Honey, Hips – an essay on my body

“I felt like I was never an entire woman, never the complete picture, just a headless dream with hips.”

I'm a stranger to my body. I've never really known it. As a child, the term ‘daydreamer’ was constantly used to reprimand me. I was always confused as to why they thought it was a bad thing. Even if they put it in a report. Circle it in red. Show it to my mother. Whatever the task was, I was in my head – lounging on clouds, imagining mermaid scales, never really there. Daydreaming is not something I've ever given up, it's just the way I've always been inclined. Inwards and upwards. I've existed away from my body. Elsewhere, always.

The pink marker outline of my body is only something I started to notice when the world around me brought it to my attention. When others pointed it out.

Deep in the grip of girlhood, right in the middle of summer, I sat on sun-warmed concrete eating watermelon with a girlhood friend. She had recently moved to our town and we'd quickly taken a liking to each other. I remember the buzz of her arrival. Her big blue eyes and fast air of city knowledge meant she fused into our tiny school breezily. On this particular day we'd been lounging in her backyard, eating melted hazelnut chocolate off our fingers, and talking with teenage passion about the boys we were crushing on. In the shade, she waved a chocolate finger at my midriff and sighed "I wish I had your waist". With watermelon in my mouth I giggled and mumbled. But I remember how jarring this new information was. A rip in the long, low heat. A fleshy revelation.

Up until that moment, I was unaware that this thing that seemed to live on me, or in me, or was me, was something to want. It was strange to come to an awareness of yourself through the sighs of your new girlhood friend. What you thought you knew adjusting into a new kind of self-understanding. Up until that day, I had a cluelessness about my body. An ignorance. Life for me had existed entirely within my mind, my imagination.

At 16, after my braces came off and my DD cup arrived – I became visible. And quickly. Like I was pushed onto a green velvet stage, squinting into a spotlight. The outside world had fed me information about my body, my desirability, and I pulled it into myself, I let it live there. On a weekday afternoon, my high school boyfriend confided in me that his older brother had told him that he 'liked my body just not my face'. Once again, my self-understanding was torn violently down my seams. I was not really desired. It was these hips, these tits. They wanted my body, which felt foreign to me, like it wasn't mine. To want my body felt like not wanting me at all. I felt envious of my own flesh. Over time I threaded myself back together with the belief that I would only ever be wanted as a figure. I felt like I was never an entire woman, never the complete picture, just a headless dream with hips.

On the night of my 21st birthday party, I wore tight, white Levi jeans I'd found at a thrift store. As the night rolled on, some kid drunkenly slurred that he needed to tell me I had a great ass. "Like, it's so good" he exclaimed. Eyes glazed over with beer. I laughed and brushed it off, but it made me feel like I was always late to myself. Like I was always a stranger to my skin. It was the first time I was ever told about my ass but it wasn't the last. I laughed in champagne eyes that night, wondering if I'd ever know myself before the world does.

Did I love it? I know I'm supposed to say no, but yes. It was sexy and exciting being told I had a great ass. Coming from any gender, any mouth. So it was fun, but did it take me towards a genuine relationship with my body? No. It didn't. While the relationship with my internal world is sacredly mine, the relationship with my flesh is spoken mostly in the voices of others. One was mine, one was not. It was never that I hated these things on my body and someone came along, pointed it out, and changed it into the soft eyes of love; most of the time I just didn't notice. I had no conviction in love or hate towards my body. In a way, it just didn't exist.

In my mid-twenties, I started sleeping with a man so hot I could barely fathom it. He told me that once, a girl in a bar called him a shrimp. I asked him what that meant and he gave a paraphrased definition from Urban Dictionary, which I googled the next day:

Urban Dictionary, Shrimp: Someone who has a sexy body but isn't beautiful. Came from the idea that when eating a shrimp, you only take the body then throw away the head.

I was so shocked I nearly spat my drink out. The concept enraged me. And he was unrealistically gorgeous. Mouth-watering hot. And unlike me, he was no stranger to himself. Outside opinions were mostly radio noise. When I showed a photo to my friend she said Jesus. On dates, women would trip over themselves to get in his eyesight. I couldn't blame them for melting and going a little floppy in his presence, I did too. He had been called a shrimp once, but clearly throngs of other women completely disagreed. To learn that he had lived the same story as me broke a sort of spell.

Either this woman in the bar and the rest of us had a different definition of beauty, or she was lying. What was strikingly beautiful to us, wasn't to her. Or she was out to sting. This realisation snapped my warped belief that the perception of others is a undeniable stone-hard truth and something to contort a self around. Rather, these perceptions are something pliable, changeable, built on breeze. While they can still sting or excite, while they can influence someone's sense of self, while they do feel truthful – they aren't. Not really. No-one knows what truth truly is. How could a drunk boy know? How could a brother know?

Thousands of people can agree on someones attractiveness, or not. But have you seen a woman who has cast it aside? Have you seen the shimmer?

I still don't know how really I feel about my body. These memories overlay my connection with it. I feel like other people got there first; like I was too slow to stake my claim. I still carry these opinions. Barbs of perception stuck into a body I have tried relentlessly to escape. Or keep. I have a culturally acceptable body, if I sculpt it even a desirable one. Although, maybe it's not. Maybe I just believe that because I've been told by girls in powdery bathrooms. The closest thing to a glimmer of truth is that it feels painfully alien to me. I feel most unseen when I'm looked at. Most unlike myself in my physical form.

I've been told I have a great ass and when it's said I won't deny that I blush a little. Cheeks flushed bedroom pink. Making me obvious. I know I'll probably always enjoy it. I've decided it's fine – I am not failing as a woman if I like it. Like red velvet cupcakes, it's a pleasure to enjoy. But just as red velvet cupcakes don't hold a universal truth on worth, neither does an ass compliment.

I remind myself that I can start again. I can scrub myself clean of their fingertips. Erase the tape. Find new definitions for my body. I can shut out the rest of the world, lay lax in the grass, trace a single daisy up my navel. Coaxing my internal life up and out of my skin. Into burning light. Into bright perception. We'll reacquaint ourselves. Meet each other the way we should have. My body, me, this new conversation.

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Brooke Solis x