 2009, pp. 6-7)
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Before meeting with this youthful, confident trainer, I was to complete a questionnaire so he could have a baseline to make me feel as horrible as possible, I imagine; however, being a qualitative-researcher-in-the-making (Luttrell, 2010), I find questionnaires that are poorly constructed and only allow for extremely limited answers very difficult to complete. In addition to being poorly constructed, these questions made sure to remind their reader that she was definitely not-enough in the body she brought to the gym this morning, so I showed them and left most of the questionnaire blank. “You’ve been coming here for four years?” Youthful-Confident-Guy asks with much more surprise in his voice than I think should be there. His eyes glaze over the practically blank form again as he continues: “That’s a long time. Why have you been away so long?”
Reminder to self: I am a 5 feet, 8 inched, 37-year-old woman who is 145 pounds. I have been wearing the same size clothes (size 6 or 8) for at least the past 10 years, and I have done boatloads of work on my (many) perceptions of my body in order to be enough . . . most days of the week.
Unfortunately, finding myself in this present circumstance, I haven’t been to the gym in almost a year, I haven’t worked out at home in a few weeks, and my body feels like it is growing softer as I sit across from the 200 pounds of muscle in front of me. Where I am located in this moment—my historical as well as the present life conditions which currently surround me—all attribute to the situatedness of this experience.
My internal self-talk is interrupted when I hear my voice rambling on to Youthful-Confidence about how I had to take some time off from the gym because of the neck and shoulder pain that has cropped up due to writing so much, and how I have been exercising at home so I haven’t completely been ignoring my body, and how I am only here this morning to learn some exercises that will not cause my neck so much pain so I can continue writing my dissertation multiple hours every day—and on and on and on. Nervous babble as I tumble into a downward spiral of bodily-not-enoughness, the very phenomenon I explored for my dissertation study and have been writing my way through for hours on end each day, so that I might open up a phenomenon which I believe has been buried or covered up so extensively in American culture that it is still quite undiscovered (Heidegger, 1962/2002).
Bod-i-lee [bod-l-ee] not [not] e-nough-ness [ih-nuhf-nes] (adj – n)
corporeal and embodied moments in American culture when someone or something tells girls and women we are not enough of something in our lived or physical bodies (not thin-enough, toned-enough, athletic-enough, feminine-enough, pretty-enough, sexy-enough, smart-enough, White-enough, Black-enough, English-speaking-enough, and Christian-enough, to name a few).
As I continue to stammer about with my absurd justification-ramble, clearly making no difference to the 200 pounds of muscle sitting in front of me, I am reminded that I have had so many personal training sessions over the past 15 years, attended so many “butts and guts,” “body combat,” and “boot camp” classes, and burned through so many Tae Bo, Biggest Loser, and P90-X videos that I probably know hundreds of exercises that would cause no pain in my neck. Hell, I could probably even teach this kid a thing or two (about tact, anyway).
“Well let’s see, it says here that you like to exercise—walking, some jogging, some weights, some of the machines—but you obviously haven’t been doing those things like you should or your BMI wouldn’t be so high, right?”
In-ju-ri-ous [in-joo-r-ee-uh s] Lan-guage [lang-gwij] (adj-n)
system or set of signs and/or symbols used by a number of people that are harmful, hurtful, detrimental, insulting, abusive 2
the elaborate institutional structures of racism, sexism, classism, and any other –isms, which are reduced to the scene of an utterance from one person; and invested with the power to establish and maintain the subordination of the group/person addressed (Butler as cited in Rasmussen & Harwood, 2003, p. 29)
the pejorative language that is endowed with historical, social, and cultural power which continues to support the ongoing production of racism, sexism, classism, and any other—isms that have been historically created within broader institutional structures (Rasmussen & Harwood, 2003, p. 29).
Youthful-Confidence smirks as he looks up at me from the gym’s poorly designed questionnaire. My heart races, my mouth feels dry, and my palms begin to sweat. I feel disoriented in my body. My lips are paralyzed, stapled shut. I want to stand from this awful plastic chair and walk away. Instead I just sit there, stupefied by those words that are slamming onto my body like 50 pound weights. Not privy to this internal angst, Youthful-Confidence continues whittling me down where he needs me: “You wrote here that you don’t want to change your body size, that you have worn the same size clothes for a while.” The information he is now referring to on the poorly designed questionnaire is in response to the most infuriating two-part question of them all:
(a) How would you change your body if you could?
(b) How many clothes sizes would you like to decrease?
