The Body is Mine

I appreciate the compassion.

I appreciate the anger at

objectification.

I appreciate the attempt to

bring women back to their own

inner worth.

But I do not agree

that showing one's body

is inherently a fall from some

"sacred core."

You diagnose the illness

perfectly.

Then you prescribe the wrong

medicine.

In trying to escape one prison,

you build another

and call it liberation.

You attack the male gaze,

yet the argument still lets men

define

a woman's relationship with her

own body.

"Don't show your body because

men will consume it"

still makes the man's desire

the centre of the woman's

decision.

Why should a woman's freedom

be determined by the weakness

or lust of the observer?

Women post images for many

reasons,

art, playfulness, politics,

body-reclamation,

aesthetics, preference,

or yes, sometimes validation.

Viewers respond in many ways

too.

Some with respect.

Some with objectification.

Some with both.

The problem begins

when we reject one set of

external judgments

the male gaze, the algorithm,

the culture of consumption,

only to replace them with

another.

A new hierarchy of purity.

Sacredness.

Authenticity.

Suddenly someone else is

certain

of what is "ugly truth,"

what real power looks like,

what a woman should reveal,

and where she should return.

Moral authority can wear the

clothes

of solidarity and lived

experience too.

A woman can be completely naked

and utterly virgin in her

consciousness.

Another can be fully clothed

and completely prostituted in

her mind.

I am suspicious of virtue

imposed through shame,

repression,

or social morality.

And I will never automatically

place

the mind and poetry above the

body

as if one is sacred

and the other somehow lower.

Why do we think the mind is

more sacred than the body?

The body is the visible part of

the soul.

The soul is the invisible part

of the body.

To reject the body in favour of

the poem

is to remain fragmented.

A conscious woman

does not need to choose between

her skin and her intellect.

She owns both.

She can use both.

And she is attached to neither.

A woman is not sacred

because her body can create

life and her virtueness.

She is sacred

simply because she is alive.

Hiding is not automatically

freedom either.

A woman can post a fully

covered photograph

and still be desperately

seeking validation.

Another can post a sensual

photograph

without needing anyone's

approval at all.

The action does not reveal

consciousness.

The inner state does.

So:

Don't post your body because

men want it.

Don't hide your body because

morality fears it.

Don't turn your body into

currency.

Don't turn modesty into another

currency either.

Be conscious.

Then the body is neither

temptation nor prison.

It is simply yours.

Coming home does not mean

becoming someone new.

It means dropping who the world

told you to be.

Society, media, parents,

lovers, partners,

they all teach us how to market

ourselves.

What to reveal.

What to hide.

What makes us desirable,

respectable, powerful, pure.

But home is the space of

absolute innocence

that existed before any

marketing began.

That is why late night poem we

almost deleted

felt like home.

Not because poetry is more

sacred than the body,

but because it was born in

isolation

free from the desire for an

audience.

An act of pure meditation,

not performance.

But the same can be true of a

photograph.

The photograph is not

automatically a performance

because it contains skin.

The poem is not automatically

meditation

because it contains pain.

Neither the covered body

nor the naked body

can tell us where consciousness

is.

Only the person living within

it knows.

If we escape the prison of the

crowd

only to enter the house of a

saviour

who tells us what true

liberation should look like,

we have not become free.

We have only changed masters.

Freedom asks something quieter:

Not to obey the crowd.

Not to obey the gaze.

Not to obey the morality that

fears us.

And not even to obey

someone else's idea of

liberation.

But to become conscious enough

that whether we speak or remain

silent,

cover ourselves or reveal

ourselves,

write a poem or post a

photograph,

the choice is finally our own.