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Archives Identifier
Accession no. 2026.52
Creation Date
Spring 3-19-2025
Description
People think I'm calm, collected and confident. I think I'm stumbling, trying to navigate without knocking things over. As women we're taught to make ourselves small, quiet. As a fat woman, I have no choice but to be confident in a world determined to see me as otherwise. My attitude is defiance. It's taken forever to have this confidence, so putting it down is difficult. You need to protect yourself. No one's going to stop making assumptions because I decide I'm tired of wearing this armor. In a way, that is its own kind of comfort.
If you are a woman, you mother. You are in service to others – that is the expectation and reality. And mothering includes caring, creation, encouragement, planning, sweat, miracles, problem solving, mind reading, determination, sorrow, fear, joy... It is a blessing and a curse, inescapable and endless, and just monumentally IS, like the sea.
Keywords
RISD, womxn, female experience, feminism, gender identity, women's studies, diversity, social equity and inclusion