Dis-or-i-en-ted [dis-awr-ee-en-tid] (adj)
to lose perception of time, place, or one’s personal identity 3
to lose the intimacy of one’s body in its dwelling place
a bodily experience that throws the world up, or throws the body from its ground (Ahmed, 2006, p. 157)
“That’s right,” I reply flatly, “I’m totally fine with my body size. I just want to learn some new exercises for my neck and lower back.” Shit! I internally scream at myself as I continue tumbling downward into not-enoughness.
Why Am I Still Here
“Are you sure you don’t even want to go down one size?” Youthful-Confidence pushes on, sounding very confused as to why this woman sitting in front of him who is obviously in need of his special trainer-knowledge is not complying with the gym discourse he is used to. “If you reduce your BMI you’re obviously going to reduce your clothes size too. You don’t even want to go down one dress size?”
A sudden flashback to my ten-or-eleven-year-old self, standing in the living room with my dad in front of the television. I had just announced that I wanted to be a news anchor when I grew up, to which he replied, “That sounds wonderful, honey. Just remember, those people on TV are
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It is now possible to see that, in certain respects, there has never been an altogether simple, “natural” body. There has only been a body that is shaped by its social and cultural designation . . . we have entered a new epoch of body destabilization and there is a new franticness surrounding the body induced by social forces which are absorbed and transmitted in the family, where we first acquire our bodily sense (Orbach, 2009, p. 9).
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Heart pounding and sweat trickling down my lower back, I muster a response to Youthful-Confidence and tell him that no, I am not interested in losing weight, nor do I even wear dresses enough to want to “shrink my size in them.” I explain that I am writing my PhD dissertation (if I say “PhD” it might intimidate him?) on this very thing of bodies and how our society puts too much pressure on bodies to be sucked, thinned, toned, shrunk, stretched, and smoothed, so why didn’t we do this another time because I had a meeting back at my university with very important people and I had to go shortly. “OK, sure. When’s good for you? Monday?” Youthful-Confidence asks in all of his naïve (or perhaps not-so-naïve) trainer-glee. He pulls out his calendar to pencil me in for my rescheduled free training session that will hopefully, for him, still lead to me hocking my road bike to pay for more personal training sessions, so he can help transform my body into “a smaller dress size,” some other time. I feel the entirety of my bodily disorientation in this gym-hell to which I have subjected myself and then am even more bewildered when I hear a voice, obviously someone else’s, giving Youthful-Confidence a time for our replacement training session the next day.
“Great. Well, you should have about 40 minutes left before your meeting today so that should be plenty of time for you get some hard cardio in for 20 minutes and then shower up.” Fifteen minutes later, leaning against the shower wall as the scorching water pounded down on my body, my furry grew with every second. I could not stay on the elliptical machine to exercise because I was so incensed at what had just taken place, and my way of “showing him,” I decided (because it was the best I could come up with at the time) was not doing “20 minutes of hard cardio.” However, as I stood there fuming in the shower, I did not feel the redemption for which I yearned. A brief encounter with some arbitrary 20-year-old man had conjured up my bodily-not-enoughness and I was enacting a perfect, “why me, why this, why now” vulnerability/victimization, practically on cue.
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It has become ever more evident that our understanding of bodies needs new explanations and theories. Whether we’re trying to fathom the willingness and desire of so many people to change the size or shape of their penises, breasts, bums and tums, or attempting to comprehend the experience of a man with a phantom limb, or decoding troubling psychosomatic symptoms, or dealing with anorexia, bulimia and any of the body dysmorphias, the Descartian or Freudian conceptions of the body now seem inadequate. The mind-body link is being transformed (Orbach, 2009, p. 8.)
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Standing there naked and vulnerable in the shower feeling sorry for myself, I thought again about my dissertation study: A study of bodies and the cultural disciplining of bodies. I thought about the eight 7th grade girls who participated in the writing group and what I learned from them each week as we met for 2 to 3 hours after school. Almost every single time a moment like this cropped up for the girls in the Purple Flowers 4 —a moment when someone or something told them they were not enough of something in their lived or physical bodies—I constantly anticipated that bodily-not-enoughness coming into being as something similar to the vulnerability/victimization I was currently embodying in the shower. Yet what took place each week was something very different, very powerful: resistance.
