by tashmcgill | Aug 18, 2016 | Bodies, Culture & Ideas
I’ll say it sometimes, dropped into the lull of a conversation about somebody’s graceful movement.
Or somebody might ask, ‘You know, what do you call it, that step?’ and I will answer without thinking, ‘that is the pas de basque’ or I will say, ‘that was a ballonné’ and keep to myself how the hands may have been more precise.
Then to quizzical and bemused faces, I will explain it quietly, ‘I was a dancer, once.‘
When I was a young girl I loved the feeling of my hip flexor stretched to pointed toe in a fluid, long movement. The smell of a new leather ballet shoe and the extension of my torso while my legs shifted into fifth position with hands at two; ready to leap into that old and elegant language of bone and body.
I craved the forward propulsion of movement that came from the pirouette and the barre exercises that dominated my classes. The discipline of dance taught me to prize technique in every aspect of my life. Everything I learn now starts the same way – the movement in completion, then breaking down the steps until I have mastered each technique before bringing it all together. Ballet taught me the strategy of moving artfully from one place to another, step by carefully selected step. Technique will take you places talent alone cannot, so now my fingers move over the keyboard as fast as my thoughts move and my knife can dance across a chopping board. In learning to dance, I learned how to learn and learned how to execute.
Then I learned at 5’2” with curved, wide hips and too busty for my height, I would never be a ballerina. So I turned my attention elsewhere, put my ballet shoes away and took two buses to music lessons instead. For a long time, if left to my own devices on an empty stage, the dance would erupt from within me, my body didn’t know I wasn’t a dancer anymore. I would shut myself in the living room at any chance, turning up the stereo to dance freely. I would commandeer the empty school assembly hall in the brief moments of early morning to practice the steps that were not yet faded from memory.
Last week, I found myself alone in the gym, looking at the open space and remembering I was a dancer, once. I did not resist the urge to cartwheel, leap, lift and spin my extended right leg into a twist and finish in a plié. No one saw or questioned, laughed or scoffed. I just danced, as I am prone to do.
As it turns out, I can still pirouette, precise and straight from east to west across the room, and land a leap with leg extended and toe arched into submission. I can still feel the fibre of muscle and definition that lies underneath the soft curves of my body that will bend when asked, into concave and convex shapes or spread into a split with ease. The difference is that now my body dances alone in the dark, unwatched.
In all my dancing, I danced alone. To dance together requires a shared language, an assented understanding between two parties. Regardless of whether you dance for an audience, if you dance with another, you must dance for them too. That is what I have wanted to learn.
The first time I was taken to the dance floor with a partner – my hips froze and my body found resolution. Resolution to not move, to not engage. I needed language that I had no words for and nothing to take the place of words. Words couldn’t tumble out of my lips to make sense of what I didn’t understand or the questions I couldn’t ask.
Alone in the room, with an empty floor and only my own rhythm to follow, I can effortlessly freestyle and push my body beyond imagined limits. I am unhindered by the thought of who is watching or with me. I can make my own steps and choose the most interesting ways to move across the floor.
When I am not alone in the room, each of my steps is a response and will be responded too. My breath must change to accommodate new rhythms. Patience and bravery is required in new ways. All of a sudden I am aware of my dance space and the space of another. My body is less willing to leap and spin so freely; for the first time I lose confidence in my technique. Technique that has never failed me before.
By now, you should know this is both a true story about dance and a metaphor. I am a paradox of confidence and innocence, sometimes imagining more quickly than I can learn and sometimes learning more than I can practice. But there are a few things I know to be true.
I am changed. Still insecure, wary of misstep, but also brave I step into rhythm; willing to try without the security of technique to guide me. I am intrepidly exploring trust that makes me brave.
In this moment of exploration and discovery, I realise how much I have missed being taught. I have missed instruction and the security of being guided to perfect technique. And my desire is perfection that bears creation, experimentation and re-creation. I want to move more than I ever have, but a new way of dancing.
These old moves have been my safety net, the trusted and known. Suddenly I am inspired to new rhythms. I want new language for my tongue to stumble over and finesse until I speak this language with ease. I find myself wanting to dance for another, to move beyond technique to intuition.
