I titled this one after ZZtop's song, "She's got legs" a woman that is sexy has to have a great pair of legs and then some...
Not to worry, this isn't going to be a feminist post. I'm not a feminist by any means. I think these days the best way to show you're a "feminist" is by actually using your talents and your potential, not as a gender representative, but as an individual setting their own personal goals and welcoming challenge. When you use what you have it speaks louder than the words that you use to express what you are, what you stand for or the genre you have chosen to subscribe to. I'd rather express my capabilities through action, and most of the time no one can deny you if you show the best form of yourself and handle yourself with respect and dignity. I like this better than hanging a label on myself like a christmas ornament, and pulling it out whenever the holiday calls for it.
There are always obstacles; minority, disabled, gender...the list goes on, but it's how we handle ourself and problem solve rather than blaming a system for everything we don't get...obviously there are countries and cultures that have extreme social right issues, and require great movements, but I'm only speaking of myself, my current set up and the tools I have. My disability or gender is not there so I can use it as an excuse, it's there to push me even harder and if I don't succeed in life then I am to blame. I try to see it like this as I navigate through life.
This illustration came to mind last summer. It was hot. I saw a woman cross her legs and as I subconsciously tried to mirror her and cross mine, I remembered I couldn't, at least not in the natural way. Last summer I could manually lift my heavy leg over my left leg and voila, they were crossed. It wasn't particularly graceful, more like a slow motion magic trick, but I could do it with the assistance of my hand. Nowadays, my legs have become even heavier leaving that tactic irrelevant.
When I visualized this illustration I mentally broke down the step-by-step motions of a woman crossing her legs combined with the environment or social nuance of the moment. It looks sexy and confident. I recalled the memory of when I could cross my legs and not only how it looked sexy, but that it felt sexy. The lifting of a limb that ends with a pointed shoe as the underside of the calf alluringly brushes over the left knee, right before both thighs meet, rest and conceal themselves underneath a flowy skirt.
I remember it called my attention and without thought, a natural emotion wished that my body could still do these things...these simple things that seemingly represent gender or confidence. ..these movements that allow me to express myself physically.
Obviously, intellectually I know it's ridiculous and crossing my legs, wearing the trendiest fashion or carefully picking out my image from hangers or makeup table does not in any form correctly constitute confidence, womanliness or capabilities.
Still, it's there. It's all perception, including our own and it's a continuous workshop in understanding our own self and that it is ok. We place idealisms on social aspects, genres, social groups and not the individual form. "We", as in our self. Our self is to blame. There' society, but then there's us finding it within ourselves to be ok. If you're not ok, then no one else will be ok with you.
My legs feel heavy, like a pile of bricks that every once in awhile get topped with another. There's nothing elegant, light or airy about them. They are lifeless and it makes me feel heavy. With the increased heaviness of my body, what seems to have been lost in body muscle has journeyed to my mind. My womanliness has transferred there. It was always there, actually.
When I was in design college I used to hold onto my ideas in fear that I wouldn't be able to produce another one. Design school was a difficult program. It was hard, competitive, arduous and I felt alone, alone going though this, at the time, unknown condition and trying to make something of myself all at the same time. I had a hard time in college, because I was too busy trying to design or draw like everyone else in the true ID style. I stood in my own way for the most part and I stood in the way of my own growth. I did my best to keep up with the competition and mimic the style or way that seemed to consistently thread through all of my classmates, but it always came out as a stunted representation of what I meant to say. I was so consumed with thinking I didn't match up that I stood in the way of my own natural self and never lived up to my potential. Probably one of the things I learned most from college was about my own self and knowing that confidence comes from an individual place. I was young. I still am. We always are.
Now, I let my ideas go. I don't hold onto them like they are the last drops of vision I will ever have, because now ideas flood and they can't seem to stop coming. My gates keep widening and I realize I don't need to help it along--it comes naturally if you let it. Sometimes, I wish I could mentally archive these rapid ideas like index cards, and at times I do write them down, but they come too fast for me to egotistically hold onto them. Besides, another one always follows or in some form have been filed for future use until it is time for them to be intuitively picked up.
In everything be thoughtful and find new ways to accentuate your original self and accept that what you are is ok, indeed. No need to fit into a mold. Being too narrow about something breeds sameness. It's good to grab a number of influences and many times these "influences" are things we've subconsciously filed, but have a difficult time surfacing, because of the things we think we are supposed to be. The things we experience and see are all a part of our very own original story and I guess I'm learning to embrace all those, mix them together and release them into my own work, self and dreams.
So, even though at times it feels like I've lost my physical grace, and femine expression through the loss my leg's function, or the hands that apply my make up, I know it is not these things that hold my image, yet it's because I can't do these things, and what has resulted because of it, that really adds the pages to my own book. All that's waiting is for me to author it and accept it.
I don't exactly remember what I was thinking for this post when I thought of this illustration, but there you have it. A female HIBM patient (or any patient or person) experiences something different than a male HIBM patient might. There are things that each patient misses and I am sure feel less than, because of it. A woman losing her hair to cancer, a man not being able to carry his wife over the threshold, a woman not being able to carry a baby...but the acts, the clothes, the skin doesn't define as much as the true self. We all know this, but knowing and living it are separate.
As my friend once texted me, "Everyone's walking, be original"
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