I attended Boston Calling this past weekend. It’s been years since I went to a music festival and I can honestly say, it’s as glorious as I remember. We lucked out as the stars aligned and the weather was perfect. As for logistics, the only stress point for my 40-something year old brain, every little thing fell right into place, with not a single issue.
The funny point I noted was that I spent a lot more time observing folks than I did in my 20s, when I was likely part of the watched crowd.
Although there are certainly exceptions, I’ve found that most music festivals attract a wide range of humans. Boston Calling was no exception to this “rule,” and I feasted my eyes on humans of all different sizes and shapes and skin color and ages. It was delightful and an unnecessary but heart tickling reminder that music is indeed a great equalizer.
I found myself particularly taken with the young women that surrounded me at the festival. There’s a part of me that right now wants to offer some disclaimer or explanation, but I’ll only ask that you bear with me.
What I saw, to my delight, was the human body on unabashed display. Freckles, wrinkles, cellulite, stretch marks, skin rolls, and scars. Tattoos, beauty marks, discoloration, and disfigurement. Bodies that did not necessarily subscribe to the nonsensical societally supported view on what makes for a beautiful body. It was more than that though. The bodies were beautiful to me, but it was so much more. What tugged at the furthest reaches of my heart was the confidence, the ostensibly carefree attitude, and the focus on something other than what everyone else might think. It was the purest form of living honestly and freely in the moment that I had witnessed in a very long time.
I can assuredly share that I have never really been that way, not that I can recall. And truthfully, I can’t tie that notion to anything in my childhood. My grandmother (maternal) was a bit obsessed with her weight and physical appearance, but my mother was a saint in that regard. Don’t get me wrong, as Sus takes very good care of herself, but she has always tried to foster in me and my sister a healthy relationship with food and our physical being. There was always an overarching notion in our house that physical appearance is extraordinarily far from the top of the list when it comes to the most important qualities a human can have.
Sus never diminished the notion of self-care or downplayed how important our society makes physical appearance. She was just keen in letting us know that we shouldn’t be sucked into the trap of such nonsense. Food is nourishment, but beyond that, it’s fantastic. And skin moves and changes shape and stretches and bounces back and then doesn’t. We gain weight and lose weight because of hormones and emotions and metabolism and the best cookies. The. Best. We get wrinkles and grow gray hair and then lose the hair, no matter its shade. We have sunspots and dark blotches and marks that appear out of nowhere and take residence and decide to never leave.
And I grew up in a time without social media and without influencers. My influencers were Jennie Garth and whoever was on the cover of Seventeen and whichever creature was named head of my public school’s cheerleading squad. And they all taunted me with their perfectly glossed lips and straight, shiny hair, and enviable figures. And still, it was a different time, in all the ways that seem to count.
Yet, I still managed to find insecurity and self-loathing in that pile of detachment and education. In a world where my body could be a private garden, I found a path to comparison and criticism. It’s not hard if you try. It’s not difficult if you barely put any effort in at all. Somehow, I think it’s more apt to say it finds you. Still, I can’t help but think about these young women who lay in the darkness of their sanctuaries, their space, and scroll endlessly through reels and posts. I can’t help but think how there exists no escape and the very thing that I had to seek, is at their very fingertips, 24-7.
And I think that this culture of oversharing and photoshopping has bred new disordered thinking and new trauma, but I also see something different emerging. I see something radical and untouched by hashtags and well-crafted memes. I see a generation of women that could very well be impacted by the same trivialities that I have filled my brain with, but they are still finding a way to overcome. To persevere. To think differently. To act differently.
There is something of a sisterhood. A common ground. A camaraderie. There is a sentiment that is well felt when around these young women, those young women, that somehow, they’ve found a way to find protection in numbers. We will all wear short shorts, and we will all feel the slight, chafing that comes with having human flesh, and real thighs, and we will smile and resist the urge to judge each other and condemn ourselves.
I did not look at these groups of young women and think them devoid of heartache or misinformed self-reflection. Rather, I understood by looking at them that they are trying in a way that we didn’t, that I didn’t. They are, deliberately or inadvertently, sending a message that dimples in the skin are normal and arms don’t need to be synthesized and shrunk with an app, and we are not defined by the size or shape of our breasts. I saw frizzy hair that was not smoothed and lashes that were all too real, and raggedy cuticles and chipped nail polish. I saw that they were trying. They are trying. To be something different than the toxic culture that was created long ago and has been forever perpetuated by ALL OF US.
The videos we have created and sent and watched, endlessly, where slender, perfectly coiffed young women talk about wearing extra smalls and size zeroes without an understanding that most of us aren’t in that same category. The videos that fail to acknowledge that a size 2 explaining how a ‘beach body is just putting your body on the beach’ is not empowering, but degrading and false. The videos that explain all the ways in which women can mold themselves to be more like the idea by buying so and so, and wearing this and that, and acting exactly in this way.
And I am not shaming slender women. I am not mocking those who work out and eat healthy and prioritize their figures and faces. I am stating that there is something absolutely beautiful about acknowledging we are all different. There is something magical about wearing shorts because it’s really fucking hot and allowing skin to jiggle when dancing your ass off, and raising your arms up high to a blue, cloudless sky, singing, and not squeezing your elbows into your sides, as a meager apology for the half-moon sweat circles that stain your armpit region. Joy. Unhampered, untouched, JOY.
I don’t think these young women are perfect and I don’t even know if they know what they are doing, but I know. They are trying. They are trying to be human in a way that’s free and individual and also, radically connective.
Let’s all try, shall we?
X
L.
thepathtoworthy.com 
Spot on,
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