“You Have Such A Pretty Face”

Transcript:

“You Have Such A Pretty Face”

The backhanded compliment— an inferred “but” or “despite” tacked on at the end. The implication that it’s wasted on a body so big, or that it’s a redeeming factor that somehow outweighs (pun intended) being fat. Often associated with slight surprise that such a contradiction could exist— a person who is beautiful and the reviled fat?

All of my life I’ve detested my body; it was learned, of course, through biting comments from family, through shopping in the missus section before I turned ten, through fad diets and sucking it in and cold shoulders and tunics and chairs in public that squeeze my thighs. I lived in fear of someone condemning me for the too-muchness I loathed. Every night before bed I wished for some magical removal or fantasized about cutting it all off. Sometimes I still do. Through sculpture and fiber, I transcribe the violent inclinations I feel towards my own body, as well as projecting the self-tenderness which I want to nurture; the concept of separating and transmorphing my body— a vessel from which I cannot leave— into an inanimate object and destroying it. In this process where I become my own creator and destroyer, I seek to one day discard the notion of too-muchness and revel in my body, my fatness, my enoughness.