I want to practice as I have never practiced before, bending flesh to my will and making beauty from my sweat, strain and gasping breath.
A long time ago, I wrote a poem about learning to dance. I find myself here, nearly twenty years later still learning and wanting to learn.
there’s a peace coming for a time
we will listen to the air for a while
competing and combining in breath and gasp
from two sets of crimson lips
tarnished hips and bruises
from this dance you teach
teach me how to breathe
and move again
I will not run or hide
I will try a little harder
keep slightly closer,
follow you and watch myself
imitate and learn this rhythm
you already know
and i have yet to learn
but there is peace coming
neither will care who
knew what when we began
this will be our dance for a time
circling, entwined
i will learn the things you speak
and never speak
that from limb and soul
peace does grow
what is new to me
can be new again for you
i will make it so
a gift to another, my other
your gift to me new language
for one who knows a thousand words
a thousand more will rise and descend
in sweet and heavy songs
and the ghosts will go
leaving us to dance
speaking to only each other
by tashmcgill | Jul 15, 2015 | Bodies, Culture & Ideas
From the archive: A few years I lost a lot of weight and noticed some interesting changes in the way people responded to me. Here’s a snippet of what I reflected on back then.
I don’t make any secret of the fact that I’m as single as a single person comes – never been on a date, never held hands, never been kissed. I do consider myself to be in possession of a fairly healthy sexuality. I’ve certainly met my fair share of men who, in possession of depth, character and a sense of humour have won my affection. In other words – I’ve never been not open to the idea. In fact – if there is one thing in this world that I know how to do.. it’s crush. I’mreally good at seeing the beauty, goodness and wonder in the people around me.
Still – something in the wind has changed.
The only thing that’s changed is my physical appearance. And I’m not offended by it. It’s the most honest thing to acknowledge. Sometimes love and romance needs a trigger; sex certainly does.
Whatever the threshold of commonly accepted desirability/eligibility is – I think I’ve passed it. For the first time in my adult life, people are taking an interest in my love life. They’re suggesting people to connect with. It’s intensely strange to experience something that feels so adolescent at this stage of my life. Some in jest, some in resolute seriousness, have begun to talk about my relationship status, potential mates. From the most unusual places, comes commentary, speculation and suggestion.
The only thing that’s changed is my physical appearance. And I’m not offended by it. It’s the most honest thing to acknowledge. No more of that, true love loves regardless stuff. Sometimes love and romance needs a trigger, and sex definitely does. Chemistry might still exist but it has a hard time getting out there when you’re carrying extra kilos than you should. There’s no issue in that for me. I’m so different now to how I was and so much the same. I’m no more or less sexually aware or available than I ever was… but others’ awareness of me has changed.
In fact, it’s almost a rewarding gratification. It’s a relief to be noticed at last. It’s a relief to have my sexuality, my gender recognised and attributed to my attractiveness. It’s confirming and affirming my identity and participation within the species. I am no more woman than ever I was, but oh, you should hear me roar now.
What I wonder is – to what extent does physicality impact our overall perception of sexuality/eligibility and attraction? I’m not really that different in mind or heart than I was 10 months ago, but still I think a friend said it best, when he said “You’ll be married any minute now – just look at you!” I’m thinking it impacts us quite a lot. In fact, more so the group and community dynamic than the individual. After all, in years past – the art of matchmaking has always had a place in community ritual. So, community affirmation of sexuality and gender identity is important.
So, is there a threshold at which we subconsciously categorize people and attribute a certain level of asexuality to their persona? A point at which we stop considering the attributes of sexuality in the consideration of a whole person?
From Another Side
I’ve always felt guilty of failure, as if there was a part of my understanding of human nature that was simply underdeveloped, unqualified due to my inexperience. I’ve had to consciously shirk off feelings of “less-than” and the looks that suggested a sub-text I’d only understand once I’d had a relationship of my own.
I can agree that there are many nuances of human behaviour that I have not experienced for myself. Still, my observation skills seem to increase exponentially as the years tick by. Last night around drinks, there was a refreshing and unheard of perspective shared for the first time ever. With it, a bit of a bubble broke and I felt somehow released.