Re-sist-ance [ri-zis-tuh ns] (n)
the impeding effect exerted on an object by another, or by a force; the susceptibility to such an effect on the part of an object or structure.
the slowing or stopping of one thing by another force 5
“Oh, I can model any size I am, honey. They gonna have to pay me or they gonna lose something special . . . I don’t lose weight for nobody, baby.”-Buttercup, 2009
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The 12-year-old girls who participated in my dissertation study seemed to always be doing whatever they could to not be/become victims of or vulnerable to the injurious language and damaging body messages that permeate American culture telling us every day that we are not-enough in our lived or physical bodies. If any one of those girls would have been in my place, she would have talked-back-TO (Hughes, 2011) that moment, to that trainer who was simply embodying the role of repeated and habitual actions that shape bodies over time (Ahmed, 2006). My embodied depletion slowly congealed into courage as I imaged one of the girls, Buttercup, raising both eyebrows, cocking her head to the side, and crowing, “Oh, I don’t need no trainer, honey! If you don’t like this body for what it is then you gonna have to find someone else, because I don’t lose no weight for nobody, baby! 6
I quickly dressed and went to find Youthful-Confidence, and with the girls symbolically backing me up, I marched over to him and said something to this effect: You know, I’m not going to come tomorrow. I’m not going to do a training session with you at all, actually. Why would you say those things to someone who actually works to feel good in her body, someone who is (mostly) content with what she looks like? It’s not all right that you said what you said to me, and that’s why I’m not going to do a training session with you. You need to respect where people are when you’re talking to them about their bodies; you need to listen to what people want, and then maybe you’ll be an effective trainer.
That should be the happy ending to this tale about bodies. But it is not. Because this is America. And I was talking to a trainer in a gym who lives in a culture obsessed with a thinness ideal that is both unrealistic and unattainable, an ideology that teaches more of us than not that we are less-than more days than not. “Well this is America, like you said,” Youthful-Confidence reminded me, in case I accidentally thought I was in Peru, “and there are fat people and there are skinny people, and about 99% of the women who come in here want to be skinny.” He smiled at me with pride, I’m guessing, because he used a percentage.
“And that’s because trainers like you say the things you do when they are not warranted, and so people who look like me end up feeling like they are not-enough in their bodies because people like you keep perpetuating this ridiculous obsession!” I smiled back, and then calmly walked away from that experience being more certain than I had ever been that we had to start talking about bodies in our country in ways other than how to fix them.
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Perhaps moments of disorientation like these are needed: bodily experiences that “throw the world up, or throw the body from its ground” (Ahmed, 2006, p. 157), in order to remind us of our own contingency in the world, our own humanness. This embodied feeling of disorientation can indeed be unsettling; “it can shatter one’s sense of confidence in the ground or one’s belief that the ground on which we reside can support the actions that make a life feel livable” (p. 157). The above vignette was one of those embodied moment of disorientation for me, a bodily experience that might not have completely shattered my sense of confidence in the ground, but definitely shook the ground beneath me, a stable ground on which I depend to feel at home in my body. The giddiness in my own nausea, however, was what I learned from the girls in the Purple Flowers as a tool to reorient my body on a cultural line that has been both created by being followed and been followed by being created (Ahmed, 2006).
By cultural lines, I mean those lines that direct our bodies in some ways more than others in American culture—lines of thought as well as lines of motion—bodylines, if you will, that “depend on the repetition of norms and conventions, of routes and paths taken, but that [are] also created as an effect of this repetition” (p. 16). The bodylines that I refer to here are those which teach us how to be in our bodies—no, not just how to be, how to be better:
(W)
Yet, in the midst of this epoch of body destabilization (Orbach, 2009) I learned that resistance and resilience are still possible and lived by a group of 12-year-old girls who showed me how we can reconstitute the bodylines that have historically and culturally disciplined our bodies.
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Embodied Revelations
Sometimes in our culture, women and girls don’t feel comfortable complimenting ourselves/our bodies. What do you like about your body?
7
I compliment myself all the time.
Can it be kind of inappropriate?
My face: it’s beautiful
My smile: it looks good
I love my smile; I meant to say my laugh: it brightens up a room—it’s bubbly
I like my hands: they can reach out and grab things; I like how they look, they’re beautiful
I like my fingers: they’re long
My hair: it’s curly and not a lot of people have curly hair
I like my hair. I like how thick it is and how glossy it is (except I ran out of conditioner, so, yeah, today, not so much).
My hair: I can wear it either way. I can have it curly or straight. It’s long. I can do mostly anything with it. And I like my eyebrows because I don’t have to take them out because they’re just like, perfect. Not perfect, but just nice.
