The spider’s web is web of protection around art-making, around play, and around intentional community. It is an offering for spaciousness from social media. This work is meant to bring hope back into creation. This work allows me to take time with my daily practice, with myself, and with my communities that feels easeful in my body. I hope that these offerings will bring you more ease and consideration in your own body. Thank you for joining me here. Y’all are welcome to share this offering with your communities. I just ask that you credit my work @meredithannewhite.
I come today with an offering in regards to identity through my own lens as a queer woman. Thank you for continuing to show up here with me. It has allowed me so much spaciousness with my work, with my body, and with the many other happenings in my life that have needed my attention. As always, I am so grateful to have you here with me.
For much of my life, I didn’t identify with my own body. I never felt I had the right adornments for my body. I always felt it would be easier to be a comic book character with one main outfit. How liberating it would be to wear that one thing every day and never be judged for it. So when I did find something I loved growing up, it was the only thing I would wear (or not wear).
When I was super small, I snuck the same sunflower dress into my backpack each day and changed at school. Around 5, I scrapped underwear altogether. My Sunday school teacher caught me spread out in my church dress during arts-and-crafts after service. I found a shiny, green bathing suit next. The cycle continues, as I am currently in my sweatsuit phase and have been for quite some time.
Looking back on these experiences, I see how queer I was. I’m like hello small, unknowing child. I see you, and I love you! But that was not my timeline as someone that grew up with spaces of limited diversity and very few gay people. I did find out later in life that my Girl Scout troop leaders were gay. I just thought my friend had two moms which meant extra love, extra snacks, and extra fun activities. How amazing.
From a very young age, I was told that I was good at care-giving. I was observant and empathic. I was good in the ways that I was raised to be good. My clothes, and therefore my actions, allowed me to enter a space without disruption. I began to pick up on the fact that the more paletteable I became to the onlooker, the more likely my work would be “accepted” because the work was coming from a seemingly beautiful source.
Here lies my entrance into thrifting. I grew curious. It gave me access to clothes outside of gender normality. It allowed me different shapes, styles, and cuts of clothes regardless of current trends. The more I thrifted, the more I began to orient myself around the boys’ section. I found that boys’ clothes are created with the intent to be functional. There is an ability to move in them. There is an ability to get work done, to play a sport, and store belongings in the 1 of 17 different pockets. There is a freedom in how they sit on the body because we are less inclined to be objectifying this person’s body as it pertains to another’s viewing pleasure.
The girls’ section looked and felt very different. Girls are very rarely given the same freedoms in their clothes. The clothes guide the way the body is to move. Better yet, the clothes guide the way the body is not to move. We are taught from a very young age that our day-to-day practices are informed by our limited range of motion. The clothes don’t empower our own capabilities to work, mend, and take care of ourselves. Our clothes have limited us from the very beginning.
When I got out of school, I began receiving “work.” I was offered a mural in exchange for a candle-lit meal, a monetary investment in exchange for sex, and a show under the guise of radical, queer, femme. I was tired of my work being used for sexual gain, personal gain, or tokenization. So I began to dismantle my own narrative surrounding beauty. I cut my hair off. I got rid of my shorts and dresses. I was no longer beautiful in the ways that people were accustomed to. The more I dismantled the ways I chose to show up in a space, the more uncomfortable it was for those around me.
How do I define myself with what I wear?
As I began to come out to those around me, I began to pick back up softer pieces of myself. I didn’t have to be hard and rigid to be queer. I didn’t have to present as masculine to be heard. In opening myself back up to my femininity, I’ve opened myself back up to the work I feel called to make. This is slow work. This is craft. This work is energetic and considered. This work tells stories through the medium of textiles. This is sewing. And sewing has completely and utterly dismantled the identity I built for myself secured by four walls and a mote. As I sink further into the clothes I like to wear, I sink further into personal embodiment.
How may I show up fully as myself regardless of how those around me are seeing me?
Craft work allows me to further connect with my grandmother and my mom. It opens space for my elders to whisper stories in my ear about the clothes I’ve inherited, the quilts with hidden messages inside, and the hands that carefully stitched sacred memories back together with care. In welcoming these forgotten stories back into my life, I’m better able to meet my own body with grace. I’m able to create in this body in this lifetime with courage. So I send you away with this:
Where can you take up more space in your own body?
I sit at my table with my favorite sweatpants, a large wool sweater, my hair disheveled with clips, and tarot cards spread about. I send love to you and your body today.
Thank you for joining me here. Y’all are welcome to share this offering with your communities. I just ask that you credit my work @meredithannewhite. You can find me here, on my IG @meredithannewhite,and my website. Thank you so much <3