On Vindication, Fat Girl Wounds, and Releasing Defensiveness to Find Joy
Jumbled thoughts on proving yourself a little less. Yellow Brick Road.
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First - If this album came out when I was a teenager, my tumblr would’ve been even more insufferable than it was.
Second - a bitch spent a couple weeks in Cali, flew back and went blonde!!!!!!!! It’s cute, it’s hot, it’s fun, it’s giving very much star quality.
Mostly, it feels like a visual representation of where I’m at in life right now. Lighter in spirit than ever before, more accepting of change, more open and honest about my desires and less beholden to the heaviness of obligation.
It’s officially 8o degrees every day now in NYC, and I’m declaring Live, Laugh, Love summer. We all deserve to be as carefree as a middle aged white woman in Home Goods, and I don’t want to hear a single person dogging anyone else’s pure, unadulterated joy, okay? We’re getting corny and we’re staying corny, because it’s simply better than whatever dystopian fuckery we’ve been existing in. Keep your misery to yourself!!!!
As for me? No thoughts, just Aperol Spritz and shaking ass. This blonde babe is debuting and only accepting exploration, vibrance, creative expression, passion, clear intentions, and full belly chuckles for the foreseeable future. I went blonde two summers ago for a L’Oreal brand commercial, never felt hotter, then went back to black last winter by request of my very shitty agents at W*lhelmina. Needless to say, I - a grown woman - let another adult tell me how I would be marketed best and it didn’t go in my favor. Returning to blondedom is now my reclamation of doing whatever the fuck I want and still making money. Sweet vindication.
Vindication…I’ve been thinking a lot about her recently. Mostly, how grateful I am to let her go and find out who I am without carrying her on my back. In my protest of other people’s ideas of who I should, could, and must be, I’ve grown comfortable in defensiveness and have accomplished much of my life’s work through vindication at a cost. I’m not sure vindication is much more than obsessive defensiveness, which in survival state, can motivate people to achieve remarkable feats but rarely true joy and contentment. At least, not in my experience.
I wouldn’t have my career if not for vindication. Plus size models are interviewed and say they pursued this line of work because they wanted young girls to “see themselves.” The public is foaming at the mouth for a fat girl to say she has dedicated a life in the spotlight in virtue of anyone else but herself. I get why my colleagues follow the script - it’s a crowd favorite. I know out of personal experience, the sentiment bears truth and healing that cannot be undervalued. I also know they’re a little full of shit.
The truth that many are too ashamed and worried to admit for fear of sounding like a bitter fat girl: they are overjoyed to finally be affirmed in their long denied place as a hot person. And not affirmed by the gross kid in drama who feels you up behind the curtain, but can’t admit publicly he likes fat girls. Not by a middle aged receptionist in your hometown at the doctor’s office, but by huge brands that will plaster your ass in a department store for your entire graduating class to see in the suburbs while you live in New York City. For all the young boys who liked your best friends instead, for all of the high school superlatives overlooked, for all of the prom dresses never worn, for all of the opportunities of validation’s past - they want vindication. I wanted vindication. I got it, and it was like….literally okay. I got a leg up in my career by someone’s perspective, but I kind of forgot my purpose.
Here’s the thing: I could spend an entire day living every little girl’s dream (though it is genuine hard work and not as glamorous as it seems), step off set, and be knocked off my confidence by an Uber driver who asks what I do and doesn’t believe my answer. The reminder that much of the world hasn’t quite caught up or chosen to see me the way “representation” wants everyone to believe, that defending my right to be seen doesn’t end because I’ve “achieved” is a reality check. I was competing for space to get work, being compared to other women constantly, and barely making rent all to feel vindicated. It occurred to me that living in spite of people’s beliefs about me, even successfully, was making me miserable.