My height: I know I’m short, but to me, I am a fun size, like a little candy bar that comes in a fun size . . . and my weight, because I am not overweight and I am not underweight. So this is my normal, my weight . . . the inappropriate would be my breasts. I am proud of them. If I could, I would stay like this forever.
I’d say my breasts too because they’re not like too big and they’re not like too small. They’re a good size.
My smile and my skin color. My smile because I like to be happy and it’s big. My skin because I like the color of it. I just love it. I also like my arms—they’re long. I guess they’re long, but I don’t know if they’re long or not.
I like my skin color too because it matches with like any color of clothes that I own.
I like my face shape—it’s heart-shaped and like everyone else in my family, they’re either square shaped or rectangle or circular.
Oooh, I have one, I like the moles on my face. They make me look pretty. Very pretty.
I know what I like, I like my nose. It’s a button-shaped nose. It’s pretty.
I like it too, wanna trade?
I like my hair: it’s long
My freckles: they’re pretty
I like my toes: I like how they’re round. They look like mini-grapes.
I like my hips and my curves.
I like my curves too.
Yeah, I’m with you. I like my curves too.
Yeah, I like my curves.
I like my fat.
You’re not fat
I like my fat—everybody has fat on them—I didn’t say I was fat
I should like everything about me, because you should be happy with who you are.
We should, but everybody isn’t.
Yeah.
What about your curves?
They make you look more . . . feminine
They make me look good.
What does more feminine look like?
Like a water bottle.
It makes the shape of a woman.
Because, like, this is what a woman should look like (makes hourglass shape)
An hourglass shape
Exactly.
Or a Coke bottle
I don’t think so. My stomach doesn’t go in
That’s a curve
Yeh, but y’all said hourglass; I ain’t no hourglass.
Am I the only one that notices that boys are so square?
Boys are so square.
What Is a Normal Body to You?
In-ter-pre-tive [in-tur-pri-tiv] Re-search [ree-serch] Po-et-ry [poh-i-tree] (adj-n)
a “special language” we as researchers use when other modes of representation, such as prose, cannot capture what we want to show about our work and participants (Faulkner, 2007).
a special form used to explore knowledge claims and invite the reader to experience data in different ways (Faulkner, 2007).
utilizing a participant’s exact words in a compressed form in combination with researcher’s subjective response to fuse participant and researcher perspectives (Faulkner, 2007).
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My brain is an avocado light bulb 8
What does that mean?
Well, I’m smart, but at the same time, people don’t think I am, and because of that they replace me with an avocado.
Understand?
Introductions 9
At first I wanted my name to be Killerbunny, because in one of the books I’m currently writing, Vampire Wars, all of the vampire hunters will have superpowers, and Killerbunny will wage war on all of the vampires. But then Miss Hilary said the names we chose for ourselves would be the ones she always used when she referred to us in her book, so I changed my name to Elpis. Elpis means hope in Greek. I looked it up. I’m the kind of girl who has a lot of hope, even with two older sisters who think they’re better than me, an older brother who is the laziest person I’ve ever met, and a younger brother who gets everything he wants. It’s annoying that boys don’t have to do anything and get what they want, and we girls, we do everything we are asked to do by our parents and teachers and society, and we don’t get what we want. Anyway, I finally decided on Alice. For my name, I mean, because I saw the new Alice in Wonderland movie last summer and Alice was incredibly brave. I think I’m brave because I stand for what I believe in and I do what I want. So that’s me, Alice. (For the purposes of this story, anyway.) When I’m rich and famous one day, you might know me by another name, but either way you will know me. Because I will be a famous writer. Or artist. Or fashion designer. Or maybe an actor. Probably all of the above.
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Alice, a 12-year-old girl who was an innate feminist and an intellectual, constantly worked to reshape those cultural bodylines that had been laid out for her as a Mexican American girl from a working-poor background. Alice was extremely aware of the injustices in our society. She seemed to live purposefully incongruent to the world, and it was her intellect and ironic wit that accompanied the resistance that came into being when some kind of injurious language was inscribed on her body—a resistance I named talking-back-TO whatever or whomever was telling one of the girls she was not enough of something in her lived or physical body. Alice’s resistance/talking-back-TO was many times in response to the injustices of being discriminately gendered within her family, school, and society; other times it was in response to her societal positioning because of social-class standards, cultural beauty standards, popularity as it related to her own acceptance (or rejection) by peers, and teacher fairness.
