In a world where principles of equality and equity are disregarded, perhaps accepting that my body exists somewhere on the disability spectrum helps me to show it empathy and kindness
I’ve been thinking a lot about how I have lived my whole adult life feeling like I have had to perform professionally in opposition to my body. Representation pic/iStock
It’ll soon be almost a year since I took a sabbatical from art criticism. I needed a break from the routine of the monthly column. It had become one of too many items on my work plate, which felt overwhelming, considering that around this time last year, I was going through the brain fog of the first trimester. If you’re a creative person who has been pregnant, you may have experienced this fuzzy feeling — there’s a sudden lack of transparency in the ideating process. The fluency or ease with which you otherwise were able to perform suddenly vanishes. I remember struggling to complete my sentences, combing through my brain for the right word, which felt so within reach and yet elusive. I’m afraid to admit this, because as people who have been conditioned to perform as women, we have had to train ourselves to work against our body’s limitations in order to feel like we deserve equality.
Women were historically kept outside of the paid workforce because our bodies were seen as weak, and our psychological constitutions were deemed too emotional because of our capacity for empathy and kindness. The fact that we menstruated was grounds enough to keep us from being employed. The fact that our wombs could be impregnated made our presence in most public domains feel like a liability. Our place was confined to the hearth, or to the living room. In many places, this continues to be the norm.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how I have lived my whole adult life feeling like I have had to perform professionally in opposition to my body. I’ve had to suck it up and medicate myself through period pain to show up for a pre-planned meeting, or to stick to a deadline so that I would not be considered as untrustworthy or flaky. I have visited biennales and done artist studio visits while pregnant or with a toddler, so that I didn’t lose the assignment in question, even though, as a mother with an infant or as a pregnant person, I have struggled to find the faculty for attentiveness that art viewership demands. All of these facts point to how I have always been a disabled body trying to function in a world designed for able-bodied cis-heterosexual men. The world I have inhabited and continue to inhabit continues to disregard principles of equality, and more importantly, equity. An equitable world would be one in which concessions were made for bodies that exist outside the norm; one in which we would understand, finally, that the notion of meritocracy is indeed a myth and there is only privilege that decides who gets access to the best opportunities.
While I was talking to my partner yesterday about a study I had read about how the best indication for how well a child is likely to do in school is how emotionally secure they feel, I was surprised when he told me that where we live, doing well in school is not something people place a lot of emphasis on. It kind of shocked me, because growing up in Mumbai, your only ticket to anything was securing an above-average score in a board exam. I cannot even imagine what my life would have been if it had been viewed as okay to fail, okay to not get ideal marks/grades, okay not to be ranked among the top ten in class. It still blows most people’s minds here that in every classroom I was ever in during my school years, we were competing against between 70 to 80 kids. It was only in my final year of graduation that I had a classroom with fewer than 30 people, and then at university. As an adult now living in the ‘west’, I’ve realised there’s absolutely nothing ‘equal’ about the conditions of my upbringing and those of someone like even my partner. I had no choice but to work really hard, always, and to always put my best foot forward.
After more than a decade of hustling and navigating a gig culture to ‘make it’ as a freelance writer, I definitely feel burnt out. Having secured for myself a steady freelance gig which offers a stable, liveable income has offered me the luxury of taking a step back from the hectic nature of commissioned writing. I’m still one of the very few mothers who work full-time where I live, and I often wonder what it must be like for mothers who have access to maternity leave, where they receive basic pay and get to be home with their kids. I cannot remember the last time I was able to leisurely examine a work of art and allow it to move me enough for the words to sprout through my fingers. I fear that my next bodily struggle is lurking around the corner — menopause. Perhaps accepting that my body exists somewhere on the disability spectrum helps me to show it more empathy and kindness. It also helps to have somehow renounced the conventional idea of writing as a career. It has grown into a sacred vocation, something you give your life to for spiritual, as against material gains.
Deliberating on the life and times of every woman, Rosalyn D’Mello is a reputable art critic and the author of A Handbook For My Lover. She posts @rosad1985 on Instagram
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The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper
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