“Still,” he said (being the recipient of a recently shattered heart), “you’ve got to be thankful that you don’t have any of that baggage of poor relationships to carry into the future. Everything’s a fresh clean slate.”
Yes – there is something delightful about that. Whatever tragedies I have suffered on my own or lived vicariously through my friends … I have no significant love wounds. All unnecessary and unfounded conjecture on love may abound – but I can believe the best of love between a man and a woman. I can believe in soulmates, in connection as deep of the deepest oceans. I can believe in patience and appreciating someone for who they are, not how they make me feel. I can love freely out of knowing myself. I can believe the best of love and how it is.
Now, the world says I am qualified for love; acceptably attractive. The community expects it of me. Isn’t that strange?
This was written more than five years ago. I’m slightly heavier now than I was writing this, but just as single. A few stolen kisses and plenty of confirmation of my robust, vital sexuality. Still unscarred from love and yet, not without wounds. My community has changed expectation too. Now, those who speak say it’s my intelligence and independence. Others nod sympathetically, I just nod. I am more myself now than I was then but I have always been me.
by tashmcgill | Jul 14, 2015 | Bodies, Culture & Ideas
I did not earn these tiger stripes of mine. I am not one of the women who can claim bravery, sharing images of stretchmarks on Instagram. The hashtag is #loveyourlines. Search it and you will read some words that reveal how women really feel about beauty and its social constructs.
“Maybe we’ve been looking at it wrong. Maybe we’re not damaged, maybe these are the brands of our accomplishments.”
“I have struggled with my stretchmarks for years, but today I want to accept them. I’m not perfect, but I’m worthy of love and loving myself.”
“They’re like flames and like the Phoenix, I will rise above them.”
We talk as if the body fights against itself. As if we have fought, battled and finally lost perfection as the prize. Then we call that battle birth and say it must be worth it. Our sacrifice is worth it because of what we made.
If a woman must say she is beautiful because she made another human, because her scars are the product of love, because she sacrificed flawlessness to make another perfect little body to one day be wrecked by scars of love’ – then she does not say ‘Because.’
She is saying ‘despite’.
Qualifying For Beauty.
We are looking for one more way to qualify for beauty and find our meaning. It’s not that our meaning is solely found in our beauty but physical beauty and the popular feminine are entwined without distinction. So our language becomes muddled and unclear. We mistake our words in trying to accept ourselves fully. We are saying self-acceptance and love lies beyond overcoming the obstacle of our physical imperfections, we talk ourselves into self-acceptance by worthy cause and thus; forget – our bodies alone are not our beauty. In fact, our bodies are not our beauty, just a vessel of it. A machine.
If I didn’t know that our bodies are not our beauty, it would be easier to believe. Instead I know our bodies are vessels for beauty not beauty itself. Carriers of beauty and at times beautiful, our bodies are machines designed to slowly burn up as we decay physically, mentally towards death. We ought to use them up, wrinkled and worn down. We ought to wring every ounce of beauty from within these bodies.
Isn’t it strange that our bodies might be loved and yet our True Selves remain untouched, but when we are truly loved and seen, our bodies can be also loved?
Maybe I could stand it if the tiger stripes of birth were my story too. Little silver marks that fall delicately around my curves. Like lace over my hips and gathered like fingerprints under my belly button. Velvety to the touch, in the right light they shimmer, like a roadmap of where to touch me. In truth, the map says – here’s where I stretched. Here’s what’s left behind of the sad and heavy days, here’s what you didn’t know at 17. Here’s what you lost at 28 and found at 30 years of age. Here is my pale Scottish skin over strong thighs and proud breasts. Here is an extraordinary, sensitive machine that carries my self, my soul, my sense.
My marks are not qualified.
They are not beautiful because they came from something worthy.
Nor beautiful because they proved my womb is warm and useful.
They did not mark me as one who is connected by flesh and blood.
They are not battle scars.
They are not the remnants of some hard-fought struggle.
I am of sound mind enough to reason, these marks cannot make me beautiful – though you might tell me that, if I had given birth.