Alice wrote dozens upon dozens of poems and initiated multiple conversations questioning the “why” of it all, always making sure to properly educate all of the girls in the Purple Flowers-and me-on the multiple ways peers, popular culture, teachers, family, and friends were sending her messages that she was not-enough in her body (as a teenage girl, a Mexican American girl, a girl from a working-poor family, and a girl who was not included in the “popular” crowd at school). Rather than bodily-not-enoughness coming into being for Alice as some kind of vulnerability or victimization, it seemed to continuously come into being as a resistance-to, a talking-back-TO the injurious language telling her she was not-enough. This first poem by Alice, “I’m Not a Rose,” for example, illustrates that bodily-not-enoughness beautifully coming into being on the page as a talking-back-TO whomever inscribed the injurious language of being “ugly” on her body.
I’m Not a Rose
you called me ugly and said I’m not a rose well sit down and listen to what I have to say I’m not the kind of girl who wastes her time to look thin I’m not that kind of girl to run off with her boyfriend for no reason I’m not mean buy honey I can get nasty I’m not a rose but I do have thorns I’m not pretty but I have a huge heart I’m not perfect but I’m good enough you say I’m ugly but I’m sort of pretty well little miss perfect It’s your time to talk when was the last time you gave someone a hug? When was the last time you saw someone who was depressed and think, ‘I’m going to help them’? I might not look like a prom queen and I know I’m not a rose but if you took the time to listen you would know you’re not even close.
These lines from Alice are gripping, telling, as they talk back-TO peers at school, society, whoever imposed the injurious language on her body. On this page for Alice, a resistance to the vulnerability that might envelope the situatedness of being called ugly came into being—a talking-back-TO this malevolent message, so that being-enough in her body, rather than not, became her situated truth. The lines point to the embodied attributes Alice possesses which allow her to be enough in her body, no matter what others say or think: “I’m not pretty but I do have a huge heart/ I’m not perfect but I’m good enough/ you say I’m ugly/but I’m sort of pretty.” Language taking hold of bodily-not-enoughness and talking-back-TO it: “When was the last time you gave someone a hug?/ When was the last time you saw someone who was depressed and think, ‘I’m going to help them?/ I know I’m not a rose/ but if you took the time to listen you would know/ you’re not even close.”
The point here is not whether bodies experience disorientation (we will and we do), “but how such experiences can impact the orientation of bodies and spaces . . . and how [experiences and bodies] are shaped by the lines they follow” (Ahmed, 2006, p. 158). It is important then, to pay attention to what the girls did with such moments of disorientation, as well as what such moments do to and for bodies—“whether they can offer us the hope of new directions, and whether new directions are reason enough for hope” (p. 158). Another of Alice’s pieces, “Unlock the Key Inside You,” illustrates a kind of embodied resistance in her writing as a new direction of possibility. It reveals how she called upon writing as a space to play with and talk back-TO the layers of complexity within bodily-not-enoughness.
Unlock the key inside you.
But how?
Let’s just say the only person that can unlock the key is you. But the question is do you know you? Who you are?
I am me, the smart intelligent me. I can do anything from learning the ABC’s to owning my own business.
OK. If this is you then why don’t you show it to the world?
Why should I show it to the world? It’s not like you respect me.
Oh! I see, you’re afraid of being yourself around people like this. Well, I have something to say: Being yourself is the only way you can survive in this world. Being you is going to help you succeed. Even if you’re not one of the popular ones you still are counted as somebody in this world. You are counted as a person. A person that can help this world succeed to many heights. That can become popular without even knowing. That can do the strangest things. Let’s just say everyone’s special in their own way and you are different just like everyone else. SO UNLOCK THE KEY INSIDE YOU AND BECOME YOU.
Alice’s writing is provocative here as bodily-not-enoughness comes into being on the page as a talking-back-TO, perhaps society, herself, and/or “one of the popular ones” in a manner that is so telling of how she and other girls in the Purple Flowers were always calling upon certain ways-of-being in order to be enough in their bodies. Alice artfully writes one character as if she could be experiencing some kind of vulnerability due to the world “not respecting her,” and she presents the girl as mistrusting due to that lack of respect she receives. Yet, this girl who could be experiencing vulnerability because of this lack of respect or this lack of popularity seems to also be talking-back-TO that vulnerability by asking why she should even allow the world to be privy to her intelligence, her learning the A, B, Cs or owning her own business, revealing Alice’s keen awareness of how she is perceived by some in American culture.
