I have been thinking a lot about what activism means to me. I like calling myself an activist. I am an activist. The sentence feels good in my mouth and I feel pride every time the words roll off my tongue. Maybe activism isn’t even mine to claim, maybe it isn't really anyone's to claim but its for someone to acquire. But whether I am wrong or right, I go ahead and find identity and joy in being an activist. It allows me to find some pride in this world that is built on oppression, genocide and world wars. But what does activism mean to me?
As I scroll through my Instagram that is full of posts by beautiful individuals/activists posting and sharing their stories and their mundane (yet powerful) resistances, I come across an author/blogger talking about body positivity. I hesitate before opening her post, knowing that her words would dry my mouth and create a knot in my stomach that would (k)not open for days (haha see what I did there). Body positivity is an integral part of feminism. Body positivity is also something I struggle with every day of my life.
Body positivity is also something, I know people around me struggle with every day. How can we not? How can we not look at ourselves and feel like we’re not good enough when the entire world is a product of a capitalist system that wants to tell us we need to be fixed? We go to stores and buy every cream and every pill that will make us into the people we see on tv: skinny and mostly white. Whether it is a fairness cream from India or the Victoria's Secret fashion show in the States, women everywhere are given a standard of beauty that is Eurocentric and yes, impossible to achieve.
I grew up feeling inadequate in the way I look. I still struggle sometimes to allow myself to feel beautiful. I still have days when the acne on my face makes me want to crawl into bed and not leave my house. I still go shopping and feel like sinking into the ground when a top doesn’t fit just right. I still freak out when I see a picture someone tagged me in and I don’t look like my beautifully edited self.
Unfortunately, I even allowed numerous individuals (one in particular) to tell me and allow me to believe that my body wasn’t good enough. I allowed cis heterosexual men to be the judge of whether I get to be happy with my body or not. But recently, I am pushing myself to allow myself to love me for who I am. But more than that, I a pushing myself to question why I was told to hate myself in the first place. Our bodies are beautiful, our bodies are a piece of art that is unique to all of us.
Me, pushing myself to love and forgive myself more is my way of resisting the patriarchal capitalist system. Activism then to me is a lifestyle, and self-love is a revolution.
