While for some of us it may take an event—a serious illness or a trauma—to remember that we are bodies, many people do not have to wait for a specific event to remember the centrality of their body. That’s because their body is placed outside the cultural hierarchy of the “ideal body,” and so they learn early on that their body makes them “other.” Most forms of oppression are directed against the body as “isms”: racism, sexism, ableism, heterosexism, ageism, sizeism, and so on. The message underneath these isms is this: You are less valuable in this society because of your body.
