I’m Beautiful And I Don’t Need You To Validate That
“Who told you that you were cute?”
These words have been spoken to me throughout my entire life from every possible source as they collectively informed me that my opinion of myself did not matter.
The first time someone asked, I said “My mommy and daddy,” because I was able to infer from the nature of the questions that my thoughts were unimportant. That question demanded external validation of my cuteness and implied that the lack thereof meant it wasn’t true. I decided early on that maybe being cute was not for me. Instead of appreciating the wholeness of me, I focused on the utilitarian aspects — does my body do what I want it to do? Can I push it further? And when my body disappointed me, as all bodies do as we age, I ignored it until survival meant that I couldn’t.
And such became the cycle of my life. Demand my body perform without taking care of myself. Ignore all pain and signs of weakness until they are debilitating. Collapse and then hate my body for responding poorly to neglect and misuse, all the while never appreciating what I can do and never seeing the beauty in myself. Never appreciating that I am more than my utility, more than my usefulness. I am beautiful in many ways and one of them is physical. I am physically beautiful.
It continues to take a great amount of effort for me to say that I’m beautiful. As much as they are just words, I’ve heard the opposite for so long that saying I’m beautiful feels like another language. I look in the mirror and love my skin, love my hair, love my eyes, lips, cheekbones, eyebrows, the shape of my arms, the fullness of my breasts, the roundness of my hips, and the thickness of my thighs. I rub my soft belly and hug myself; I am squishy and soft and strong and gorgeous. Then I think about how others might see me. I think about the people who are touted as beautiful in our media and I remember how different I am from that and ask myself “who told you that you were cute?”
I look at my fleshy breasts that were never perky and resent that they hang almost to my bellybutton. I count the rolls along my side and hate that bra bands and thong strings disappear into them. I squeeze my lower belly, lift it and let it fall, silently telling myself how ugly I am and how nobody should want this corpulent body…And then I stop and ask myself why that matters. Not even one minute prior, I was worshipping at the altar of my flesh and yet the thought that anybody else would do so feels unbelievable. Despite a lifetime of lovers and a current spouse, I stand in front of the mirror doubting my beauty because it doesn’t match what I’ve been conditioned to see as beautiful. It is only when I disrupt these thoughts by asking myself whether I need someone else to validate my beauty. This is when I ask myself why is my perception of my beauty centers the imagined opinions of others. Why does anyone’s opinion matter more than my own?
I ask myself why I’m choosing to insult myself when a moment ago I loved all the things I saw and felt,? Why am I denying my beauty? Why am I splicing my humanity into pieces that do not reflect who I am? Why am I ashamed of my physicality? Who does that shame serve?
And there is where we find the answer — who does diminishing and demeaning my beauty serve? Because when I do not see my beauty, when I tell myself my “beauty” is actually ugly, I choose not to be seen. I choose to hide to spare myself the ridicule, judgment, and casual cruelty we express about those who do not fit the anti-Black aesthetics that have been reinforced as our normal. I choose to diminish my voice because I believe that no one will listen to a fat Black womxn who isn’t trying to conform by being a good fatty or a comfortable negro. I become easier to manipulate; easier to control because I seek your approval, your meaningless validation. I need to prove to you that I am worthy of being seen and so I jump through your hoops, run your obstacle course, blame myself when you move the goalposts or when I fail the test I was never meant to pass. I become a weapon against myself as I strive to be what you tell me I should be, and I slowly kill myself in the process. Be it repeatedly starving myself or working my body to the point of pain, or using the cruel lens of popular media to criticize my body until I am a jiggling mass of unacceptable limbs and parts fit only for disposal.
When the propaganda works, and it often does, I do the work of white supremacist, patriarchal capitalism for them and marginalize myself. I tell myself that I do not matter and should remain silent and in the shadows. I deny myself the ability to express myself in all my glory and I deprive the world of the power of my presence, the brilliance of my thoughts, the radiance of my smile, the mischievousness of my eyes, and the joy of my laughter. I hide the honesty my expressions cannot help but reveal in the face of rampant fuckery and I hide the playful beauty of my lascivious and licentious body that has allowed me to enjoy many facets of pleasure.
I am beauty. I am purpose. I am amazing and I believe all these things about myself until I am confronted with the reality that our society thrives on conformity and external validation and seeks to destroy anything that challenges it. So, for years, I chose to hide and survive, sustaining myself on crumbs of private rebelliousness rather than risk it all to be some severely compromised yet visible version of free. Loving my skin, my body, my movements, my sounds, and my smells as they are, is a form of freedom…even though I know that freedom ain’t free.
Years ago, I wanted to be on Suicide Girls — a site that claimed to redefine beauty. I started researching the site only to find mostly thin white women with tattoos and colored hair. Occasionally, you’d see a thin Black woman, but they received far less notice and the responses they received were rife with racist attacks, misgendering, and vitriol. The fatphobia was clear — their version of curvy was thin with a big butt or big tits. Stomachs were small pooches that barely wrinkled. Fat rolls were nonexistent. Despite my desire to model for them, I was not interested in the emotional battle I would face or my very probable rejection, so I chose not to try. Yet, here I am, ten years older and fatter, fulfilling that need with my Only Fans account, because the desire to be seen and celebrate my beauty never truly disappeared; I just learn to ignore it.
I stopped ignoring it when I started to cosplay. I stopped telling myself I didn’t want to be seen when I started cosplaying. When I started, it was about me. Then I wanted validation: sometimes I got it but often I was reminded that I should never seek visibility. I once again found myself seeking that validation at great emotional expense until I remembered that I don’t need anyone else’s buy-in to appreciate and celebrate my beauty. Once I re-centered myself in my hobby, I found all that joy again.
As I grow older and my body shifts in both appearance and function, I continue to remind myself that I am beautiful, wonderous, and amazing. I remind myself that I do not need to make myself smaller to exist in this world. I’ve lived long enough and contorted myself in a myriad of ways trying to find the correct combination that would make me worthy, the form where no one could deny my cute. I’m no longer interested in trying to fit; I want to enjoy being. I want to enjoy living as unapologetic, joyful, and free as I can. I am making the space to enjoy and appreciate my wholeness and celebrate the fullness of my humanity — a privilege I’ve denied myself for entirely too long.
I am beauty. I am purpose. I am amazing and you are fortunate that I am willing to share myself with you.
If you appreciate or learned from this essay, please feel free to compensate me by contributing to my Paypal or CashApp. You can contribute any amount you want at any time:
Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/TaLynnKel
Cash App: $TalynnKel
OR
Originally published at https://talynnkel.com on August 12, 2020.