As exemplified in the writing above, it was not always the stereotypical White, middle-class thinness ideal permeating American popular culture (Bordo, 2003; Orbach, 2009) that contributed to the girls’ bodily-not-enoughness coming into being in multiple and nuanced ways as a talking-back-TO. Alice was very distraught, for example, by how gendered she believed American culture was, and how gendered she believed her familial-culture was. Almost every week she would make some reference about how “girls are this” and “boys are that,” or how boys “get to do this” and girls “have to do that.” In these moments it seemed as if Alice was simultaneously unpacking the consequences of what it meant to be gendered, and deploying gender as a tool to be enough in her own girlness. Sometimes this simultaneous unpacking and deployment of gender stemmed from the gendered roles she perceived within her family unit: like her mother’s expectation that Alice should give up the computer if her younger brother wanted to use it, that she should acquiesce to her younger brother’s preferences for television shows, or that Alice should make sure her brothers were awake and ready for school each day.
Other times her frustrations came from a gendered incident that took place at school: a comment made by a teacher that Alice perceived as sexist; how boys were “allowed” to do and say so much more than girls in many teachers’ classrooms; and how boys did not get reprimanded as much as girls for their behavior during class. Or she might report to us some gendered moment she saw in a movie or television show that infuriated her: some cartoon on television where all of the girl characters were “evil” and the boy characters were “heroes,” or how so many of the girl characters seemed dependent on others—or “helpless,” as she put it, in their roles on the Disney Channel, while many of the boy characters seemed very independent. To write/right some of these injustices, Alice was making sure all of the girl characters in the novel she was writing were powerful and independent so they would not “need anything from the “evil” boy characters.”
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Today I am enough! No one can tell me differently. I am beautiful enough. I’m kind enough. I’m wonderful and unique enough. I’m tall enough, big enough, curvy enough. I’m enough. Yes I am. – (Buttercup, 2009)
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On Talking-Back
Buttercup
My mom jokes that I need to see a psychologist because I gotta a problem. What’s my problem? Bein’ crazy. But I’m not crazy. Well, at least I don’t think I am until one of y’all tell me I am. When I told Hilary that story one day during writing group she asked me what bein’ crazy meant and I was like, “You know, I’m crazy! Do I need to get a dictionary out for you, Hilary?” and she was all, “No, I know what crazy means to me. I’m just wondering how you’re defining it.” So here’s how I’m defining it for her and you. Maybe us middle school kids aren’t crazy; we just tired of all of you grown-ups contradicting you-selves all the time and that makes us be crazy. Like one minute y’all tellin’ us we “too young” to understand something that’s goin’ on, and then the very next minute, y’all sayin’ things like, “You need to act more mature about this or that.” So which one is it? Are we too young or do we need to be more grown-up? I mean, I get it, sometimes you don’t think we should be hearin’ things because it might make us E-MO or whatever, but do you think we walk around with earplugs or somethin’? Parents, do you think we can’t hear you talkin’ in the living room or talkin’ on the phone when we in our bedrooms? Or at school, do you teachers think we don’t hear everything you “whispering” about us or our friends before, during, and after class? Or like when you think you bein’ all discrete, coverin’ you mouth with a stack of papers to talk about one of us with another teacher in the hall? Oh, and don’t even get me started on the “You need to be responsible and get your work in on time” speech we always get, when y’all take like ten years to get our homework back.
And another thing: y’all always tellin’ us to be a certain way—be respectful, be polite, don’t curse, don’t talk about other people like that; and then you turn right around and disrespect each other (or us), use curse words, or rant and rave about your boss or some Wendy’s worker in the drive-thru like they the devil. I call Hilary out on that stuff because she does it all the time. Like one time she was telling us a story about these redne—ooo, wait, I’m not supposed to use that word; so she was telling us this story about these really, really country-ignorant-actin’ man who was rude to her and then in the middle of the story she was like, “If they think I’m comin’ back to that place, they gotta another thing comin’, cuz I ain’t ever goin’ back!” Then Alice was tellin’ a story (go figure) like 10 minutes later and said something like, “She ain’t going to make me do that,” and Hilary says, “Don’t use ‘ain’t’ around me, please.” And I was like, “WHAT? You JUST said ‘ain’t’ like 5 minutes ago!” She said somethin’ about usin’ it as a joke because she was makin’ fun of someone, and she knew the rule of “ain’t” so she could break it. So I said, “Well so does Alice, so what’s the difference?” See what I mean? Walkin’ contradictions.
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Buttercup is a popular, intelligent African American girl whose bodily-not-enoughness also came into being as a talking-back-TO, both in her talk and in her writing. In a poem she wrote during our first writing group meeting in the fall of 2009, for example, her not-enoughness came into being as a talking-back-TO the White, middle-class dominant culture’s standard of beauty, which Buttercup clearly understood did not mirror her own physicality.
