Consume Me: Objectified Bodies as Art

I love being watched.

As much as I write about staying inside my experience, of witnessing myself, of being the subject instead of the object of my life, I’m also excited by being on display. There’s something so thrilling about having another person's attention. I love being in the spotlight, even love public speaking. And although it often scares the shit of out of me, it really feels amazing to be in front of an audience.

But live performance (even just dancing or singing for my partner) is often layered with embarrassment and shame. I hear a voice in my head: I should not be enjoying this so much. It feels narcissistic. It feels shallow. It feels…dangerous?

Somewhere between seven years old and my mid-thirties, expressing myself stopped being about the magic of offering a story and became layered with the need to be beautiful and valuable. It got all tangled with a loss of power and with a fear for my emotional and physical safety.

Many of the artists I know feel the same way. There’s a conflict inside them between wanting to create and share their art with others, and feeling ashamed of being seen. They are afraid of being judged. Afraid of being misinterpreted. Afraid of being objectified. Afraid of losing power. Just afraid.

But here’s the thing: I think all of us are artists. We are all meant to be storytellers. And whether we tell stories through novels or dance or music or paintings or textiles or just over dinner with our friends, we are wired to share our stories.

Our stories are the way we connect, create meaning, and find belonging. (In Greek, story and history is the same word: ιστορία.) To hold them inside of us is to deny the core wildness of ourselves, the thing that makes us human.

And stories are meant to be consumed. They are meant to be taken into the body, metabolized, and utlized as nutrients for our lives.

The nature of dance especially (or music or acting or modeling for photography) means that my body is part of the piece. It is my breath, my voice, my limbs, my face that are telling the story.

I become the story. And if stories are to be consumed, then that means my body is to be consumed as well. I become both the subject of my life and an object of art.

I remember hearing a quote by Glennon Doyle Melton, "If you're not at the table, you're on the menu.” And my immediate thought was, “Of course I want to be at the table. I want to be the subject of my life. To feel safe and empowered. To feel free from this system that is objectifying every body. But I also want to be on the menu.”

I also want to be on the menu?

Yes. I want to be consumed. Ravaged. Devoured. Taken in by others and absorbed like nutrients.

Used as fodder.

I think we are totally capable of holding space for nuance and paradox. I think we can be both an empowered subject and an art object at the same time.

An audience can view me as a whole person when I perform a story. They can be watching me dance or sing just as a friend would listen to a secret or a confession. They can hold a non-judgmental space for my self-expression.

I call this witnessing. It’s therapeutic. It’s deep healing. That is how I first started pole dancing and it is how I learned to start witnessing my own shadows.

But sometimes it’s important that the audience doesn’t see me as me. The whole point is that they see me as a character in a story that I’m trying to tell. My body becomes something else, something Other, something that is to be consumed, imbibed for their own utilization.

They will take the story and they will make it their own. They will see themselves or people they know reflected in it, or they will ignore it. They will love it, hate it, or be indifferent about it. They will use it as inspiration or avoidance. They will critique it, adore it, or abuse it.

And that means, of course, that they will be doing all of those things to my body, as well.

None of that is in my control. When I share a story, it is no longer up to me how it will be experienced by the consumer. My only job is to be the best storyteller I can be.

Whether it is dance or music or poetry or photography or these essays, I want to tell more stories. I want to make more art. And that means opening myself up to the dangers of being consumed by people who are unwilling to hold space for me as a subject.

They will only see me as an object and forget that I am also a whole person.

But I cannot hold those stories inside of myself any more than I can constantly hold my breath and expect to be a healthy and functioning human. Telling stories is inevitable, just like breathing is inevitable. It is wasted energy to hold them in.

They will both only stop when I'm dead.

And even then, my stories will hopefully continue on like compost — feeding the roots of another person’s story — which is fodder for another person’s story — which is nutrients for someone else’s story — on and on and on and on...