The Summer I Stopped Sucking In My Stomach

 

“In the end, she became more than what she expected. She became the journey, and like all journeys, she did not end, she just simply changed directions and kept going” 

-r.m. drake

“In the end, this post may keep me single forever…and so be it.”

-s.d. matthews

 

Okay, now that we’re all alone here, Warriors and Warrior-Supporters…

…and I KNOW we’re alone because only a VERY distinct type of human is gonna read something with this title which is, quite honestly, SPECIFICALLY why I used it…

…so, now that it’s just us…and maybe the ten people who will hate email me later, true story…hi, my name is Sharron Matthews and I grew 100% concerned about how I looked through the gaze of anyone not myself…mostly…and I know what the ramifications of this next word will be, but so be it…men.

Woof. 

Though I’ve fought it hard (and been fairly vocal about it) I would honestly estimate that the average percentage of how this gaze still affects me in my adult years as about 52%. 

I know. 

I thought about that number for a while and changed it four times. 

It started at 80%.

I’m just being brutally honest…because life is short and honesty is the best policy. 

How I’ve dressed, how I’ve expressed myself, ALL of my accomplishments and perceived failings were/are recycled through my body and mind, then propped up in front of an imaginary (OR REAL) group of…yup…males for validation, approval or harsh judgement…and I for the longest time didn’t even really know it. 

It just was. 

WAIT. Let me rephrase that.

I KNEW IT…BUT didn’t realize that I could choose to change this practice, this program…that I could choose to live outside this construct. 

Woof woof. 

When I finally DID realize it, when I saw the power this application of thinking had over my life, my happiness, and my artistry I was just fucking gobsmacked. 

I still am.

In the last five years, I’ve spent a good deal of time listening and talking to other women I love and respect about this subject, I’ve read a lot on it, I’ve been working and working and working on changing my view and life practices…of challenging the gaze that is not my own…and last week, I had a fucking breakthrough life moment. 

It was…it was akin the deepest gulp of the sweetest air I’ve ever tasted.

Last Tuesday, almost fifty-five years after my emergence into this world, I was wearing pair of bike shorts, a sweatshirt, glasses, no make-up, walking my dog through Liberty Village (where all the thirty year olds thrive, god bless) and I passed by a group of about seven construction workers sitting around on a break…my whole body tensed a bit when I saw them and then, miraculously, my whole brain released in a way that I almost cannot describe (okay, I will call it “the unfurling”)…and I realized that it TOTALLY DOES NOT MATTER A WHIT WHAT THE FUCK THEY THINK ABOUT ME…at ALL…

…AT ALL…

… and I felt/thought that for the very first fucking time in my life. 

FELT IT TO MY CORE. 

READ THAT AGAIN. 

In response to this seismic moment, I had a vocal/physical expression of discovery that was so sudden and extreme, I almost choked…and the choking was SO obvious that my dog barked in alarm. 

Then, I just smiled…walked on and continued to revel in the release.

A bunched-up part of me that had BEEN clamped and chained tight for…for…for years and years…just let go. 

The stomach that my mother told me to suck in for as long as I can remember…relaxed…just let the fuck go. 

My shoulders laid down and back.

And my smile got bigger.

In that VERY moment, I felt TRUE freedom for the VERY first time in my entire fucking life. 

And then?

As I continued to walk…

…my joy got itself angry. 

Okay.

This might be an overshare, but fuck it, here we are…so, four years ago I had sex (calm down…everyone does it) with a man I’d been seeing for a while. 

The sex was so unbelievable, the physical release was so extreme, that after the dust settled in the comfy little sun-filled bedroom we were in, I turned to the man and wondered aloud, “Could my body always do that?”

Yes.

Yes, I asked HIM for his opinion on my body’s capabilities, and I give myself grace on that.

When he nodded, an encouraging and fairly proud smile on his handsome face, I burst into an expression of emotion so epic that I felt in my very bones…the watery and epic honouring of wasted years.

I cried tears of mourning and joy that lasted for a good long while. 

That very wonderful gent just hugged me through it all. 

God fucking bless him…for many things. 

When I walked by those construction workers last week…men who probably could not have given a shit or even noticed that I’d walked by…and felt the penny drop that the only opinion of myself that really mattered in my world, is mine…I had the same kind of realization.

Epic and confusingly emotional.

Happy and sad and angry.

I felt the bitter loss of time that I could have used to wonder about or explore other more important things…or to do ANYTHING else, really. 

As I walked away from those construction workers, leading Jo back home, filled to the brim with a fuel made up of a delicious combination of relief and rage, my mind went back to the 2019 Canadian Screen Awards. 

