there's a certain type of loneliness in being this sexy.
by Solidago Faye (they/them)
The requirements for a man’s hard-on change with the seasons. Your tits might be in style for now, but give it a few months, you’ll be the new topic of disgust.
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Before, the part of me that ached to be a pretty girl had grown into a tumor. I was molding myself into the shapes of un-alive things like Coke bottles. The Public find my tattoos unbecoming of a “lady”. The visibility of my artistic agency hits their eyes like sharp sunlight the morning after. Being subject to my environment as it stands means having my creativity used against me.
The desire for an Innocence never granted:
I have been guilty since I left my mother and she was guilty before me. We are most familiar with the court of public opinion.
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Beauty, for a Black person, comes at a cost. I am never the beautifully mysterious stranger, I am always a threat. A threat to people’s notions of what can and what shouldn’t be. A threat to one’s safety. In a body like mine, nothing is simple, except, maybe, pissing in the shower. I am tired of being forced to act sane whilst people gaslight me and rid me of all innocence. These are the events that lead people to cursing.
Ugliness is a shield:
Something about being unattractive brings all the assholes to the forefront. This is perfect. Now I can weed them out with ease and peace, as if I was back in my community garden in Brooklyn. Exposing their roots and discarding them; making more space for those that bring me fruit.
It’s something about their re-pulse, something about my state reminds them of what they are supposed to think. To re-pulse is to arouse feeling. I then wonder what they actually feel. I think they do too. Beauty takes so much away from us. It’s often forgotten that beauty is inherently violent. For beauty to exist, there must be a standard and therefore an other.
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I have never actually been called ugly, but I have had people consistently remind me that I am not and cannot ever be the standard of “beauty”. I often catch people readjusting their gaze to “status quo” as their eyes drop from mine. As we globally descend further into Fascism and homogeneity reinforces itself, once over and once over, the individual's opinion on my mug means less and less. Without a cosign from the right people, I may as well be a gargoyle.
there's a certain type of loneliness in being this sexy.
I often feel like a freak on a leash.
Still showcased, because my beauty is undeniable, but not fathomable, so I'm not celebrated. That’s why I am stepping into something more comfortable. The number three keeps coming to mind. I have been deeply torn five-fold, some of its wrinkles my own doing.
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And so the undoing is more of the same. I feel like the right people will find me attractive but I am also learning to not care so much. Those wrinkles are badges; exclusively obtained through experience. With that, comes wisdom, one of the few things the State can’t whisk away from me (unlike Beauty). Wisdom shifts my operational code immediately every time.
I can feel people treating me like a malfunctioning toy. I can feel their eyes searching and cutting me open. They don’t expect to find blood. This is one of those moments when we grasp at thin air. Looking for something human-but-not; only to be disappointed or bored when we find that’s all we have.
Artwork: Solidago Faye (they/them)
Instagram: @cele5tial_
Twitter: @cele5tial_
Email: solidagofaye@protonmail.com
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Thank you to Tressie McMillam Cottom, author of Thick and @lipglossssssssss on TikTok for pushing discussions on desirability, regardless of backlash.
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This project was commissioned by Sibling Collaborative LTD as a part of Sibling Series: Witches and Bitches
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Page Design: Mia Quimpo Gourlay (she/her)
Facilitated by: Madalena Miles (she/her)