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The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love QUOTES

The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love QUOTES

1 " Systems do not maintain themselves; even our lack of intervention is an act of maintenance. Every structure in every society is upheld by the active and passive assistance of other human beings. "

― Sonya Renee Taylor , The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love

2 " It is considered normal for women and girls in the United States to have hair, a reality shaped to varying degrees by the default of Westernized beauty standards. In Western societies hair is often tied to notions of femininity, beauty and gender. Having hair is what is expected of a "normal" woman or girl. Of course, there is an endless screed of rules governing our notions of normal hair. One cannot have too much hair or too little. "

― Sonya Renee Taylor , The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love

3 " Equally damaging is our insistence that all bodies should be healthy. Health is not a state we owe the world. We are not less valuable, worthy, or lovable because we are not healthy. Lastly, there is no standard of health that is achievable for all bodies. "

― Sonya Renee Taylor , The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love

4 " When we say we don’t see color, what we are truly saying is, “I don’t want to see the things about you that are different because society has told me they are dangerous or undesirable.” Ignoring difference does not change society; nor does it change the experiences non-normative bodies must navigate to survive. Rendering difference invisible validates the notion that there are parts of us that should be ignored, hidden, or minimized, leaving in place the unspoken idea that difference is the problem and not our approach to dealing with difference. "

― Sonya Renee Taylor , The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love

5 " When we liberate ourselves from the expectation that we must have all things figured out, we enter a sanctuary of empathy. "

― Sonya Renee Taylor , The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love

6 " Living in a female body, a Black body, an aging body, a fat body, a body with mental illness is to awaken daily to a planet that expects a certain set of apologies to already live on our tongues. There is a level of “not enough” or “too much” sewn into these strands of difference. "

― Sonya Renee Taylor , The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love

7 " When our personal value is dependent on the lesser value of other bodies, radical self-love is unachievable. "

― Sonya Renee Taylor , The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love

8 " To be fear-facing is to learn the distinction between fear and danger. It is to look directly at the source of the fear and assess if we are truly in peril or if we are simply afraid of the unknown. "

― Sonya Renee Taylor , The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love

9 " Radical self-love demands that we see ourselves and others in the fullness of our complexities and intersections and that we work to create space for those intersections. "

― Sonya Renee Taylor , The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love

10 " Saying I’m fat is (and should be) the same as saying my shoes are black, the clouds are fluffy, and Bob Saget is tall. It’s not good, it’s not bad, it just is. The only negativity that this word carries is that which has been socially constructed around it.… We don’t need to stop using the word fat, we need to stop the hatred that our world connects with the word fat.2 "

― Sonya Renee Taylor , The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love

11 " When we decide that people’s bodies are wrong because we don’t understand them, we are trying to avoid the discomfort of divesting from an entire body-shame system. "

― Sonya Renee Taylor , The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love

12 " Concepts like self-acceptance and body neutrality are not without value. When you have spent your entire life at war with your body, these models offer a truce. But you can have more than a cease-fire. You can have radical self-love because you are already radical self-love. "

― Sonya Renee Taylor , The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love

13 " Racism, sexism, ableism, homo- and transphobia, ageism, fatphobia are algorithms created by humans’ struggle to make peace with the body. A radical self-love world is a world free from the systems of oppression that make it difficult and sometimes deadly to live in our bodies. "

― Sonya Renee Taylor , The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love

14 " there is no standard of health that is achievable for all bodies. Our belief that there should be anchors the systemic oppression of ableism and reinforces the notion that people with illnesses and disabilities have defective bodies rather than different bodies. "

― Sonya Renee Taylor , The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love

15 " Phrases like “Get over it!” and “It’s all in your head” are rooted in ableism. They are body terrorism against non-normative brains. Let’s stop telling people to “get over it” and start asking, “How can I help you heal? "

― Sonya Renee Taylor , The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love

16 " Radical self-love summons us to be our most expansive selves, knowing that the more unflinchingly powerful we allow ourselves to be, the more unflinchingly powerful others feel capable of being. Our unapologetic embrace of our bodies gives others permission to unapologetically embrace theirs. "

― Sonya Renee Taylor , The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love

17 " Body terrorism is a hideous tower whose primary support beam is the belief that there is a hierarchy of bodies. We uphold the system by internalizing this hierarchy and using it to situate our own value and worth in the world. "

― Sonya Renee Taylor , The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love

18 " An acorn does not have to say, ‘I intend to become an oak tree. "

― Sonya Renee Taylor , The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love

19 " The work is to crumble the barriers of injustice and shame leveled against us so that we might access what we have always been, because we will, if unobstructed, inevitably grow into the purpose for which we were created: our own unique version of that oak tree. "

― Sonya Renee Taylor , The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love

20 " Our beliefs about bodies disproportionately impact those whose race, gender, sexual orientation, ability, and age deviate from our default notions. The further from the default, the greater the impact. We are all affected - but not equally. "

― Sonya Renee Taylor , The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love