As I sat in the audience at the Sony Centre (or whatever it’s now called) plucked, combed, sucked-in and bejewelled…and quite happily so…Canadian ICON Mary Walsh accepted an life-time achievement award with a speech in which she delightedly stated how happy she was to be past the age where she had to worry about being desirable to men, because she felt that NOW she was invisible to the male gaze, she could really get to business and hit her creative stride. 

It was a real mind blowing speech.

The amazing female artists around me whooped in support, some raised their hands high as an AMEN and others just sat in awe. 

Later that night, after I brushed the ton of hairspray out of my hair and scrubbed my face of all the lotions and potions, hung up my designer dress and, instead of burning the high heels that so hurt my feet, I put them in a box and labeled them (VIRGO), I laid down in my bed and wondered WHY THE FUCK we have to be past what’s deemed desirable to be at our real, controversial, creative, balls-out fucking best.

WHY!?!?!

Back to the present.

About twenty minutes past the Construction-Worker-Revelation, I arrived back at my condo building, maneuvered Jo into an elevator, still just buzzing and simmering.

As I stabbed the button for my floor, I thought over the meme I’d recently mused over for days, posted by Busy Phillips and written by a user named @tofugoddess (I’ve tried to find her on both INSTA and TWITTER and have failed BUT wanna give her the props) that said the following:

This meme took the wind so far out of my sails that the day I saw it, I had to lie down.

My mind REELED.

As I stood in that elevator, I thought WHAT IF?

What if I’d been taught the contents of that meme? 

How would my life be different? 

What if my mother had taught me at ANY point that I could take care of myself alone AND not JUST take care of myself, BUT that I could THRIVE alone and NOT while I was waiting for a partner…but instead, living a big-ass solo life if I so chose.

My own full life. 

What if she’d taught me that I didn’t have to waste my time looking for someone else to make me feel safe in this world? THAT I WAS SAFETY. 

What if she’d taught me that a partner was just that…not a leader? 

What if she’d taught me that how I felt about myself was the MOST important thing?

Quite simply, what if…instead of being told over and over again to suck in my  goddamned delightful belly, I’d had the above thoughts, ideas and the practice of them instilled in me. 

And celebrated my flesh, my mind, my soul, my ideas, my opinions, and my creativity in all their forms. 

How would my life have changed?

It’s fucking overwhelming to even ponder. 

Now, I could get into a million stories about my mother right now, but really SHE was only teaching me what SHE’D been taught. 

Right?!

Until recently, I’d never really thought of myself as a feminist and indeed growing up the word FEMINIST seemed to be dirty one, tainted and brittle.

The word FEMINIST seemed to stand for women who were loveless, quite possibly bitter, and were probably very undesirable man-haters. 

At least, THAT was the PR that anyone who was opposed to feminism was selling at the time…and wow, were THEY loud.

There were so many vehicles at the time (and still in this time) in popular culture that were (are) actively pushing back against the autonomy of women, that were HARD SELLING their version of the acceptable and desirable qualities in women, namely the following:

TV: Be hot and thin and young forever and want to have a boyfriend who validates you…but save your virginity for marriage…unless you’re the slutty one, then girl you are evil…also you CANNOT have it all…but you must try…also, also, you are not safe out there. 

Movies: Also be hot and thin and young forever and want sex from a man that validates you…but save your virginity for marriage…unless you’re the slutty one, then girl you are evil…also you CANNOT have it all…but you must try…also, also, you are not safe out there. 

Magazines: Buy this serum, wear this thing, do these exercises, be slutty or DON’T be slutty (depending on the publication), cellulite is wrong, fat is wrong, blemishes are wrong BUT you know what? Self-hate is REALLY wrong, but girl…ewww. 

Romance Novels: Be helpless, be lonely, be sad, be unfulfilled, but especially be a virgin who will eventually give herself to a non-virgin, usually rich, worldly, dominant man…probably a pirate who is really a prince. Prize your virginity. SAVE IT FOR LOVE. NOTHING ELSE MATTERS. Don’t get laid for fun. 

Billboards: BE PERFECT. And THIS is what perfect is. 

I could go on, but you get the picture, right? 

How could my evolution, my mother’s evolution, her mother’s evolution (yes, there were books back then, and papers and magazines with pretty much the same information inside of it) NOT be informed by ALL that I mentioned above?

Most of the female conversations that I sat beside of or at the knees of as a kid taught me that all women were in competition. 

Listening to our mothers talk about other mothers, OR talk negatively about their bodies, putting themselves through whatever the latest fad diet or commercial weight loss program was powerful as fuck. 

Watching my own mother COUNT and QUALIFY every morsel she fed her body laid the foundation for the way I viewed my own.

I dearly wish my mother, and all the women who came before her, had been taught THEIR worth.

Fast forward to yesterday. 

One week after my super-important, aforementioned, life-changing moment…I was again walking Jo, in pretty much the same outfit, and came around the corner of a building across from mine on King Street, and saw two kids…little girls…standing in front of a man who was peeing on a wall.

