Author: stewamar

As of writing this, in eight days my dance titled “My Friend Ana” will debut on Mathers stage for DTG’s Freshworks. My Friend Ana is a semi-autobiographical piece based on my experiences dealing with anorexia until entering treatment at age seventeen. This idea has been in my mind for over a year, and as these ideas were forming, I had never heard the term “Queer Time.” It wasn’t until this class I learned the term, but I’ve been experiencing queer time without knowing the name for years.

In class queer time was mentioned in the context of physical disability, which made me start to wonder if the same applies to mental illness. The more I thought the more I realized it does. For this blog post, I will be focusing specifically on eating disorders and mental illness is a very broad topic, and specifically anorexia nervosa, as that is what I have lived experience with.

One thing my mom always said to me was that I never had a childhood. I wrote a poem once about the last Halloween I went trick-or-treating and only pretending to take candy out of our neighbors bowls. I watched my mom start to cry and she said something about wishing I could just be a kid. This is one way anorexia caused me to experience queer time, by stealing my ability to have a true childhood. The theme of stolen childhood is that’s very present in my piece.

The second way I think My Friend Ana explores queer time is through the concept of ED treatment. I cite the beginning of my recovery to be when I left a partial hospitalization program in order to go back to high school. I think being in PHP was my greatest experience with queer time. My life was quite literally put on hold. The whole world moved on while I was stuck in a treatment center for eight hours a day, trying to get better. I think any type of rehab program is one of the only times where life is put on pause. It was the summer before my senior year of high school. I could barely work and wasn’t making money, all my friends were touring colleges, and my cheerleading teammates had pre-season. When I got home each day I was so exhausted and sick that I didn’t want to do anything else. I couldn’t be a functioning member of society, because my only job was to recover. I think this fits perfectly with the part of queer time that talks about not being a participating member of society.

Finally, the physical symptoms of EDs also contribute to queer time. As previously mentioned, when I was going through treatment, I was constantly sick. I was also constantly sick during the depths of my ED. I wasn’t very good or productive in school, partially because of my eating disorder. I slept more than anyone else I knew because my body was so exhausted. And I struggled maintaining a lot of relationships because I was practically sleepwalking for four years. Anorexia took away my ability to not exist within queer time, I was physically incapable of leading a “normal” life. Another crucial element of queer time is that of the nuclear family. One of the most common arguments I’ve heard about why queer couples shouldn’t get married is because they can’t reproduce. Typically the counter argument for this is that their are straight couples who also can’t reproduce. This applies because in its most severe cases anorexia can lead to infertility.

After a lot of thinking I believe most(if not all) eating disordered people experience some version of queer time. Both the disorder and the recovery from the disorder cause the afflicted person to lose a sense of “normal” time in some way. When I set out to choreograph My Friend Ana, I did not have this theme in mind. I think that’s because it came so naturally to the piece. Queer time was my version of normal for so long. There is a reason queer and trans people are more likely to have EDs than our straight and cis peers. Queer and trans people have been told for years that something about is wrong. Everyone develops EDs for different reasons, but this is a contributing factor for many queer eating disordered people. So it makes a lot of sense to me that this is one way someone can experience queer time.

Come see my piece!

https://www.onthestage.tickets/show/dickinson-college-theatre-and-dance-department/679a562de042530f58d15b9c/tickets#/productions-view

 

