More On Bodies

Bear with me please, this is a longer post, and it kind of wanders, but I really needed to get some of this stuff written out here.

One thing that I've heard several times since I released Finn is, "Thank you so much for using a model that's shaped like me," and that's stirred up some feelings. My thoughts on bodies (and how cool they are) are on record, but there's still a part of me that recognizes that every time I take a picture of myself for a pattern or for the blog or for Instagram I am making a statement. I have complicated feelings about that.

I wish we were better about body diversity in knitwear (I wish we were better about diversity in general, but I can really only talk about body size from a firsthand perspective). Things are already so much better than they were when I started knitting, but there's still work to be done. There are still designers who won't grade a top above a 40-inch bust, and most knitwear models are on the smaller side. There are a bunch of inter-tangled reasons for this, and I've heard a lot of them. This conversation comes up a lot in the industry. I'm a bit guilty of it myself-I've more than once found myself thinking "I could knit sweaters so much faster if I was X-inches smaller."

I made the decision early on in my design career that I would model the majority of my samples. Part of it is convenience-I like to wear the things I make. But a lot of it was the recognition that I am one of the smallest knitters in my knit group in town. I'm in the smaller half of the group that meets up for Our Common Thread. I have a 44-inch bust, thank you very much, and many of the knitters I know are my size or significantly larger. So, I thought to myself, I could be alienating a lot of knitters if I made all my samples a size 36. I still think that's true, and given that I've heard "seeing a model that's close to my size/shape makes me more likely to buy this pattern" more than once since the Finn photos went up, I'm probably right.

I feel validated whenever someone thanks me for using a "model that looks like me-" I like to think that putting my self and my body out there is the right choice, but I also feel a bit sad that it should be so novel to see reflections of ourselves in the knitting industry. And honestly, there are tons of diversity issues in knitting other than body size, and I hate the thought that this wonderful thing that brings so many of us together ends up looking so much more homogeneous than it really is. And I don't want to sound like the knitting industry is getting everything wrong, because it's definitely not, I just would love even more of it, and I hate how the act of taking and posting pictures of myself is something that people feel they ought to thank me for.

I don't really have a nice way to wrap this up. It's a problem, and it's been a problem for a long time, and it will continue to be a problem unless we keep working through it as a community and figuring out how to showcase the diversity of the knitting community within the knitting industry. Conversations like this are hard, and fraught with emotion and history, but they are important.

Ultimately, what it comes down to for me is something I said in my last On Bodies post: "since all bodies are perfect and amazing and beautiful, everyone deserves clothes that fit them and that they feel comfortable in." I'd like to add to that: since all bodies are perfect and amazing and wonderful, everyone deserves to see images and reflections of themselves from within the industry.

On Bodies

Fair warning, this is a longer post, and it gets a little personal. But I wanted to talk about bodies today. I touched a tiny bit on this earlier, when I first mentioned adding more sizes to my Epidemic pattern, and now that it's live again I thought it was as good a time as any to talk more about it.

My personal philosophy is that there is no such thing as a bad body. Full stop, no exceptions. All bodies are perfect and all bodies are beautiful, based solely on the fact that they are our bodies. Our bodies are miracles of genetic adaptation-they keep us safe, they keep us alive, they keep our brains provided with nutrients and oxygen so that we can exist as humans, and do all sorts of human-y things, like thinking deep thoughts and making good art and loving each other.

I did not always love my body. I struggled for years with self-esteem and body image. I hated myself; I couldn't stand to look at my reflection or pictures of me. I had self-deprecation down to an art, and I knew how to dress so I would stay hidden from the world, and I knew what to tell myself so that I wouldn't make the mistake of thinking I could actually be a worthwhile person. 

It took a lot of time for me to be able to love my body exactly as it is. Changing your thinking like that is hard work-it took years of me constantly telling myself things I didn't necessarily believe for me to get where I am now. I love the proportions of my face. I love the shape of my eyes. I love how strong my legs are, and I love that my belly jiggles a little bit when I walk. I love that I'm short, and flexible, so I can curl up into the corner of the sofa easily. I love my scars and my moles and my messed-up toenail and my uneven jaw. My body does great things for me, and it is a good body.

On the other hand, there are days when I hate my body. I'm diabetic, which means my body kind of stinks at taking care of itself. I've gotten really good at helping it out though, and we make a pretty good team, but I get bad days when I'm sick and exhausted and I yell and swear at my body and I feel broken and useless. There are bad days when I wonder what the point is of a body that can't take care of itself, and I get filled with fear and frustration and anger that my body isn't "good enough." Those days are rough. But my body is really great at letting me know when it needs me to step in and help it out, and it's pretty cool that my body can do that.

And the thing is, even though every body is different, they're all really similar. All our bodies let us know when it's time to eat, or sleep, or cry. Heck, our bodies can even make us crave certain foods when we're missing a certain vitamin-how awesome is that? Every body does fantastic, marvelous things, and they are all so amazing just by virtue of being a living body, and that makes them perfect and beautiful.

I can't stress this enough: every body is perfect by virtue of its existence. It doesn't matter what size or shape it is, how healthy or ill it is, if it's lumpy or pointy or strong or weak. None of that matters. All bodies do incredible things. All bodies are good bodies.

And so all of this comes down to me feeling very strongly that since all bodies are perfect and amazing and beautiful, everyone deserves clothes that fit them and that they feel comfortable in. And comfort is hugely subjective, but it's also the singular most important aspect of style there is. And you know what isn't comfortable? Not being able to find clothes or patterns that will fit or accommodate your perfect, kick-ass body.