Truthfully, I have nothing worthy to attribute my marks to. Like many women who cover their first stretchmarks with the stretchmarks of childbearing, I grew too fast and shrunk too quickly, my skin could not keep up. Time has passed and those lines are faded. I do not qualify my imperfections to be considered beautiful. My body was made to be used up and I am doing a good job of that, perfecting it’s strength and ability for balance, grace and clumsiness.
In the same way, I am not beautiful because of my age or the lines on my face. I cannot be considered beautiful because I have lived so long, making this body last until my life is etched in leathered valleys.
Isn’t it strange that our bodies might be loved and yet our True Selves remain untouched, but when we are truly loved and seen, our bodies can be also loved?
My beauty is within. Seek it out.
by tashmcgill | Jan 31, 2015 | Bodies, Culture & Ideas
“What can I do with these small hands?”
There are a few things about my body I’ve always been self-conscious about, not the regular things but little details. I always aspired to have elegant hands. The kind with long, graceful fingers and delicate wrists. But very little in my body is shaped that way. I’m compact, with bold and sure lines. I’m formed of curves and muscle. My hands reflect those same short but strong characteristics. Square palms, straight, squat fingers. My hands are working hands, they are not beautiful.
My hands, can’t seem to stay still while I’m telling a story or expressing a point. I imagine my gestures are as graceful as I’d like for them to be. I would be satisfied with a perfect manicure, then practicality takes over; for the sake of knife speed, guitar playing and heavy lifting I cut my vanity down to a short, unfussy length and splash them occasionally with bright colours.
I know those long, elegant fingers wouldn’t belong on my body. I can see for myself how my father’s more delicate wrists would look strange at the end of my arms. My hands are small, generally speaking, but not with a natural deft flexibility. I have to work hard with delicate tasks. They are covered in tiny knife scars, the way that chefs’ hands often are. Just this morning, I glanced a too sharp blade against an unwary finger. There is a blurred spot from my knuckles brushing against concrete in youthful exuberance. A trace of where a lighting rig stole some skin, a pocket where a nail got a shot in. Some fade over time, others remain. But I see them all.
I turn my hands over for a new set of callouses. A knife scar might be mistaken for a number of things but these callouses tell you what I do. The actions I’ve repeated over and over. What I do tells you something about who I might be. So these callouses I’m more fond of, because they are telling a story I don’t mind so much.
There’s no mistaking the callous of where my knife blade rests against the base of my index finger, or where my pen sits pressed against my middle finger for hours of writing at a time. And at my fingertips and the side of my thumb, my skin is made tough and worn smooth by guitar strings. These marks have corresponding stories on the rest of my body. A scar hidden by my tattoo, from a sweaty summer night where a blister formed and burst under my strum. A near permanent bruise on my right thigh where my guitar sits inside my arms. In the same way, an indentation on each of my wrists from where I sit at this laptop cataloguing my thoughts.
All these stories, telling you something. That I am a maker of things, I hope. That from my functional, sturdy, un-beautiful hands something beautiful is being made.
But there is something more. If I look at my hands the way a palm-reader would, I can see what is possible. I see these clear lines, soft valleys. What is unseen, what leaves no mark is touch. My touch is strong and warm. My hands are almost never cold. I twiddle my thumbs without irony. They are endlessly curious, exploring new territories. They almost never stop moving, even at rest my fingers curl around themselves. I love to touch.
There is one thing, though, from these practical, unbeautiful hands. My hands are capable of making something that lives inside of my flesh and yours. My hands can make home. A safe place, a healing space, a comforting space. My hands can show you my love in silence. I feel it when I take a newborn into my arms, or when my 10-year-old nephew climbs into my lap and asks for tickles. When I walk in the forest I place my hand on the totara and the pohutakawa and say thank you. My pulse warm against the aging bark, I say a thousand things with these hands that could never make their way into words.
When moments come and my hands touch you and hold you, other human – I thank you too, for letting me make something beautiful.
by tashmcgill | Dec 30, 2014 | Bodies, Community, Culture & Ideas, Friendship, Mind, Relationships
Your friend is your needs answered.
He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving.
And he is your board and your fireside.
For you come to him with your hunger, and you seek him for peace.
