International Women’s Day 2022: #BreakTheBias

Published February 2022, LesMills Insider

I've always been an active person. As a kid I spent more time running around outside and splashing in the pool than I did anywhere else. I played baseball; I was on the bowling team; and I spent my summers at camp playing tag in the 95-degree heat. But I was also fat, and according to the media and, well, anyone else you asked, that was the worst thing a person could be. 

Being a woman in a larger body is always something that's made me self-conscious, but the older I get, the more I realize it’s because of what I've been told I should feel: shame. I spent many years feeling like I needed to shrink myself and take up less space. The world wanted me to hide and be less visible. 

So – that’s what I did. I dieted. I ran. I ran a lot: nine half marathons, two triathlons, more 5K's than I can count. I literally shrunk myself – the scale fell by over 100 pounds. What didn’t change, though, was my perception of myself. The world applauded me and told me how good I looked but all I heard was that I didn’t look good before. When I gained most of the weight back, I could only imagine how “bad” I must look now, how disappointed in me everyone must be. Why are women told so fiercely to conform to such a narrow standard of beauty? And, why is it so threatening for someone who is not a size 2 to be radiant and confident?

Sometime in 2013 I found myself in a BODYJAM™ class. I was mortified. I couldn’t dance. I didn’t want people to look at me and so I stood at the back of the room, fumbling around, tripping over my feet, but having the time of my life. I was hooked. I kept coming back, and with every class I slowly realized that BODYJAM was growing my confidence in ways I'd never imagined possible. I started to move closer and closer to the front of the room. The same thing happened in every Les Mills class I took: RPM™, BODYPUMP™, BODYATTACK™… I went from being the nervous person hiding at the back to wanting to be right at the front…

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Wishing Weeds

Published 2013, Lunch Ticket Literary Magazine

Everything was green. The way the sun shone down made everything seem brighter than it was. The arch of trees above my head should have provided a veil from the warm spring sunshine, but it didn’t. The sun still managed to shine on everything, even the tiny black ants scampering at the base of the trees. They gathered specks of dirt and pieces of splintered bark left over from the storm the night before.

The path was hidden, and if you didn’t know where to look, then you would never find it, which I found to be a shame because everything about it was beautiful. Only one other person knew about it. When we were seven we agreed to keep it a secret, and ever since then I struggled to keep my lips closed tight. I was never good at keeping secrets. He was, though.

I stared at the dirt, counting the roots as I walked. I concentrated so hard it was almost as if my feet weren’t moving at all.

A breeze blew through the trees, and I closed my eyes as my hair fell in front of my face, but I didn’t stop walking. I was never very graceful, even with my eyes open, but still I kept my eyes closed. I could hear the faint sound of the creek up ahead, and I let the running water guide me like I knew he would if he were here beside me.

When I opened my eyes, a speck of copper brown caught my eye through the trees, and I couldn’t stop the smile that spread across my face. It had been only a few days since I had seen the sparrow out on the path. I knew it was the same one because the patch of black on his breast looked like a heart. He perched on a low branch a few feet to my right, and if my arm were a foot longer I probably could have touched him. I knew his presence, so buried in the forest, was rare because sparrows, as far as I could remember, preferred the city and the presence of people. There were no people here, except me. He blinked once, and when I took a step towards him, he flew away.

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for Daniela

Published November 2018, Life (as it) Happens: A Nerdfighter Poetry Book

you don’t see what I see
I see moonbeams
shining from your face
your eyes sparkle
like the brightest stars
there are whole galaxies
coursing through your veins
and your soul shines
the brightest of them all

you are my north star
but you are blind to it all
all you see is darkness
you are buried six feet under
covered and cloaked in dirt
but what you don’t know
is that the most beautiful things
grow from the earth
and when you let the sunlight in
you, too, will blossom and bloom
and break free from the darkness
and one day, you, too
will see what I see

Beauty

Published October 2012, Men, Ink magazine

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”

That’s what we were always told as little girls, isn’t it? Growing up, though, it became evident that beauty had its own standards. The girls in the magazines and in the movies were tall, blond-haired, blue-eyed, and, most importantly, thin.

As a young girl, especially one who met very few, if any, of those standards, it was easy to get lost in the societal expectations of beauty.

When I went to photograph behind-the-scenes moments of the Men, Ink pinup calendar photo shoot, I honestly wasn’t sure what I was going to find. Tall, gorgeous models with tanned skin and clear complexion? Probably. Over the summer I spent two months in Los Angeles, California, and simply being surrounded by that environment skewed my own perception of beauty. In the land of breast implants, tiny corset-adorned waists, and hair extensions, it’s easy to forget what natural beauty looks like.

I never thought I would be so thrilled to see actual models eating donuts, enjoying a drink filled with empty calories, and scarfing down large slices of Fat Tony’s pizza. Could models do that; was that allowed? Weren’t they afraid they were going to feel fat and bloated? It was so refreshing to see that they visibly didn’t care. A piece of pizza is a piece of pizza, and watching them eat, drink, and be merry at this photo shoot gave me a completely new take on model culture.

Some of the girls had elaborate tattoos on their thighs that they proudly displayed in their pictures. Some were more curvaceous than others. But the most important thing to note is that no matter the size, shape, or height of these models, they were all confident, which arguably made the pictures they took that much more attractive.

The simple fact that the eating habits of the models at this photo shoot are so forefront in my mind about the experience tells a lot about how modeling culture is perceived in our society. There is a tendency to believe that to be a model, you must be beautiful, and to be beautiful, you must be thin, and to be thin, you must not eat (especially pizza); but that is absolutely not the case.

Beauty is subjective, so go on—have your pizza and eat it, too.