Lihpappil

I didn’t raise my hand in the last two years of high school for fear of the tight fabric of my uniform straining against my enormous arms. In my mind if I raised my hand, everyone would see that my 16 year old tuck-shop-lady arms were actually taking up the entire room.  The shift of my blouse would show folds of skin, while I held the gigantic appendage up, adding to the shame and drawing attention.  So I kept my hand down, my arms down, my head down, my armpits unable to breathe through my restrained posture, creating a funk throughout the day from sheer suffocation.

My questions unanswered. My ideas unheard. I remained silent, not risking attention to my uneasy low-self esteem, spilling out of the chair, my thighs squeezed under the desk. I made sure that the material I’d cut from elbow to armpit for circulation was never exposed, holding it tightly hidden under my arms. Bound and gagged.

The walk to school in the morning would leave sweat patches under my arms and discoloration over time, no matter how many times I scrubbed and soaked the fabric with bleach.  Dirty and lazy was the only way to read me in the school halls, regardless of what I might have been.  I became aware of the silent head-shake and the words “childhood obesity epidemic” going through the minds of teachers when they saw me.  It was there, angry and pitying.  A nasty strain on them.

Complaining is admitting to being someone human inside this body, to existing where I shouldn’t as an epidemic in our society. Showing weakness often opens floodgates of opinions from others.  Their feelings about my body and what it means to them overwhelms me as I reassure them and agree to make a pact of shame. Again.  It began at the age of 6, when I was alone with a friend of my mother who grabbed my inner thigh and whispered menacingly into my ear, “You’ll have to get rid of this”. Surely that’s not assault? It’s just concern.

Never are you completely yourself as a fat person, you are a preconception of others emotions on the subject. Your identity rests on the predictable conversations in coffee shops and comment sections when that girl, with her tightly held arms, strains against the fabric to have a voice. Fat is one of the last bastions of casual prejudice among the more progressive corners of society. The obsessive, angry and sneering culture of fat hatred transcends politics.  Bringing everyone together in a fit of anger and disgust, “We’ll have to get rid of this”.

My mother is the smartest person I know.  She reads every quarterly essay, and even though we currently live in Brisbane she also has shelves full of The New Yorker and other worldly journalist publications of which I’m sure she’s read every word.  Long form journalism is kind of her thing.  While reading though a New Yorker with her a few years ago we burst out laughing at a cartoon in the middle of an article.  It was a picture of a man at a bar with a strange lock of hair across his otherwise bald head with the caption, “the dread lock comb over one night beta test”.  We took a picture of it convinced that every friend on social media would find it just as hilarious as we did, but alas you had to be there.  It pops up on our Facebook memories at the same time every year now, and we comment and share it with each other to keep the joke, and our seemingly singular appreciation of it alive.

We weren’t free range.  We lived on the whim of an ever changing idea that never settled, and that’s quite a different beast.  By the time our friends hit social ideologies and counter cultural edges we had long since grasped the concepts, as well as our privilege allows, due to a thorough head first education in them.  In my 20’s when she ran as in independent in the federal election she gave my address as her headquarters before traveling across the NT trying to rabble rouse and expose the racist government’s tactics.  I received savage letters from red necks with letterheads.  Her fliers, delivered by me while pushing my own sleeping daughter, were reused by racist ideologists who hated her.  Threats scrawled furiously across them were sent to a small family house in Alice Springs, where I lovingly made banners in her name.

She told us young to never accept anything but complete and utter adoration from a partner in love.  Her credentials in the matter are still strong after over 35 years of friendship and marriage to her biggest fan.  I took that advice so seriously that I’ve only been with one partner of 14 years, who was quickly and happily convinced early in our acquaintance that I was and am the smartest, most amazing human on the planet.  Which I don’t contest or contradict, other than to say that I owe it to my mother.

They wouldn’t let me in with her when she had the first ultrasound.  I took her out to brunch and tried to stay up-beat, glancing at her collar bone where I usually tickle her with my chin when we hug.  The swollen skin there nonthreatening to the naked eye.  She told me I could touch it to make sense of it but I wouldn’t.

By the time we shaved her head the strands had been falling into her lunch in clumps and driving her crazy.  We filmed it for posterity and laughed.  This was the first time she’d had hairless legs and armpits since the 70’s.  Her head is large and rounded, like her mind.  We joked about her looking like a big baby, but really she pulled it off.  She survived treatment by watching mindless television and eating sweets unapologetically.  Seasons of 90’s sitcoms (that pass none of the current tests we demand for representation or political correctness) coupled with fruit danish and chocolate with tea.

