The New Self-Help

Making Peace With Your Body Is a Mighty Act of Revolution

The three tenets of radical self-love

This story is part of The New Self-Help: 21 Books for a Better You in the 21st Century.

Radical self-love — a deliberate unlearning of the internalized shame and discomfort we accumulate with respect to our physical bodies — is a non-negotiable step in the fight for a more equitable society.

I came to that realization by accident. A few years ago, when my friend Natasha told me she was worried she might be pregnant and didn’t want to be, I asked her why she had chosen not to use a condom with this casual sexual partner with whom she had no interest in procreating. Neither Natasha nor I knew that my honest question and her honest answer would be the catalyst for a movement. Natasha told me her truth: “My disability makes sex hard already, with positioning and stuff. I just ­didn’t feel like it was okay to make a big deal about using condoms.”

A reel of memories scrolled through my mind of all the ways I told the world I was sorry for having my big, Brown, queer, wrong, bad body. It was from that well of shared vulnerability that I told her: “Natasha, your body is not an apology. It is not something you give to someone to say, ‘Sorry for my disability.’” My…