I’m too tired to hate my body today

…but not too tired to hate body positivity

Before giving birth for the first time, I thought it would be magical, transcendent even. Aside from not having any sort of concept of the kind of pain awaiting me, it was also just a lot more disgusting and humiliating than I thought it would be. My midwife had to reach both of her hands inside of me (what felt like elbow deep) to turn my baby. When my daughter was born and placed on my chest the first thing she did was poop. Good times. While someone was wiping turds off my stomach, I informed the nurses that I believed I had just accidentally peed on the bed. They said not to worry, I still had to give birth to a giant bloody pancake, so everything would get messy again anyway. Then the doctor stitched my vagina back together. With a needle and thread. By the time another nurse sat between my legs, her head basically in my crotch, cleaning blood off my entire lower body with a cold washcloth, I had stopped caring.

The point of me telling you all this is that whether or not you’ve given birth, you have probably experienced your body’s indignities to some extent. But we rarely talk about this. Why?

I think there are three main reasons why I do this or have in the past: Spiritualizing the body, toxic body positivity, and equating the body with sex.

Spiritualizing the body

Whether it is through religious faith or alternative spirituality, I have often heard in faith communities I’ve been a part of, or from…