After the doctors were shocked at how well her body had responded to the first round of chemo, we considered making thousands on chocolate and fruit danish as the best new alt-med.  We didn’t want a fraud case on our hands this early in the game so we kept it to ourselves.  Her hair grew back, gray and peppered, none of the strawberry, but it was never too soon to suggest the dreadlock comb-over.

EDIT : Mum died in August 2017

You can read her eulogy here 

liquid soap,
The thirsty grass colour of your drapes.
A park with swings,
The boredom that green grass escapes.

So this has been doing the rounds (since the dark ages):

Who knows who wrote it, some bloke pulled it out of his arse by the looks of it.  I’m going to take you through this one quick and relatively painlessly.

Two young ladies arrived to a meeting wearing clothes that were quite revealing their body parts. Here is what the Chairman told them: He took a good look at them and made them sit. Then he said something that, they might never forget for the rest of their lives. 

Right. OK. So this guy is obviously a straight up sleaze, am I right? If some bloke looked me up and down and “made” me sit I would personally be out of there quick smart. Probably with some choice words and a letter to HR regarding sexual harassment. Let’s move this along…

He looked at them straight in the eyes and said; “ladies, everything that God has valuable in this world is well covered and hard to see, find or get.

In the eyes? How uncomfortable and odd that we need to know where this idiots gaze went. Oh that’s right, it’s all about the male gaze. The male gaze is really important apparently. HOLD UP. What is this dude on about? God, if you believe in him, is suddenly involved here.

1. Where do you find DIAMONDS? Deep down in the ground, covered and protected.

2. Where do you find PEARLS? Deep down at the bottom of the ocean, covered up and protected in a beautiful shell.

3. Where do you find GOLD? Way down in the mine, covered over with layers of rock and to get them, you have to work hard & dig deep down to get them”

eh. Maybe God hid them so that creepy tycoons like this guy would leave them WELL alone. That’s the better analogy, I wish they had gone down that road… but unfortunately we hear about his gaze again in this next bit…

He looked at them with serious eyes and said;

“Your body is sacred & unique” You are far more precious than gold, diamonds and pearls, and you should be covered too. So he added that, “If you keep your treasured mineral just like gold, diamond and pearls, deeply covered up, a reputable mining organization with the requisite machinery will fly down and conduct years of extensive exploration.”

Gross. Just. Gross. Firstly, the serious eyes? HAHAHAHA! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Lol.

Secondly, if the analogy was binned when we decided God wanted you to leave the hidden things alone, it’s definitely going down the drain with the idea that Diamonds, Pearls and Gold are “sacred and unique”. The analogy is further undermined (lol, geddit?) by the fact that about half the human race has a female body. We aren’t talking about minds or souls here. The treasured minerals we are talking about here are I guess Vaginas? Maybe? I mean the analogy is convoluted from here on in. The reputable mining organisation is probably affiliated with this old coot sizing up these young women in his office. Yuck. “fly down and conduct years of extensive exploration”? Sounds like a bad trip to the Gynecologist if you ask me. Or alien abduction.

Then he said, “First, they will contact your government (family), sign professional contracts (wedding) and mine you professionally( legal marriage). But if you leave your precious minerals uncovered on the surface of the earth, you always attract a lot of illegal miners to come and mine you illegally. Everybody will just pick up their crude instruments and just have a dig on you just freely like that. So, keep your bodies deeply covered so that it invite professional miners to chase you.” 

This is where it gets really real. I’m pretty sure what’s happening here is some kind of child bride/human trade. The other choice seems to be just straight up rape. It’s a hand-wringing either way.

So basically, women are objects for men and we should do as we are told/wait around for a man to make us whole humans, yeah? Or be raped and used.  Those are your choices gals!  With a side dish of slut shaming and victim blaming for good measure.  No thanks.

Greetings!  My name is Phillippa (Lihpappil is phillippa inside out and back to front, because that is sometimes my state of mind).   I do a lot of stuff and I want to write about it and nobody can stop me.  I have kids.  I like to travel. I like to walk in the bush, but I have to live in the city.  I have opinions and I like to sing.  Get to know me because I’m awesome.  You don’t even need the preliminaries.  You can already tell.  It’s happening.

I love you too.