When I was a child my parents had one of those 1970s green Electrolux canister vacuums with the long handle and fabric hose. I remember lugging it around the house and always loving how strong the suck was and watching cracker crumbs and dog hair and dirt disappear from the carpet, leaving straight clean lines in its place. As a teenager I used to fantasize about using this vacuum and cutting my skin open to suck the fat right out. I would daydream and plan the discreet places where incisions would be unnoticeable and hidden, like behind my knees, in the creases of my elbows, underneath the curly black hair where my thick thighs meet my pubic area. I daydreamed about how the fat could easily be sucked up into the vacuum bag and tossed in the trash and my skin would shrink along with my body making me smaller and more desirable. Or if that didn’t work, I could cut off the sagging skin and fold it up, tucking it inside my body before stitching the incisions with a magical needle and thread. I don’t remember when I stopped having these fantasies of homemade liposuction, but vacuuming is still one of my favorite chores to do at home.
Homes are always more than just buildings. They are our dreams and hopes and loves and losses embodied, sometimes in brick and wood and sometimes in flesh and blood. Homes tell the stories of our lives – in all its alterations and iterations, remodels and renovations.
A few years ago I went on a road trip alone. It’s one of my favorite things to do and one of the rarest things I do now as a mother to three. I was driving to Idaho State University to give the keynote address at their first Positive Body Image Week on campus and the three hours alone in the car were glorious. I drank a giant gas station soda and listened to loud music and thought a lot about these barren southern Idaho highways and how they used to really signify freedom to me as a high schooler who didn’t quite fit in and couldn’t wait to get out. Before the internet and easy access to cable television and cell phones, having a car and a highway was the only way I knew to escape and find myself – and others who might think like me. I felt my rural town was conservative and constricting, backward and overly religious. On a whim I pulled into town instead of buzzing by on the freeway and decided to see if I could instinctually navigate my way to my old high school without Google maps. I did it easily and slowly, soaking in all the houses I knew and the others I didn’t remember, succumbing to a place and a time that both made me feel nostalgic and nauseous. The junior high school sits diagonally from the high school and I remember moving to this town in the seventh grade – the most awkward time to be the new girl. The site of the windowless brick walls instantly reminded me of being called “Amy No Pants” (a play on Amy Pence) by a mean girl in the hallway who made up stories and laughed with the others about how I removed my pants for anyone. I pulled into my usual parking spot in front of the high school and tried to get inside but the building was locked. It looked so much smaller than I remembered, as imposing buildings from our youth often do, but I was overwhelmed with the memories that happened inside those walls. This dumpy brick building was important to me at one point in my young life, and I spent more of my time there than I did at home, with early morning cheerleading practice and late night basketball games and dances in the gym. I walked around back to the football field and stood on the track where I used to jump and scream in a teeny tiny polyester skirt with pompoms, and where I once had sex after dark in the grass.
My first job at the age of 14 was at the Dairy Queen just a few blocks away and I decided to grab a cheeseburger for the road. I was struck by how much I remembered of the building when I walked inside – little details like the color of the countertop by the cash register and the 1980s soft serve ice cream cone machine. It had been remodeled to update it to the contemporary DQ look, which made me sad. I walked outside to use the restroom and the hot rancid stench of the giant round dumpster out back brought forth so many memories fast and hard –mixing our own fry sauce by hand in giant buckets of mayonnaise and messy plastic bags of ketchup, hand-dipping ice cream cones, the soles of my sneakers sticking to the sugary floor, the parking spot where my boyfriend would wait for me after work. I had my long anticipated first French kiss shoved up against the glass of the atrium space by the cutest boy in junior high and was surprised to find myself disappointed in his hard, wet, unmoving tongue, and more disappointed to discover he felt pressured into doing it. I was taken aback by how strong the memory was of feeling ashamed of my body because of my reaction to that kiss and the knowledge that I wasn’t really his type of girl (read: thin and blonde).
I was listening to one of my favorite body positive podcasts while doing the dinner dishes (my favorite thing to do to pass the time and get inspired and educated during one of my least favorite household chores) and it was an interview with the writer Sarai Walker. Her recent book, Dietland, is an angry and fun feminist manifesto. During the interview conversation Sarai said something that struck a chord with me. She made a great analogy about how we’ve been taught to view our bodies as broken, as a project to constantly be fixed.[i] We talk about them and view them much like a home remodel rather than accepting them for what they are, with their unique structure, character and charm. It took me a long time to realize that my body is my home. It houses the most important parts of me – my soul, heart and voice. We only get one body and it is the vessel that carries us through our days to do the most important things, which as a mother can often feel like the most mind-numbing ordinary but important of things.
All photos by Meagan Elemans from an at home body positive boudoir photo shoot in 2020 from her home in Canada to mine in Idaho via FaceTime can you believe it? I’m so thankful to be so at home in my body these days and so thankful to have a home to shelter in place at during the pandemic while still being able to collaborate to create radical art. To read more about this series and see more NSFW photos from this pandemic shoot click here.
[i] Marie Southard Ospina, “’Dietland,’ Diet Culture & The ‘Thin Woman Within’, Featuring Sarai Walker” The Bod Cast: Bustle’s Body Positivity Podcast, May 24, 2016