One of the most compelling storylines this season, of Rupaul’s Drag Race which also best exemplifies the themes of this class overall in that of my favorite queen this season, Lexi Love. Lexi is a trans woman and is also the oldest contestant on the season(but she is still only 32). In an earlier episode of season 17 Lexi tells the story of her mom kicking her out of the house when she was eighteen because her mom found out she was gay(at the time Lexi was identifying as a gay man, before coming out as trans later in life). Lexi has talked about her past a lot on the show including a history with sex work, and getting sober from a crystal meth addiction. She talked about how drag and her drag family quite literally saved her life. On the most recent episode(episode 13, “Drag Baby Mamas) the top five queens were tasked with making over their real life parents into members of their drag families. Given Lexi’s backstory, I was shocked when they revealed Lexi’s makeover partner to be her biological mother. Like the other queens, Lexi begins crying tears of joy when she sees her mother. In the confessional she talks about how she and her mom had a very rocky relationship but are now in a very good place. As Rupaul is doing her Werk Room walkthrough, she stops to talk to all the contestants and their parents, including Lexi and her mom. While talking to Rupaul, Lexi’s mom says “This is her dream.” Lexi begins to tear up, saying this is the first time her mom has referred to Lexi with the correct pronouns. Later in the conversation she misgenders Lexi but then quickly corrects herself. Finally during critiques on the main stage Lexi’s mom uses her correct pronouns, which makes Lexi exclaim “she called me she” through tears. In the confessional, Lexi calls this her mother giving her “the gift of trans acceptance.” 

Lexi’s story reminded me a lot of the life Venus Xtravaganza of Paris Is Burning could’ve had if she had lived. They were both abandoned by their biological families, found solace in queer communities(ball and drag), and had a past with sex work. One of the main differences between them is unlike Venus, Lexi only came out a few years ago(I believe at age 29, and she was 32 at the time of filming Drag Race). So she was older when she came out than Venus was when she died. This made me think of the Clarke Forum, Rainbows and Mud, where Nic Weststrate, mentioned queer time in a trans context, talking about how there are trans people who come out in their 60s and 70s versus some who have been openly trans since childhood, and might be teaching elder trans people things. There is also an episode where Lexi reveals she has a full time job outside of drag(this is pretty rare for Drag Race contestants). She then explains how her job is online, and she uses pictures of her from before her transition, and pretends to be a cis man. This shocks the younger contestants, who express they see Lexi as this proud, completely confident trans woman. This also makes me think of Venus and her death because even the most proud and confident trans women are still victims of systemic transphobia. In the same makeover episode, Lexi talks about how she’s been intimidated by fellow contestant Suzie Toot because Suzie represents what she could have been if she didn’t have to go through her trauma. Similarly, Lexi being able to live the life she wanted, including reconciling with her mom as she grew up made Venus’s death feel even sadder for me. Lexi is not better or smarter than Venus, but she didn’t meet the same fate as her. Venus Xtravaganza, and all the innocent murdered trans women in America, could have had a beautiful life if she had lived, and Lexi Love is proof of that. I wish there was some reason I could point to a reason why Lexi came out the other end of a similar life while Venus didn’t but there isn’t one. For some odd reason Venus’s life was stolen, and Lexi was able to become a superstar. The greatest tragedy of all is how easily their fates could’ve been switched. 

While Reading Eli Clare I found a lot of passages particularly striking but one I couldn’t get out of my head comes from The Mountain reading “The body as home, but only if it is understood that bodies are never singular, but rather haunted, strengthened, underscored by countless other bodies. My alcoholic, Libertarian father and his father, the gravedigger, from whom my father learned his violence. I still dream about them sometimes, ugly dreams that leave me panting with fear in the middle of the night. One day I will be done with them. The white, working-class loggers, fishermen, and ranchers I grew up among: Les Smith,John Black, Walt Maya. Their ways of dressing, moving, talking helped shape my sense of self Today when I hear queer activists say the word redneck like a cuss word, I think of those men, backs of their necks turning red in the summertime from long days of work outside, felling trees, pulling fishnets, baling hay.”(Clare, 11).