I had a bone to pick with the world for making me think that everything beautiful and good was reserved for thinness. I did it for my inner child, who so desperately needed to be affirmed that she was deserving of center stage in her own life, not despite but because of her beauty. But in pursuit of vindication, I fed right into the narrative built to harm me. I’d fallen into the trap of a world perpetuating the belief that beauty is more valuable than character, kindness, and servitude.
You can build a life and legacy in combat with other people’s opinions rather than in union with your self-fulfilled happiness, and feel like a total failure even if its a life of objective success and comfort.
This is obviously specific, but the pitfalls of vindication manifest in other ways too. Look at the concept of the post-breakup glow up. The “best revenge is your paper” energy. We glorify this sweet victory of becoming hotter and more successful after being hurt by an ex, only to be actually feeding into a deep rooted belief that if we had been hotter and more successful during the relationship our partner wouldn’t have cheated or disappointed us. Like yes, vindication in this situation is relatively powerful in that you are hotter and making bank - but I can confidently say it’s emotionally putting lipstick on a pig. Glamorizing unworthiness and validating something within you constantly whispering, “if you were only just a little better, they would accept you.”
There will be times in our lives when defense is necessary. When we have to stand up for what is right and true; ask for a promotion, call out injustice, and proclaim boundaries when they’ve been breached. And then there are habits formed by ~ trauma ~ in which you literally can’t identify when armor isn’t and shouldn’t be necessary. Love, for example. Throughout my 20s, I routinely found myself in relationships, situationships, hookups with people who would make me defend my interests, principles, and worthiness as foreplay. I once dated a comedian (because I didn’t love myself) and my former roommate said she could only identify when we were hooking up because we finally stopped arguing in the living room. On the other hand, I would date hot people who vindicated my need to prove that fat women could bag hotties, while also being in absolute misery defending how worthy I was of being seen beyond the external. Naturally, these relationships got stale, faded away, or became so combative that they weren’t worth engaging in anymore.
Vindication is cheap. Accepting your fulfillment lies in divesting from defending who you are and what your worth is invaluable. For this reason, I am adopting this singular statement as my personal ideology.
Who the hell is John Henry?
There’s a tall tale, American folklore, which might be based on a real person called John Henry. John Henry was a formerly enslaved person who became a steel driver on the C&O Railway. He was known among railroad workers for his size, strength, and speed wielding a 14 pound hammer and ability to drive it for 12 hours a day - longer than anyone else. John Henry was a marvel. Technology would catch up to man, and soon the railroad company bought a steam drill to do the same work faster and cheaper. John Henry refused being replaced, and went up against the steam drill to defend the rights of black workers. He took a 10 pound hammer in each hand and drilled so hard he created a 14 foot hole into the rock. The machine only drilled 9 feet.
John Henry’s heart burst from exhaustion.
Of course, the legacy of John Henry is symbolism for the black man’s defiance of white subjugation and inventive oppression and man’s race with the machine. But there’s also personal nuance to this story that a bitch like me - who has built so much of her life on a foundation of defensiveness - can take heed.
We don’t know what John Henry did when he wasn’t being measured for his worth. They say he played the banjo. I wonder what his favorite song to play was, if he played it for his children, if he had children. What we know of him, if he is a real man which seems more than possible, is lost in vindication. His joy and life is lost in vindication and defensiveness.
How much are we willing to lose to be deemed right, reasonable, and justified in existence? To be proven worthy of a full and good life?
Some Q’s to munch on:
What (or who) are you defending?
Is the person or space you are proving yourself to even worthy of your worst, let alone your perceived best?
Are you proving your worthiness to others or yourself? How can you validate what needs to be validated without handing that power over to weirdos?
Is it possible to discover who you are while defending what you wish others saw in you?
Who are you when you’re not defending? What does a defenseless you live, laugh, and love for?
"No thoughts, just Aperol Spritz and shaking ass" is my new summer motto. I thank you.
"No thoughts, just Aperol Spritz and shaking ass" is my new summer motto. I thank you.