There is family; whom you cannot choose and there is fraternity – the brothers and sisters you do choose.
Do I value friendship over all other things? Yes. Friendship – true, complete companionship outlasts all. Friendship is the root of love. You depend on your friend, but you are not dependent on him. It is in friendship that we learn to see someone fully as they are, we learn how to live with the differences between us and remain loyal regardless. We learn to see the truth of people rather than our ideal of them. Friendship will outlast romance, marriages, the birth and death of children, the death and decay of lovers, career changes. Friendship is a paradox – to hold another so close in your heart yet not be dependent entirely on them in the same way we need a spouse. Friendship spans continents and endures the years.
We live in a complex culture, hindered by lack of inhibition yet a proliferation of obstacles to true friendship between men and women. But if we are to navigate this complex culture, we must do with the art of friendship high in our priority. Not just friendship between like of our like, but friendship between the genders (and transgender). More than ever, men and women need to understand one another and engage with each other in meaningful ways outside the limitations of potential partnership and sexual liaison. (more…)
by tashmcgill | Oct 22, 2014 | Bodies, Culture & Ideas, Health, Mind
I got to 200 the other day. 200 gym sessions this year. I train for lots of reasons.
I need the stress release of boxing.
I like to talk to my trainer who is both my friend and therapist.
I like getting up to go to a place I want to be in the mornings.
And then there’s the real reason, that I sometimes admit to myself.
Because I want to be beautiful, I secretly whisper to myself.
Then I have to follow it up with empowering feminist phrases like ‘beauty is strength’ and ‘healthy is beautiful’.
But I released when I counted to 200, I’m not chasing beautiful at all. I’ve been chasing normal these 200 sessions or so. In fact, normalized beauty is probably what I’ve been chasing since my early teens.
So much comfort is found when you can establish your identity within the spectrum of normal. Society doesn’t push uncomfortably on any of your sharp edges that way. Nothing feels like a mis-fit if you can find a spot in the middle of everything.
Normal is not even about being a certain weight or shape. It’s about fitting in. Fitting into clothes, fitting into expectations, fitting into.. normal. Fitting in substitutes for having a sense of belonging, but belonging to what?
Normalized beauty is a set of homogenized templates. Haircuts, fashion cuts, brow styling. Slightly deeper we get to athletic versus curvy and I’ve already talked about the fashionable butt trend. I was just reflecting on the waif trend of the early 2000s. Normalized beauty changes to reflect societal trends. Normalized beauty is formed by comparisons and averages.
So that changes something for me, because actually I’m not humble enough to aspire to normal. I want to be beautiful. I want to be extraordinary. I want to be captivating – and I want to be all of that beyond a normalized beauty template.
At my age, the internet and Facebook is full of pithy sayings and blog posts from women who mean well. They write about becoming comfortable in their own skin, loving their stretchmarks and how their partners are truly attracted to them when they are full of confidence. I want to rally against that, because it feels like just another form of normalization.
I do want to be beautiful in ways that are more than just my body, my shape and my skin. I want to be seen as beautiful in all the ways that only I can be seen. I want to be incomparable, therefore nothing about my beauty can be normalized. I think we all do, men and women alike.
I think I am idealistic. At my age, I’ve pursued this game before. But perhaps it’s not a game. Perhaps all I’m chasing at the gym each morning is strength. Perhaps it is confidence that makes you beautiful, once you know who you are. Perhaps it’s having confidence that there is beauty within you, instead of being concerned with how I average out on the scale of ‘normal’.
Normalization is a creeping vine that has the power to choke us. It pushes us to keep up with the ‘human experience timeline’ – marry at a certain age, buy a house, have kids, change careers, travel overseas, buy that beach house… and so on. Normalization starts on the inside though, in how we see ourselves, then how we see others, how we relate or compare ourselves to others and then how we compare against the timeline.
It comes back to identity. Who am I? What am I about? Where and how do I find meaning for myself. What am I going to do about it?
I’m going to get up in the morning and hit the gym for session #201. I’m going to look in the mirror and see what I see, instead of what I’ve been looking for. Instead of chasing normalized beauty, I’m just going to chase uncovering, discovering me.