I’m me. Not some perfect model you see on T.V. I’m me. I’m as real as it gets—not some fake Barbie doll I’m a prize. You have to work hard to win me I got an ego out of this world! Maybe the biggest in history I’m a smart Black girl with attitude I’m a lover not a fighter I’m wonderful and free. I’m not the type that would fit your standards I don’t have to be liked because I love me I’m not to be judged because God made me I have plenty of confidence. I trust my gush
10
Buttercup narrates a powerful and telling situated confidence in these lines from a raced/gendered/religious place of being enough (“I’m a smart Black girl with an attitude/ I’m not to be judged because God made me”) which seems impenetrable—as if she is the girl we want girls to be: self-assured and unscathed by fictitious representations of bodies constructed by popular culture in our society. The embodied attributes she lists in the poem are beautiful illustrations of not-enoughness coming into being on this page, in this moment as talking-back-TO the unattainable expectations and cultural bodylines set forth by American consumerism. Buttercup writes that she is “a prize you have to work hard to win,” she has “an ego out of this world. Maybe the biggest in history,” she is “wonderful and free—not the type that would fit your standards,” and she is a “smart Black girl with attitude.” These lines point to her deep understanding of how bodies are disciplined in American culture and her awareness of how the way she is trying to be-in-the-world probably does not coincide with the normalized standards set forth by dominant ideologies.
There were several other moments where Buttercup’s awareness of dominant ideologies that have an effect on bodies of color was present. She wrote in her writer’s notebook, for example, about how she experienced life as a “light-skinned” African American girl in a southeastern region of the country where people questioned the “Black” of her “Blackness” due to the lightness of her skin.
Everywhere and anywhere I turn I’m reminded of what I am not. They all say, “You can’t be Black, look at you.” Or “Why are you so light skinned?” Well, let me explain. I am a young African-American girl who feels that I am not enough because of my color. They say, “Are you mixed?” I say, “No.” They look as if they are amazed. They act as if they’ve never seen a light skinned person before. They say, “Are you serious? You expect me to believe that your mama and daddy are both Black?” “Yes,” I say. They laugh and walk away. They call me a lie. I just want to cry. Someday I’ll defend myself. I’ve proven it many times, but they’re going to hear me. Dats a promise!
According to Fanon (1986), once race is inscribed on the body, it cannot be erased. Banks (2003) additionally suggests that once some kind of meaning is inscribed on the body, it may “control the readings we do of ourselves, our experiences, and others” (p. 25). This piece is a powerful example of how a certain kind of race was inscribed on Buttercup’s body when the question was posed about her being “so light-skinned”: the racialized history of “passing for Black” (Fordham, 2010). 11 A racialized-bodily-not-enoughness, then, seems to come into being on this page as a resistance-to the vulnerability that could have been, a talking-back-TO the injurious language someone inscribed on Buttercup’s body telling her she was not-Black-enough because of the ‘light skin’ in which she was born. She writes that yes, people calling her a “lie” makes her want to “cry” because they do not believe both of her parents are African American due to the lightness of her skin. While I understand that the racialized context behind this piece could have fragments of vulnerability tethered to it, some susceptibility to being wounded by the denigrating comments people make, this experience does not end in vulnerability—it does not end with Buttercup only being able to read her body in this way.
If Buttercup had stopped writing at, “They call me a lie. I just want to cry,” vulnerability with no resistance-to that vulnerability might be something to explore. Consequently, this piece ends with Buttercup promising us that she will defend herself someday: she has proven it many times, and we will hear her. The important thing to note here is that though her body might have been disoriented by injurious language, whatever psychic and social resources she called upon manifested a resistance that allowed her to reorient herself on those bodylines so that she could be enough in her “light-skinned body,” rather than not, in that moment on the page.
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If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat. It is an unnecessary insult. (Angelou, 1969, Preface)
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In this next poem, I point you to Buttercup’s awareness of her Black body’s displacement amongst White bodies, yet also how this racialized-not-enoughness, again, comes into being on the page as a resistance-to that displacement; as a talking-back-TO the incessant malevolent messages she receives as an African American teenage girl.