I love this passage for a lot of reasons. Mostly because of all the different topics Clare touches on within just a couple sentences. In class when we first discussed the concept of ownership of the body, and trauma written on the body, my immediate thought was ownership of the body after sexual violence. When we discussed how one can reclaim the body, my first thought was tattoos. I thought specifically of Medusa tattoos that represent survivors of sexual violence, and semi-colon tattoos that represent suicide attempt survivors. Personally, I have a tattoo of the NEDA symbol which represents my eating disorder recovery. This phenomenon is what my brain jumped to, but tattoos are just one example of physically reclaiming a traumatized body. This type of reclamation of the body is what I believe Clare is talking about when he says “The body as home, but only if it is understood that bodies are never singular, but rather haunted, strengthened, underscored by countless other bodies.”(Clare, 11). I believe this can refer to both physical trauma left on the body, as well as mental trauma that can begin to manifest physically.

Within this same passage Clare also tackles generational trauma saying, “My alcoholic, Libertarian father and his father, the gravedigger, from whom my father learned his violence.”(Clare, 11). Part of what I believe makes Eli Clare such an exceptional writer is his capacity for empathy. Here he is even willing to look at what made his horrible abusive father the way he is. Here, Clare shows that his father learned his violence, he had his own trauma written on his body. However, Clare still writes about his father and the abuse he suffered at his hands in an unflinching way. He does not fall into the trap of believing his father’s abuse is in anyway justified. No of my favorite sayings is it’s an explanation, but not an excuse, which Clare makes very clear here.

Within this same passage Clare brings up class in a very interesting way. He concludes my chosen passage saying, “Today when I hear queer activists say the word redneck like a cuss word, I think of those men, backs of their necks turning red in the summertime from long days of work outside, felling trees, pulling fishnets, baling hay.”(Clare, 11). This made me think of our in class conversation about “passing the buck.” I believe here that Clare is talking about queer people passing the buck not onto other types of queer people, as we discussed in class, but into other social groups. Here, Clare talks about “rednecks” and how the term originally referred to working class men, typically in the American South. Being from the South myself, this is something I’ve discussed a lot with my father, especially prior to and right after the 2024 election. We’ve talked a lot about how Trump seems to have an iron grip on this population, despite Trump representing the opposite values in many ways. Many, but of course not all, working class Southerners, at least that I’ve grown up around, will pass the buck on to queer people, and many other minority groups, when the system fails them. Clare’s writing made me start thinking about how these groups might be constantly passing the buck off to each other. Using “redneck” as a slur, and writing off all working class Southerners may seem productive to some people, but it is its own form of discrimination, namely classism. This is also what I mean when I say Clare has an incredible capacity for empathy.

 

As I was reading Jeanette Winterson’s Written On the Body I was immediately struck by a passage on page 72 reading, “We don’t take drugs, we’re drugged out on danger, where to meet, when to speak, what happens when we see each other publicly. We think no-one has noticed but there are always faces at the curtain, eyes on the road. There’s nothing to whisper about so they whisper about us.”(Winterson, 72). I’ll admit, at first I was struck by this passage because it reminded me of the Taylor Swift song illicit affairs. Similar to that song, this passage really speaks to why people have affairs. This line draws a direct parallel between the thrill of drugs and the thrill of cheating. There is a certain excitement that comes from something forbidden, regardless of that it is. The narrator also addresses the high of communicating with an affair partner in public, which adds a whole other layer to the thrill.

This passage continues on to discuss who even though the narrator is seeking a thrill of getting away with something, they’re really not. The affair may be a secret from Jacqueline’s partner, but something about the way they are together makes in clear there is something wrong about their relationship. It also speaks to the slight narcissism of the narrator, as they believe they are getting away with this affair, but might not actually be.

This passage speaks to the overall theme of infidelity in the novel. When I read books I use sticky tabs to mark passages I want to remember. I use the same colors to mean the same things in every book, but sometimes I add another color for something specific to that book. In Written On The Body I’ve been using a tab for infidelity. At this point in the story it’s been established that the narrator has a thing for married women. But this is one of the first moments where we start to understand why. The narrator not only falls for these women, but also enjoys the thrill of an affair. The narrator is an addict in their own right, but they get high off forbidden loves and encounters instead of drugs.