Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman

by Lindy West

Part of that anxiety came from the fact that, particularly in my youth, I was a hider, a dissociater, a fantasist. It was easier to bury myself in stories than to deal with the fact that the realities of adulthood were barreling down on me: money and loneliness and self-doubt and death.

When your body itself is treated like one big meat-blooper, you don’t open yourself up to unnecessary embarrassment. I was a careful, exacting child. I hoarded my dignity. Even now, I watch where I step. I double-fact-check before I publish. I avoid canoes.

Because there was really only one step to my body acceptance: Look at pictures of fat women on the Internet until they don’t make you uncomfortable anymore. That was the entire process. (Optional step two: Wear a crop top until you forget you’re wearing a crop top. Suddenly, a crop top is just a top. Repeat.)

you can’t advocate for yourself if you won’t admit what you are.

There was something about me that was symbolically shameful. It’s not that men didn’t like me; it’s that they hated themselves for doing so. But why?

People only care about your mistakes when they can hear you. Only failures can afford to be cavalier and careless.

Shame is a tool of oppression, not change.

I sometimes think of people’s personalities as the negative space around their insecurities. Afraid of intimacy? Cultivate aloofness. Feel invisible? Laugh loud and often. Drink too much? Play the gregarious basket case. Hate your body? Slash and burn others so you can climb up the pile.

Part of writing is choosing which details to include and which to discard. Part of reading is deciding whether or not you can trust your narrator.

Fighting for diverse voices is world-building. Proclaiming the inherent value of fat people is world-building. Believing rape victims is world-building. Refusing to cave to abortion stigma is world-building. Voting is world-building. So is kindness, compassion, listening, making space, saying yes, saying no.