The Rural Body

On physicality and fashion.

May 16, 2021

Hi Folks,

Today I want to talk about the body. And I want to give a fair warning that this essay contains a lot of personal discussion of my own relationship to my body, so if you aren’t in the headspace for that, maybe skip this one.

When I was living in New York, there was a feeling I had that grew so great that it got to the point where there were entire neighborhoods I found myself avoiding, turning onto alleyways and streetcorners to avoid the figures leaned up against fire escapes and metal stairways, lithe and lean, the women and young girls in short skirts parading along Park Avenue, everyone so beautiful, and effortlessly so. I did not understand the raw emotion it brought up in me until I saw this tweet, and then suddenly I found the words:

I knew this outfit, had seen it many times parading across the streets of the city. There were many other outfits like this too: long, cotton floral dresses, old tees and hoodies, mom jeans and loafers. I would stand in my college dining hall and look around at all the outfits that had been thrifted and repurposed and think about how if I went back home and drove out of the city a bit, you would see almost the exact same thing on the bodies, and yet the reaction would be impossibly different.

None of this is to say I judge these people for fashion; a good outfit is a good outfit, and we should all strive to wear the clothes that make us feel comfortable. But still, I could not stop thinking about the irony of it all, the coastal elitism that is so clearly present towards rural— and especially southern and midwestern— communities. No one likes to talk about it much. But it’s there. I watched friends wear outfits that I could never without getting made fun of; I had other students tell me I wasn’t cool enough to hang out with them. It took me years to grow into a sense of self that was distanced from other people’s opinions, and it still takes work to practice this.

I think it all comes down to the idea of “coolness”. It’s a tricky thing, because so much of what is considered “cool” in America is also founded on things like youth, whiteness, beauty, and wealth. We like to think that coolness is something inherent, inexplicable, a thing you either have or do not, but that’s one big lie. By having certain qualifications that this country has historically given precedence to, you automatically seem to jump ahead in the line for becoming cool. I think back to thirty or forty years ago, when brands like Ralph Lauren pioneered this all-American kind of cool, and the effect their clothes could give you: a look of effortless wealth, the rugged self-assuredness that stems from being given the freedom to explore your likes and dislikes when you do not have the daily struggle to just survive. In that version of America, coolness was a sense of ease, and it was reserved for a very specific subset of people.

Of course, none of that is really cool anymore, and perhaps it never was. Trends change. But one thing that I do not feel has changed is the notion that coolness requires hierarchy. The very idea of it implies a binary; if you are cool, then there is someone else who is uncool, which places them beneath you. Mara Wilson— former child actress and self-proclaimed Hollywood dropout— writes in her essay collection, Where Am I Now?, that “the defining characteristic of a hipster—the thing everyone agreed on, and most hated about them—wasn't so much their taste, but their contempt and condescension toward those less cool than themselves.”

People who think they’re really cool will even look down on the hipsters, believing themselves to be actually authentic in their coolness. It’s all such a circle, and it’s exhausting. There’s so many different levels of coolness depending on where you go, too. But still, almost all of those levels will place themselves above the rural: down here, out here, we are hillbillies, trailer trash, rednecks. We are one group that I don’t think anyone has predicted will ever be cool. But there’s something that is possessed here that I found lacking in all the other places I have lived, and that is a sense of truth and stability. It is saying, I am not trying to be something I am not. I am simply what I am. Or, as Phillip Seymour Hoffman put it as Lester Bangs in my all-time favorite movie Almost Famous, “The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you're uncool.”

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For as long as I can remember, I have been concerned with my body. It has undoubtedly occupied more mental space for me in this lifetime than anything else, which is such a stupid thing to allow to take up that much of my thought space when I really think about it. My body simply is. It just exists. And yet, the need for control over it is ever-present, addictive.

I have never had an easy body. It has constantly fought me, both physically and mentally. It has made everything more difficult than it ought to have been. First I was born premature with underdeveloped lungs, leading to chronic pneumonia and strep throat as a child. I was too skinny for a long time, and then suddenly I gained weight excessively. I could not exercise because I could not breathe because of my lungs. I cried in gym class and I cried in theater practice and I cried watching movies and television shows, reading books and magazines, feeling like I would never have what those people did, which was just simply to wake up in my body and feel okay about it.

I remember in fourth grade looking at the other girls in the class, seeing their bodies from the front and the side, and trying to figure out where my form fit in. In sixth grade, crying over the first birthday party I went to at my new school because I couldn’t find a dress that fit me the way I watched dresses fit the other girls. Squeezing myself into too-tight uniform skirts because I was embarrassed to have to wear the one the store made specifically for larger girls: a different plaid, a thicker weave. Writing on my middle school time capsule sheet, under the section that asked about my goals for the future, that I just wanted to be skinny. Copying it down in too-small, faded handwriting because I didn’t want anyone else to see and know how much mental space my appearance occupied. Starving myself for a week to fit into my prom dress, thinking that would make me feel beautiful and loved. Pinching my jaw in the mirror and my arms in the mirror and the inside of my thighs, thinking how I would look if the skin was only taut, tight. Conflating every failed date and every ruined relationship with my body because I was told that I was a big girl, that I waddled when I walked and my stomach spilled over when I sat, and that because of these things no one would ever love me the way I wanted. I rebelled against the body I was given in ways that hurt and it felt like retribution for all the discomfort and frustration it had caused me. It felt like my body was the biggest thing that stood in the way of my goals, that my body— unruly and overlarge and constantly breaking down in injury and illness— would always hold me back. I could not have love or fame or success or happiness, not while I looked like this. I wanted so badly to just be cool, and coolness for me was always tied to thinness: I imagined that one day I would move to New York or LA and walk everywhere and finally my body would grow small and sleek. Finally my body would be something easy to hide.

