If this doesn’t give you chills… I don’t know what will.

Samantha Peterson gave this stunning spoken word performance in our very own Boulder, Colorado.

By a few seconds in, you’ll probably notice she doesn’t have that “Hollywood” body type. She has a body, as she relates in her poem, that people seem more comfortable referring to in metaphor—even when catcalling her! Catcalling is offensive enough, but I mean, if you can’t even describe the person you think you’re flirting with as anything but an inanimate object… something is pretty wrong here.

While it doesn’t seem immediately insulting to be compared to beautiful landscapes and fireflies, notice what compliments aren’t being thrown her way. Being heavy in the U.S. can sometimes feel like you live in an alternate reality, you’re not seen fully, because seeing you fully would mean acknowledging something that seems to make people uncomfortable.

Isn’t there something a little twisted in that? We’re all people, we all have bodies. Let’s love those bodies as bodies no matter what they might look like. And let’s leave the landscape metaphors for literature and art critics maybe.

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Author: Kathryn Muyskens

Editor: Renée Picard

Photo: Wikimedia Commons