She’s Really Let Herself Go by Jen Violi
“Let myself go on and rise from violation, from something stolen from me and my body”
a personal essay by Jen Violi
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I’ve been thinking about a comment I’ve heard since I was a little girl, something said about some women, with a slow shake of the head and a patronizing sigh. “Wow, she’s really let herself go.”
More insult than comment. More like disapproval. More like criticism.
“Yeah. She’s really let herself go.”
As in, she hasn’t been to the gym in ages or hasn’t been slathering foundation over her blemishes in the morning, or putting on whatever outfits and attitudes, tones of voice and ways of being are supposed to make a woman look and sound polished and presentable and put-together.
A disparaging comment that feeds the compulsion among us to hold it all together in a way that makes everyone else feel comfortable. In a way that fits. This fear of letting myself go runs a slimy undercurrent in my head and heart. This fear of slipping up or spilling over, exposing to the world the wrinkles in my dress, the bulges in my flesh, the clutter in my heart, and the anger steaming up through the hair follicles on the top of my head. The fear that the world will see all of this and deem me unworthy of work, love, compassion and connection.
Well as with everything else right now, the slimy undercurrent has risen to the top of the river. And I’m done with being afraid of letting myself go.
I’m asking myself, what if, instead, it was a compliment? Like, “Wow, she has really let herself go! I’d bet she hasn’t washed her hair for a week. Nice. “
Or “Did you see that amazing belly, the way it’s hanging down over the elastic of her waistband, those drooping boobs—mmm, they are so relaxed without a bra!”
Or “Whoa, did you catch a whiff of that? That could only be the intoxicating scent of a woman who has forsaken showers because she has more pressing matters to attend to.”
What if “She’s really let herself go” really means she’s off and running? Covering ground. Making progress. Progressing making. Feeling the muscles contract and expand in her calves, the sweat trickle out from the hair behind her earlobe and the edges of her armpits, beneath breasts, between thighs. What if it meant she kicked down the door of her assigned prison and didn’t look back at that holy institution that wanted her labor but not her leadership, that relationship that made her feel smaller than she is and bigger than she’s supposed to be, the traditions she was raised with but never felt like home? What if it meant you were watching her stride purposefully into the heart of her craft? Brushstroke by brushstroke, turn by turn, word by word.
What if “She’s really let herself go” is actually what that whole if-you-love-someone-set-them-free shit is about. If you love yourself, set her free. Let her go. If she comes back to you, she’s yours. If she doesn’t, who the fuck cares? You didn’t really like her anyway. Get busy being a different version of you.
What if I write an epic ode to all of the times that I’ve let myself go? The times I finally stopped worrying about appearances, containers, packages and focused instead on actuality, content, the gift itself. The times I let myself go across the country to a new city—Portland, D.C., New Orleans, Phoenix rising from the ashes of a two-day Greyhound Bus trip. Let myself keep going after he left me and us. Let myself go on and rise from violation, from something stolen from me and my body, let myself go into the Atlantic ocean at midnight and choose to give the blood of my undoing to the mercy of saltwater. Let myself go to get pierced, through the cartilage in my left ear, with a silver loop to mark my own damn territory, to reclaim the circle of myself.
How sweet it’s been to let myself go. The good Catholic girl from high school, wrapped in the false assurances of dogma and settling for a demoted goddess. The save-the-world girl from college, convinced she had to choose service over joy. The woman who could only taste kisses after tasting gin. The woman who feared her own body and the fluid words that wanted to spill out of it. The woman who thought, for a moment, that a bully elected to power rendered her powerless.
What if I let myself go right now? The self who thinks she’s doing enough. The self who’s stuck on Facebook in an ocean of global despair and battle, hate and greed and grief, rather than standing on the front lines of her life—facing privilege, taking action, taking heart.
I want to burn it all down. This self. This me who nitpicks details. Who has kitchen towel protocols inherited from my mother, inherited from her mother, inherited from an adopted family with a fancy house and manners. I want to know my great grandmother’s position on kitchen towels. My mother’s mother’s mother. I bet she didn’t have one.
My dad’s mother, I know, would clean her kitchen with a hose she pulled in from the backyard. The kitchen floor sloped toward the door, so she could just hose it all down and let the dirty water roll on out. Now that’s some cleaning protocol I can get behind.
I want to burn down all the kitchen towels and hand towels and dish towels and only-for-rags towels and leave my hands wet with sudsy water or garden water or whatever, so I can flick my dripping fingertips at my old self going up in flames, and listen to the sizzle as droplets hit fire.
I want to burn it all down. This achy padded-for-protection body. I want to burn it all down so I can find her again. Or find her for the first time—wet red fledgling me in a heap of ashes.
I want to burn it all down, the fantasies I grew up with about knights in shining armor coming to rescue me from this actually exquisite mess. I want to grow a new skin for a new kind of battle. I want to grow a shell, to make of myself an egg, to return to soupy me and give myself a chance to set and solidify, to see what new form I might take this time. I want a shell I can crack out of. To bust my way out of my father’s skull so confidently that no one can doubt my place in the pantheon, not even me.
I want to burn it all down, to make way for the me who isn’t waiting for a savior to redeem her soul, sanctify her body, or approve of her mind. To make way for the me who does not apologize unless she’s actually done something to apologize for, who doesn’t stay silent when it’s time to make some righteous noise. Who knows that the world is hungry for the brave, tender untamed voices of women, and who brandishes her pen accordingly.
I want to walk into a room and turn heads with the smell and sight and music of me, the taste and girth and feel of me, to stop the trafficked chit chat of nothingness, so that all that anyone can say is “Wow, you know, she’s really let herself go.” So that anyone and everyone in a five-thousand-mile radius suddenly feels the urge to let themselves go, too.
Bras snapping open, buttons popping and flying, structures and strictures crumbling, hearts racing, air pumping through fully expanded lungs. A legion of heroines marching, unabashedly letting themselves go.
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Header image courtesy of Valerie Usui. To view more of her photography, go here.
Jen Violi is the author of Putting Makeup on Dead People, a BCCB Blue Ribbon Book, and finalist for the Oregon Book Awards. Jen is a columnist for Sweatpants & Coffee, and her work has been featured in The Baltimore Review, Burlesque Press, Annapurna Living and the new collection Monday Nights (UNO Press 2016). As a mentor, editor, and facilitator, Jen creates sanctuary for stories and the people who need to tell them. Visit her online, here.