Turning My Sensuality On
Posted: February 12, 2015 Filed under: Body, Dance, Desire, Erotic, Feminine Power, Feminism, Movement, Objectification/Sexualization, Pleasure, Woman, Woman's Bodies | Tags: erotic, Feminism, Pole Dancing, Rie Katagiri, Sensuality, Women's Bodies 73 CommentsLately, I’ve been feeling disconnected from my own sensuality and needing a way to plug back into that part of myself. I figured what better way to re-spark that inner connection than to take a sensual movement class.
I didn’t tell my boyfriend that I was going because I needed this experience to be just for me. We’ve been living together for a few months now, and while I love him truly, madly, and deeply, I suspect that being with him is the reason that I’ve shut down my connection to my sensuality.
I Look At My Feet
Posted: July 30, 2014 Filed under: Beauty, Body, Body Image, Dance, Feminism, Movement | Tags: Beauty, Body Image, Memoir, Movement, Women's Bodies 39 CommentsI used to look at my feet and see big… long..ugly. At least that’s what some of my relatives told me they saw when I was growing up . So I stopped taking care of my feet.
In college I walked around the Berkeley campus for four years in Nordstrom style loafers. I bought them in all the different colors: Blue. Black. Beige. And red. When I’d wear out a pair, I’d buy another pair. I’d take the BART across the bay to San Francisco on a Saturday.
Once, when I went home for summer vacation, my aunt looked down and said, “What have you done to your feet? They look like you’ve been plowing the rice fields [in the Philippines]!” Oops. Then again, how would she know?
Me & My Belly: A Love/Hate Story
Posted: October 18, 2013 Filed under: Body, Body Image, Dance, Feminism, Movement, Woman | Tags: Body, Feminism, Memoir, Movement, Woman, Women's Bodies 29 CommentsIf there was a Facebook option asking for my relationship status with my belly, I’d have to choose the one that says, “It’s complicated.” I belong to a family whose women usually grow up to have big, round, female stomachs, and while I love being part of this full-bellied tribe, I’ve often wished that our physical trademark could have been natural washboard abs.
My belly was round from the time I was a little girl. My mom says that’s how I was born to be. “You’re like me,” she told me when I was ten, patting her own bump of a “puson,” which is the Filipino word for abdomen.
I didn’t want a round belly. I wanted a flat one, like the bellies of the three detectives on the popular 1970s TV show Charlie’s Angels. Jill Munroe, played by Farrah Fawcett, had a stomach that was flat even when she wore a bathing suit—unlike me, whose tummy stuck out in my one-piece.
The only time my belly was flat was when I lay on my back. At night in bed, I would run my hand up and down my stomach, enjoying its horizontal shape and wishing it would stay that straight when I stood up.
