The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love

by Sonya Renee Taylor

Famed activist and professor Angela Davis said, “I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change. I am changing the things I cannot accept.”

Why are we constantly apologizing for the space we inhabit? What if we all understood the inherent vastness of our humanity and therefore occupied the world without apology? What if we all became committed to the idea that no one should have to apologize for being a human in a body?

Being uncertain, lacking information, or simply not knowing something ought not be an indictment against our intelligence or value.

Quite to the contrary, this is an invitation to curiosity. Not knowing is an opportunity for exploration without judgment and demands.

Relationships with our bodies are social, political, and economic inheritances. The nature of these inheritances has changed over time, the default body morphing and transforming to suit the power structures of the day.

Gender and gender roles have also shifted over time, bending to fit the needs of the society. In 1479 B.C.E., Hatshepsut ascended to the throne of Egypt while donning male clothing and a beard to symbolize her intention to rule as a pharaoh.13 Not all cultures have seen gender through rigid assignments of male or female.

Indigenous cultures around the world have long accepted the concept of “two-spirit” people: those who embody both feminine and masculine identities or whose gender is more complicated than one of two options.

There were periods of time in history when the constructs of race looked considerably different. Irish folks were not enfolded into Whiteness when they arrived in ...

These elements of our identities are socially constructed and transmitted through a multitude of vehicles, includin...

in the grand scheme of a life well lived, eye liner, dress sizes, and ripped abs really don’t matter.

Consider that women represent approximately half the human population, and it becomes glaringly clear that this disparity is the manifestation of gender inequity. Right now, your favorite men’s rights activist is yelling, “These feminists are so dumb! Duh, there are fewer women because women just don’t get involved in politics as much as men do.” My contemplative reply might be, “Hmm . . . I wonder how much the 144 years American women went without voting rights impacted that?”

implicit bias. The term refers to the “attitudes or stereotypes that affect our understanding, actions, and decisions in an unconscious manner.”1 Implicit bias can be favorable or unfavorable, but its key component is that it is involuntary: without an individual’s conscious awareness or control.

Humans are predisposed to social categorization. We subconsciously evaluate who is part of our group and who is not. These assignments happen within seconds, directing our subsequent engagement and influencing our treatment of others. These biases most generously benefit the bodies we consider “normal” while fettering millions of folks on the path of radical self-love. None of us are solely culprits or solely victims. We all get a bit of what we give.

If you rented a space for an event and never considered whether that space had ramps, elevators, or disability restrooms, you would be individually upholding the system of ableism by not ensuring that a person with a disability could access your event. No, you didn’t build the inaccessible building, but you did rent it, never considering its accessibility for all bodies, thus furthering the erasure of people with physical disabilities and their needs.

This book is not about something as simple as body positivity or acceptance. It is about the ways in which we see others and ourselves and judge one another on far deeper levels than we may know because at the heart of it all, even the deepest-held beliefs begin with the most superficial and perfunctory glances and barely conscious judgments.