An Ode to 'This Booty'

This booty. My mother used to tease me about the roundness of it. I was young, she thought it was funny. ‘Teya’s gotta big bum,’ she would joke. I would laugh and say shut up. I didn’t really know what that meant. Really didn’t understand the grasp of it until middle school. Ending of Grade 6. I would always wear baggy clothes. Hand me downs from my brother, or whatever ugly cheap clothes were at the thrift store. I didn’t care much for appearance, mostly I just wanted to be invisible. But one day, I borrowed a pair of my friends ‘knickers’, that’s what they were called back then. But we call them capris now, I think? They were beige, the material thin, and they were super tight. The second I walked onto the court at my school, the boys started calling me ‘basketball butt’. I was horrified. But not as much as the girls. The girls, who usually ignored/avoided me, now started to threaten to beat me up. All it took were eyes averted from them. I never wore those pants again, or ones like it. But the bullying never let up. The girls verbally attacked and the boys followed along. If the girls hated me, the boys had to, too, those we’re the girls who were putting out, so of course the boys would follow their lead with their tongues out. I hated this booty. Hated it. Covered it up as much as I could.

It wasn’t until college, that I changed it up. I was finally FREE of all the bullies who followed me up until Grade 12. I didn’t have to hide anymore. So I switched it up, I started straightening my hair, and buying clothes that I actually liked, that happened to be more tight fitting, more revealing. And man, the attention I got. It was too much for any girl to handle. I said ‘no’ so much, I wanted to wear a shirt to school that said 'NO' on it, so the guys would get the point straight away. Sure, I was the bitch, the stuck up bitch, the too good for anyone bitch, but I was used to name calling. If you give in, you’re a slut, and if you don’t, you’re a bitch, really…you can’t live in this world as a female without the name calling/labeling. Sometimes I wished this booty away. I looked at slimmer girls, and thought I want to wear that same dress without worrying that I don’t look professional, that I don’t look like a hoochie, that I don’t look like ‘I’m asking for it’. I want to wear that same skirt they wear, without having to worry about some dude yelling out THAT BOOTY while on the subway, alone, at night. Imagine that happening twice in one night, (yeah its terrifying). So yeah, I have wished this booty away. And the attention that came with it. I cant help the body I got, I cant help that when I wear certain clothes my body fills it out differently, and that does not mean ‘I’m asking for it’.

This booty. Was not built for a girl like me. I used to think (or sometimes still do). A girl who is soaked in general anxiety, who gets embarrassed easily, who would rather not be noticed, who hates, hates, hates attention, the spotlight, in any form of capacity. This booty, brings the opposite. And although I’ve grown used to it, accustomed to it, although we cool and all, this booty and I, I still cant fathom wearing tights as pants. Or white, or thin materials. I don’t even wear thongs anymore. The jiggle is too real in thongs. And I don’t want the jiggle. So yes, I have learned how to simmer the booty down, and how to slim it down with darker colours or thicker materials, but I still judge its presence sometimes. I see buying ‘butts’ is a trend now, and hey do you girls, but it often makes me think of how this booty and booties alike on skin tones like mine, or darker, would be ridiculed. Made to feel animalistic. Made to feel inhumane. Its strange, ain’t it? how, now it’s an obsession. And I think that’s what made me change my attitude towards the curves, toward this booty, the fact that we are made like this, and our bodies should be celebrated. Accepted. Appreciated. Soaked in love, instead of poison. I mean it doesn’t end at the booty. I hate my arms. I hate my cellulite; I hate the fat on my back. But man, it comes to a point where all that hate is just going to bury you under. And I have spent too much of my life buried. By my own words of self hate, and by the hateful words from bullies/or assholes who can’t believe I would turn them down. Frail frail frail egos, and self esteem. So frail that they want you to share in their frailness. To take some of their frailness with you. I will not.

This booty. How it carries, and jiggles, and stands out without apologies. I only wish to live my life that way.

Ya girl, Teya.