On King Street. 

A well dressed man. 

In front of him stood two scared little girls, shifting from foot to foot as they watched me pass by. 

The guy turned from his pee business, made eye contact with me, and I told him there was a bathroom just across the street. 

I kept walking.

Then my neck prickled, and I turned around and there he was, following very close behind me, with those two little girls trailing behind him. 

He called me a fat bitch and told me to mind my own business, in front of those two little girls, who I surmised were his children.

I was SO stunned by his vitriol that I just verbally went for it. 

We stood on the street screaming at each other like crazy people about the size of my ass and the shape of his character. 

It was NOT my finest moment. 

But his decision to attack my shell so surprised me, piercing me straight to the heart…something that’s  happened to me literally hundreds of times during this life…that I became a wild woman. 

It was like he bit me. 

His wife…HIS WIFE OR PARTNER…jumped out of an SUV parked on King Street and rushed her girls into their car…trying to corral her husband, or whatever he was to her, into the driver’s side. 

I looked to her, asking her how she felt about this development that she’d just witnessed, and she nervously laughed. 

Laughed.

With those two little girls in the back seat. 

I was gutted. 

When I finally walked away from his screaming voice, my heart racing like I’d just scaled a mountain, I could almost not hold my tears back. 

I barely made it to my condo, when I just let go.

I could not BELIEVE that I’d let the surprising verbal attack of one man destroy my well deserved decision to stop caring what he thought of me. 

A man I’d never met nor would ever see again. 

So thrilled was I about that amazing revelatory day that it made the wound from this day, even deeper.

I struggled. 

Boy, did I fucking struggle.

Even after ALL the writing, work, and meditation that I’ve done on my body acceptance for the last thirty years or more…I struggled.

I felt stuck for days. 

I looked at myself differently. 

I thought about losing weight. 

Almost unconsciously, I reduced my caloric intake. 

I would suck my in stomach at every turn, in every picture. 

Quietly and shamefully, all the while fighting the good fight of loving myself. 

Then a few days ago, I realized…I clocked…I breathed in…what I was doing. 

And that I’d lived in this wretched circle hundreds if not thousands of times before.

I would feel strong, powerful, and just great about myself, my body and my life, then I would write something, perform something, say something controversial, that would pass through the man-meter (yes, I said it) OR the who-does-she-think-she-is-meter, and it would come back lacking.

THEN, I would be called fat, obese, stupid, old, washed-up, unfuckable, or a (laughably, like it was a read) FEMINIST on the internet…or even worse…to my face. 

By men…and women. 

Woof woof woof. 

And I would look at myself differently. 

I would think (or obsess) about losing weight. 

I would almost unconsciously reduce my caloric intake. 

I would suck in my stomach at every turn, in every picture.

Quietly, shamefully, all the while fighting the good fight of loving myself. 

No.  

As I’ve written and said a million times…enough. 

I want to let my belly relax. 

I want to walk the walk and talk my talk.

Enough. 

I want to practice self love to the nth degree. 

WE don’t have to live our lives…correction…I don’t have to live my life by the standards of others. 

I know I’ve written THIS down a million times…spiritually AND with this keyboard…BUT I get to like…to love myself…the exact way I am. 

Every fucking moment. 

Through my own gaze. 

Through my own LOVING gaze. 

In this moment.

And this one. 

So, I’m turning 55 this month, which is the kind of birthday that makes you write pieces like this. 

Instead of letting this milestone pass me by…and since the last five birthdays were shit shows for MANY different reasons…I am cordially giving myself the 50th birthday that I deserve, shoe-horned spectacularly into my 55th year.

There are numerous TIFF parties to attend, shows to see, and a vacation with a dear friend. 

We’re going to see another dear friend in California. 

We are ALSO going to a national park that is on my bucket list…and I plan on swimming and hot tubbing it with said friends…so I bought myself a fancy bathing suit.

A bikini.

A bikini whose bottoms dips below the belly button.

You know what? 

IT SHOULD NOT BE CONTROVERSIAL or EVEN A TOPIC OF FUCKING CONVERSATION when a big person shows their flesh. 

SHOULD NOT. 

BUT here we are.

And fuck that. 

When it came in the mail, I was a bit nervous to pull it on…but you guys.

YOU GUYS!!

I SEE ME AND I LOVE IT.

LIKE, FUCKING LOVE IT. 

And this is me…side view, bitches…belly loose for the goddess.

Life is too fucking short to see yourself…to live your fucking life…through someone else’s eyes. 

Life is TOO fucking short to waste time.

Let your belly go, and get the fuck out there and make some noise.

 

 

 

 

S.M. September 5th, 2023

Toronto, ON.

As always, thanks for reading.

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