touching me, touching you

squishy women rule

One of my favorite photos is Howard Schatz’s lineup of Olympians, which immediately challenges any singular idea of what an athlete should look like. Connie Price-Smith, a shot putter, is 6’3”, ripped, thick-thighed, and firmly planted. Tabitha Yim, a gymnast, is tiny—4’8”, flat-chested, slim-hipped, and 85 pounds. Joseph Chebet, who runs marathons, is short and scrawny, but unmistakably toned. Shane Hamann, a 370-pound weightlifter, has a stomach that rolls over his pants, the kind of mass that's required to lift heavy. 

As for me, an office worker with a respectable average step count of 9,495, I am 5’2”, stocky-legged, slightly hunched, and soft around the edges. 

Clearly, I am not an Olympian, but the photo reminds me that we share something in common: our bodies have been molded for and by our chosen activities.

The Olympians have opted for world-class athleticism. I have selected more leisurely pursuits: cuddling, lounging, jogging, dancing, being squished, giving massages, and eating something sweet every single day. 

*****

Though I am only peripherally aware of it, my online diet feeds me the exact sludge that made the Surgeon General call for a warning label on social media platforms: slinky coquette women leaning into schoolgirl aesthetics, EDtwt threads reminding me that nothing tastes as good as being skinny, the sense that everyone except me flashes V7s and teaches rooftop kundalini yoga. 

Japan, where I lived for two years, exposed me to different images. Kyushu, with its abundance of hot springs, has a public bathing culture. And public bathing means seeing, whether you like it or not, a lot of naked women. Onsen were the first places I saw unclothed everyday women in multitudes.

Which is why seeing 80-year-old, sagging women was so helpful for me. Seeing nude elderly people crystallized my understanding of the body as a living and dying thing. The body is not so different from a fruit: an object given moral bents only by the stories that we tell about it; an object that will shrivel, inevitably, regardless of how it looked at its peak. 

On the less extreme side, being exposed to other young women with my body type, noticing them being normal and happy and not predisposed to harping on the disproportionate girth of their honking calves, made space for me to be normal and happy and slightly more restrained in harping on the disproportionate girth of my honking calves. It turns out I am normal. It turns out most of the photos online are outliers. 

*****

I was 24 years old the first time I truly touched a woman. I showed up to a contact improv workshop with a nice man I met online, then spent most of the class on the opposite side of the room from him, strategically smooshing my center of gravity into three other women. 

Practicing contact improv helped me realize that women are fun to touch—and for very different reasons from how men are fun to touch. And though that sounds sexual, I don’t mean it that way, though I don’t doubt that’s enjoyable too. I mean objectively. 

In my younger and more vulnerable years, I regarded my body as a failed attempt to be good (desirable, athletic, coveted). I especially worried that it’d be disappointing for partners—that I’d fall short in both looks and sensation. 

Since then, I’ve danced with many women, and I now understand that it is not possible to be bad to touch.

It’s pleasant when women are thin and delicate, evoking the same tenderness that I get from cradling a small animal. It’s pleasant when they are full-bodied and supple, with flesh that begs interaction like yeasted dough. It’s pleasant when I can sense the curvature of their bones as we pull away to create tension or press against each other for support.

It’s especially pleasant when they are squishy.  

Experiencing other female bodies gave me the perspective I needed to trust that my body is fun to touch, too.  

*****

Over time, I have come to understand my body as a functional tool, a machine designed for a purpose. And while it is not top-of-the-line, it works. It is the flesh prison equivalent of a 2000 Honda Civic—nothing to write home about, but more than capable of taking you from point A to point B—and I am not the type to complain about things that are working. 

When I am content with my physique, looking at my body does offer some aesthetic pleasure. But no matter its condition, using my body—stretching it, exhausting it, resting it, giving it, trusting it—brings me sensorial pleasure: all-over, sturdy, manifest satisfaction. 

Think of the difference between looking at a picture of a delicious meal and actually putting it in your mouth and swallowing. 

Of course, the meal, beautiful as it may be, holds the ultimate intention of being eaten. Of course, the body, beautiful as it may be, finds its true expression not as the source material for idle critique, but through the raw act of living.  

*****

Last month, on a group trip with 20+ internet friends to Mexico City, my new friend Nibras told me that I give good hugs, some of the best she’s received in recent memory. This made me wonder, if my body is capable of notably good hugs, what’s left to fix? What higher purpose for a body than to make others feel safe and loved in its embrace?