feminish

I could worry about whose gaze this is and why…

But then I remember that I didn’t know the photo was being taken. I was involved in the action of being dirty getting clean; being cold getting warm; being dusty getting fresh. In this moment I accepted the cold, accepted my dirtiness-becoming-clean, and accepted my body for what it is.

Maybe you can’t see that in the picture. You can’t shiver with the damp chill, or smell the soap, or feel the softness of undusty baby-fuzz hairs on my skin. But there is a silence to it, a concentrated silence. And there’s a simplicity; the sheer simplicity of human flesh, washed in splashed water as it has been for thousands of years. (How many generations of my ancestors have known hot, body-full baths anyway? four? five?) I’d like to think there’s more stark humanity here than femininity; it was a human moment for me more than a feminine one.