The Sashay Project - Part 1

So, I’m talking with ‘Liss last Thursday, and we were doing our usual rambly thing; I talked about how hand-dishwashing is now supposed to be the ultimate stress-reliever, and she talked about how it isn’t for her because of back-pain, and I got all excited about this new personal discovery I’ve made that I never would have mentioned, ‘cept we were talking about back-pain, and she says: “You’ve GOT to blog that series!”

So I do.

Hence: The Sashay Project is born.

This is a series of posts that explores the way I locomote through the world and how it is affected by sexism and the gender binary -- people who locomote through the world by means other than walking are welcomed and encouraged to share their insights about how sexism/gender performance might impact how they move through the world.

BRIEF HISTORY:

I used to be thin. Now I’m fat.

I think of myself as pretty advanced on the body-acceptance scale. I actively love and appreciate my body – it’s been a reliable, healthy, low-maintenance vehicle for most of my life, even though I’ve put it through some pretty rough periods of neglect over the years. I’ve actually enjoyed better physical health at my current weight than I ever did when I was thin, and I’m generally a body-acceptance advocate and cheerleader for my friends when they get mean and critical about their own bodies for whatever reason.

So, I’ve thought of myself as being pretty clear on accepting and loving my body as it is.

RECENT OBSERVATIONS and THE PAIN IN MY ASS:

Since I gained weight (for me, this seemed to happen as a part of navigating menopause), I started noticing certain physical sensations that I experienced at the beginning of a walk or a hike – for the first ten to fifteen minutes, I would experience a sort of crampy pain in my sacral area. Usually, it would loosen up and disappear after a time, but if I was moving/walking on concrete, sometimes it would never shift.

Recently, I’d been monitoring and exploring this phenomenon more closely – I wanted to know more about what seemed to trigger it.

I’d be grocery shopping (our coop is in a renovated bowling alley, with a concrete slab floor covered by tile), and I noticed that on some shopping days, my pelvis seemed kind of locked up – my stride felt restricted and short, and I’d get that cramping pain in my lower back.

It didn’t happen all the time, though, and I puzzled over what made the difference – had I done different physical activity that day? Had I been standing on concrete earlier (say, working in the basement at the tool bench)?

Then, I saw the video of Alice Tan Ridley on America’s Got Talent.

I loved her singing, but I think I loved her personal presentation even more – she was a confident, fat, talented, late-fifties woman who seemed completely unafraid to show herself as a sexual being.

And -- I noticed her walk.

Her hips seemed – well – liberated -- to me – and I got to thinking about that pain in my sacrum. So, the other night, when my Beloved and I went for a rambling walk in the Summer evening, I experimented with freeing up my hips as I moved.

And guess what? No pain.

Which led me to wonder about how I had been walking before – and that line of exploration resulted in a veritable cascade of realizations about how (and why) I have been “managing” my gait up to now.

Some researchers believe that the way you walk is as unique to you as your fingerprints.

I know that allowing my hips to swing easily felt very, very different to me.

I was aware that, as I moved in this new way, whenever we passed a stranger, I became self-conscious about my ass, which has always been bubbular (the nickname “onion buns” does not stick to you for nearly 40 years for no reason). My always-bubbular ass is now fat-enhanced, so when it’s moving, it’s really moving.

And as I noticed this self-consciousness, I realized that at least some part of my restricted pelvic action might have to do with the usual fat-person fear of taking up too much space, or simply being seen.

Heh -- so much for my highly-advanced state of body acceptance.

For the past week, I’ve been engaging in Conscious Sashaying, and I’ve been fascinated by the many, many layers of stuff that has come up around it.

The Sashay Project will be an exploration of those layers, and because they’re still being revealed to me, I have no idea how many posts that will involve.

I do, however, know what the Project motto will be:

Free Your Ass, and Your Mind Will Follow