I was born in the 90s and grew up in the 2000s, so much of this thinking is founded upon the cultural ideals at the time, which we all know have been incredibly damaging to women especially. What I did not mentally prepare myself for was the shift in body ideals, and the ways in which this would damage me. Suddenly the body that I had always been told was too much was growing into the thing everyone wanted: curves concentrated around the hips, a slimmer waist. I had spent so much time and stress and mental energy to get my body to look this way and I had still believed it would never be enough; I still never once felt comfortable in it. And yet, where before I had girls calling me names and making fun of me, now they told me they wished they had my appearance. It was jarring to say the least. I still do not know how to feel about my body. I have spent my whole life being told I was too big and now I find myself being told that I do not have the authority to complain about my body, that all my mental energy worrying about it has been a waste of time. I know that I fit now into conventional beauty standards, but that doesn’t make this history wash away. More than anything I wish that I could distance myself from my body mentally and stop thinking of it as a vessel for achievement but simply an object that keeps me alive and allows me to exist. For it to be that simple.

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When we think about the stereotypes of rural America, so much of them have to do with the body. Even the CDC reports that adults living in rural areas are more likely to be obese than those in urban areas. What no one wants to think about when they talk about these statistics and stereotypes are some of the reasons why: few sidewalks, food deserts, easier access to fast food and processed food over fresh, unwalkable roads and highways, food stamps only being allowed in certain grocery stores. Living in a rural area again, I have to make active effort to not drive to get places, and I still spend at least ten hours a week behind the wheel.

I have written extensively about my family’s relationship to food, and the ways in which this reflects the greater narratives of Appalachia. I never understood the concept of leftovers growing up; we always ate what was before us, even if we were full, would fight each other over who would finish the remaining slice of pizza. I could eat six or seven bowls of soup in one sitting, even if I made myself sick over it. I think it is because excess felt a lot like comfort. Remnants of a legacy of food scarcity, of some innate knowledge within us that knew we could carry our excess on our bodies. No one could take from us what lived within us.

But beyond that, there has always been a hunger I have felt inside of me that I do not think will ever be satiated. There’s no doubt in my mind that it’s emotional, and studies have proven that there is a relationship between stress, trauma, and overeating. I have been fortunate to grow up in a home where I did not ever have to lack for anything, but I know that my family’s relationship to this safety and security is still fresh, newly earned, which has somehow subconsciously led me to feel that it could disappear at any time. Taking up space physically feels like I will not be forgotten. It feels like it gives me something to fall back on. Furthermore, I have always had anxiety about the end of the world, about food access growing scarce, about having to survive on my own in the wilderness. I guess I have always wanted to feel that when all else fails I will be able to fall back on my body.

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Last summer I bought my first pair of jean shorts, just like the ones the women in the above photo wear. It was mid-pandemic, and so the store did not let me try them on first. I took them home and I stepped into them. They were tight, more so than I had hoped they would be. And I thought back to that photo, trying to figure out where on the spectrum of bodies I stood and why I even cared so much. I think those women look cool. I have never judged other bodies as harshly as my own, so why am I so convinced that everyone else is doing it to me? I took the shorts off and stuffed them into my dresser drawer. I have not worn them since.

It is funny to me now, because the older I grow, the more I feel I become aware of my physical perception. I see now when someone eyes me up on the sidewalk. I let my students play with my hair and tell me they like my outfits. We have long conversations where I try to impart some of the wisdom I have learned and keep them from struggling like I have for so long. I don’t know if it gets through. I want them to know the value that they have regardless of what the world might tell them. Even in this county, the students I work with are written off by officials at other, larger, more financially capable schools. Even in their own communities there is still a hierarchy. I hate that. I don’t know what to do about it. I know that if I ever return to New York City I will never be able to go back to SoHo. I think I am only beginning to reach body neutrality now, during the pandemic, when I have spent so much time alone that learning to love myself became inevitable. I like seeing how many people are coming forward on social media to speak about this topic, and I like that I can watch them and finally feel beautiful. Talking about these things helps. I try to teach my students writing, because I know the difference that words and stories can make, especially the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. I think often of Roxane Gay’s excellent memoir, Hunger, where she unpacks these topics extensively, and I recommend it for anyone who has ever looked at someone with a different body or from a different community and thought, at least I am not that. I would like to leave you with this quote of hers, which I think says all that needs to be said about bodies:

“I am determined to be more than my body - what my body has endured, what my body has become.”

Your prompt this week is to think of a body. It could be physical, such as your own form or a body of water, or something more metaphorical. Tell me the story of that body. How does it ebb and flow? What does it look like? How does it change?

GOOD FOLK

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