Body Work: In the Text and Under the Flesh
To be a writer is one thing; to write about your self is another. Body Work by Melissa Febos deconstructs the ideals that eat away a writer's mind as they begin their creative process. Febos bonds with the reader by leading them through her vulnerable experiences and missteps as she navigates the writing world. She effortlessly creates a unique take on a book of crafting a body of work by recounting successful writing moments paired with missteps in business. By removing her ego and embracing her fears, she explores how writing aids in healing trauma that lives unknowingly in the body—specifically, her experience with the connection between the body and the female.
She writes in different ways at the forefront of every section; just because you suffered does not mean your character must. Febos points out the obvious, how in a memoir, the writer often assumes their essay must center around the darkest traumatic event they have faced. “I'll say it again, ... the resistance to memoirs about trauma is always in part—and often nothing but—a resistance to movements for social justice” (17). At first, this section went a little over my head. As writers, we like to feel our writing has nothing to do with social justice. However, Febos highlights the connection drawn with women and literature’s stigma around victim hood. She shares later, “We have been discouraged from writing about it because it makes people uncomfortable. Because a patriarchal society wants its victims to be silent” (21). Febos begins here for us to understand later how a woman’s experience with her body and her trauma can juxtapose the social hierarchy surrounding it. As we all know, you wait to have sex till after marriage, you are a prude, and if you sleep with someone before, you are a slut. Febos stands to say the wounds from trauma can come from either end of the spectrum, so stop making yourself feel repulsed from writing them.
In the same manner, Febos alludes to the premise that you can not avoid the “I” in writing. When writing your story, you must acknowledge your character as much as the event. She admits to the reader even she holds back from revealing internal struggles out of fear of self-indulging. “I often tell my students about the importance of authorial distance. The I of their narrator is not the I that writes the book” (136). What exactly does that mean though, are we not narrating our experience? In her twenties, Febos works as a Dominatrix under the name Justine. She excitedly shares a chapter of her first memoir about sexual sessions with clients with her psychotherapist. But, to her disappointment, and rather than admiring her literary eminence, her critique was, “You’re still acting like Justine” (40). Febos then admits, “I had been telling the story I had been telling myself as those events happened, not the story of what happened” (40).
I find this moment compelling because it is my biggest battle. The body of work suffers when you narrate the account of how you want it to have happened. Febos makes an excellent point about how the “I” needs to have distance and closure. When the wounds are still bleeding, our bodies protect us by keeping us from processing and healing. So instead, take the time to comprehend the event, process it, accept it, and then document how it shapes you. The book's title is a pun in itself, Body Work, which does not necessarily mean working on the body of text that creates the story but implies working on the physical body that carries the trauma.
As I stumble with this in my writing, I wonder how the relationship between being femme in a female body contributes to my story. If I wanted it to be about something more consequential, and as a result, I harbored back the truth of what happened. Febos concludes that part of recounting the event, what happened, and how it affected you feels self-indulgent because you are ultimately honest about how it shapes you. To openly share the most humiliating moments about your life or an assault feel dramatic, but it is what happened. To succeed in memoir, the narrator must reveal the past you who experienced it through the present you who now writes it.
However, not everything needs to be unfortunate and depressing. In many sections of Body Work, Febos reminds us to share that trauma, relationships, and sex can be liberating. When reading about sex, it does not have to be vulgar to be profound. In her work, the association between her body and being female came from the empowerment of being Justine. The liberation from also stripping her fears of outside judgments and embracing the genuine gritty parts of working as a domme in her twenties. Doing this requires us, as the characters in our stories, to take in the full range of human experience. To “be more human to ourselves”(76). Febos clarifies that you must understand the event from your outlook, the reader's perspective, and the narrator's stance.
Near the end of Body Work, Febos composes a line that encapsulates why nonfiction authors publish. “The trust of shared experience...served as a testimony to my past relationship to those events”(147). We carry our trauma inside our bones, and writing them down gives us a way to release some of that pressure. Body Work successfully teaches and empowers writers how to understand themselves as a narrator better while simultaneously preventing mistakes. The most prevalent theme remains, a female with open wounds does not make you any less female than one with none. To embrace your sexuality or to have it taken from you are both stories worth sharing. Be vulnerable, and be honest. It is the only way to make the body of work, work.