I’m not just liked for my looks I am liked for my personality and smarts I am not just a ‘little Black girl’ I am smart, talented, special, and loved I am not fake; if you’re lookin’ for fake buy a Barbie doll I am real and wonderful because I know what I want in life and I don’t let people change that I am not what they say I am slowly learning not to take it to heart I am not mean I am sweet and sensitive I am not dumb or slow I am smart and funny, in my own ways I am not what they think I am what I know
These lines not only reveal the embodied attributes Buttercup has that she brings forth in direct, binary opposition to the injurious messages inscribed on her body (“I am not just a little Black girl/ I am smart, talented, special, and loved/ I am not what they say/ I am slowly learning not to take it to heart/ I am not mean/ I am sweet and sensitive/ I am not dumb or slow/ I am smart and funny/ I am not what they think/ I am what I know”), they also show the incredible resilience Buttercup’s words embody, even when someone or something is insistent upon telling her she is not-enough. As readers we have no way of accessing the “they” in Buttercup’s poems; we can, however, notice the multiple backgrounds of bodily-not-enoughness as it manifests different layers of resistance, while also acknowledging the insistence of the words to resist and rise above the messages being inscribed on the writer’s body.
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It is not just that bodies are directed in specific ways, but that the world is shaped by the directions taken by some bodies more than others. It is thus possible to talk about the White world, the straight world, the beautiful world, the skinny world as a world that takes the shape of the motility of certain skins and certain bodies (Ahmed, 2006, pp. 159-160)
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When thinking about how some bodies in American culture inhabit certain spaces (White, middle-class, heterosexual, abled, thin, “beautiful”), how those bodies are oriented toward some things more than others would, according to Ahmed (2006), depend on which way they turn, which would then affect what was within their reach. It is interesting to think about how space itself is impressed upon by bodies, just as bodies are impressed upon by space. It is a matter of how things make their impression of being on this side or that side of those cultural bodylines, as being left or right, near or far, straight or…not, all of which makes space oriented. When thinking about how to reorient and reshape those spaces, I often wonder what might happen if we as adults, researchers, and educators began learning from and with the young adolescent bodies that are constantly working to reorient themselves in those spaces that have been historically inhabited by some bodies and not others? Those beautifully resilient bodies that are persistent in talking-back-TO the cultural bodylines that have historically been created by being followed and followed by being created, teaching all of us how to be certain ways in our bodies? Would something other than historical reproduction occur?
Perhaps if we begin acknowledging the work that female young adolescent bodies of color are always, already doing to reshape the spaces they inhabit, we might begin to also see those spaces reshaping what is available to all bodies: hope, possibility. But why stop there? Learning to read female young adolescent bodies differently—as possibilities rather than problems—we might start rethinking how we as adults, researchers, and educators approach our own relationships with our bodies. The girls in the Purple Flowers’ experiences of bodily-not-enoughness reminded me that even as a 37-year-old woman (or 39 or 45, or 56) I could change the way I allowed my body to be shaped and disciplined by Youthful-Confidence at the gym back on that early December morning in 2010. Remembering the resistance I viscerally felt when I was with the girls in the Purple Flowers, I was able to (even if momentarily) reconfigure the way I called upon my agency as a 37-year-old woman who could have otherwise succumb to a history of repeated and habitual actions that have shaped bodies over time. If we began listening differently to and learning from the ways in which female young adolescent bodies of color are constantly working to resist the cultural bodylines that have been created by being followed and followed by being created, historical reproductions might eventually fail—or at least they have the possibility to be reshaped, and new bodylines could then emerge.
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Epilogue
The last day I met with the girls in the Purple Flowers they wanted to write a “group poem” so I could include something they wrote as a collective “in your diss-whatever-book,” as they often referred to it. While they crafted this poem I have since titled, “Group Think,” I sat listening to their decisions, observing their poetic bodies move with such confidence as they composed: so passionate, so candid—each one of them adding lines to the poem, while making sure the typist did NOT capitalize certain words because they wanted those words to “make a statement, just like this poem will, won’t it, Miss Hilary!” I could see myself in the poem as the girls composed it that day, or at least just outside of it; I again saw myself in that poem when I confronted Youthful-Confidence that morning at the gym; and I can still see myself in the poem now as I type it on the page for you. I wonder if you will be able to do the same: if you can see yourself both in the poem and in the experiences that I have described in this text, or just outside of them at least, if you can nod your head and think, Yes, I have had that, or I could have that (van Manen, 1990) then I have done my job.
Shut up cuz I have somethin’ to say I’m tired of being silenced i have something to say Stop talking over me i have something to say Somebody listen i have something to say My mind has kept me silent but now i have the courage to speak up I’m breaking down this door, i have something to say! I have the power in my hand To do what i can Cause i have something to say
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Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.