I finally got through to the Employment Department today, just in time to learn that I would qualify for $116 a week in unemployment assistance. Wow, talk about feeling like I was kicked in the teeth. Had I not taken my most recent job and stayed on unemployment, I would have been bringing home $1,600 after taxes. But instead, I took a part-time job that had "guaranteed funding" until June 2011 and a pay-cut. Let's just say I am kicking myself a bit. What do they say, hind sight is 20/20...
I participated in a photo shoot for an event called the #suitupcampaign. It is the hope of the woman organizing it to have a more varied representation of body types in swim suits, which would in turn invite other women to feel comfortable "suiting up" for summer if they saw bodies that looked like theirs. I was asked to submit a picture of my suit and so I set out to take a couple selfies. As I was going through them and I started to notice something; I looked beautiful. As a fat, white, cisgender, femme-presenting, often mis-identified queer woman who is currently partnered with a cisgender man, I have received many messages about my body over the course of my life. From a very young age my body was labeled as fat. I understood the resounding message that my worth was directly tied to in how much space I was supposed to take up in the world. I understood that it was always open season on my body - from family, friends, doctors and even stranger...
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