Today we are featuring a piece from our first ever male guest writer: the already famous Frankie Soto, a fantastic poet and activist, who was recently featured in Rust Magazine. We were introduced to his poetry by a mutual friend, who also introduced him to our blog and he wrote us this piece below. Please check this out and share it with others; his words convey an important message about fatness and victimizing. If you like this, go to his website to see more of his work. Thanks, Frankie! You are wonderful!
Observe, watch the heaviness of guilt crawl out of eyes as you
witness a woman mesmerized by the dessert section of the dinner menu at a
restaurant. Counting calories with her fingers like my daughter doing 1st
grade math equations; her fingers her muse, to figure out what 4 + 4 equals. In
this instance all it equals is self-consciousness and regret as if even the
slightest dive into the image of consumption has now made her a marked woman in
the Fat Department. A battle of delight and worrisome thought. Many times I
wonder what is really more unhealthy -the consumption of foods not on the
pyramid of healthy standard eating, or how the insecurity of food can consume a
person. Passing by sidewalks in panicked hurry, yanking shirts on the subway to
drop further below the waist. As if the world is holding a magnifying glass to
your every pound.
I am all for promoting healthy living, as it has its beneficial value of
lessening diabetes, preventing heart attacks as we grow older. In general it
provides us with a jolt of energy, the body is a vessel that longs to be used,
we weren’t built to be dormant. It is not human instinct to remain still, but
how many healthy outlets are offered as suggestion and does not feel like a
fist being shoved down the throat and lodged. Basically saying FAT is wrong. So
your whole opinion of yourself is scattered like a broken vase. Sweeping your
confidence back piece by piece, over the stress of what you EAT.
This is not gender issue. Trust me, many men, like myself, walk like an anvil
is balancing on our backs. If I don’t remember to lift those dumbbells 50 times
a day or walk that 2 miles in the evening. Almost like I am that teacher I
despised in high school, over-critical, displeased with even the best effort of
a paper due. Fighting ourselves for placement in social quarters, wanting to
sit in the cool kid’s lunch table of life. Unfortunately, as we grow older and
learn lessons we realize that the cool kids are just much better at hiding the
insecurities; they lurk behind smiles and sit quietly in many while breaking
windows an’ intruding -like robbers within others.
We are now not only subjecting weight as a link to obesity but also the
judgment is growing; now we are using it as a means to excuse behavior and
death. I watch replays of Eric Garner pushing out the distress calls of “I
can’t breathe, I can’t breathe”. My sensitive nature wants to interrupt the
chaos and lift him up. The reality sets in he will never rise again in his
body. A body which now is his crime, his curse. For in the eyes of people who
want to be jurors now, biting their Big Macs and whoppers but labeling Garner
guilty of being FAT and legitimatizing that as his reason for death, not the
lack of oxygen to the brain an heart, not the pressure of knees or the choking
as he pleaded for air. While we scream on the streets for revenge on police,
while we yell for revolution and change all I can think is: how can we be
worthy of change when our perceptions have not graduated to levels of
acceptance that present us with ease, so that we can be secure in our own skin?
That our weight is our weight, and it will fluctuate up and down, it will never
be consistent, the same. Life is never the same, but our happiness, our value
in ourselves should never waver. It should be a steel door during a hurricane
current, withstanding all.
Frankie A. Soto, Hidden Legacy
Well said! Acceptance is the key...
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