Petroglyphs & Body Shaming

I was fat shamed while climbing rocks to see petroglyphs in Puerto Rico

I have become self-conscious in my 40s. I wasn’t always.

I struggled with my weight as a teenager in boarding school. I gained the freshman 20 my first year when I started stress eating and spent the next three years trying to shed it.

I discovered rollerblades the summer after my first year at Columbia University and had a washboard stomach entering my sophomore year thanks to my new obsession.

I was in ridiculous shape in my twenties, as an avid rollerblader who bladed from uptown Manhattan (207th street) down to the Brooklyn Bridge, across to Bk then across the borough to Bushwick (which borders Queens). I rollerbladed for fun, as transportation, to release, and to mitigate the depression I’ve struggled with for much of my life.

I started weight lifting when I was 22 and added that to my regimen. A few times a week, I got to the gym at 6am, worked out, then rollerbladed or rode my bike to my job in midtown. I started hiking in my late 20s and boxed for some time in my 30s. I’m still an avid hiker and bike rider, and have a crisp pair of rollerblades that I don’t use as often as I’d like because I live in the woods now.

During a recent monthlong residency, I hiked 96 miles in 30 days. Still, I am not a thin woman.

Like many, I gained weight during the pandemic. I’ve long been a stress eater and that was punctuated during the lockdown. The truth is, I started gaining weight when I fell in love with my wife 8 years ago this August. That happens sometimes when you’re happy and safe. This hasn’t changed my physical abilities. I am a strong woman. At 47, I’ve found it hard to lose the weight.

Even when I was thin, I had cellulite. Contrary to what most people think, a fit person can have cellulite, a thin person can have cellulite. Anyone can have cellulite.

I also have spider & varicose veins that have made me hide my legs since I was in my late 20s. You’ll never see me in a short dress without stockings. I wear long summer dresses because they’re lovely and also because they hide my legs. I don’t talk about this publicly. My entire body is clenched as I type this…

I’m tired of punishing my body. This body that has carried me, legs that have lifted so much weight, bladed, biked, walked, hiked, swam. This body that houses my spirit. This body that keeps me alive. This body that created a life and gestated her for nine months. This body that nourished her with breast milk for eight months.

I am tired of being ashamed that my body doesn’t look like a model’s body. That it’s flawed. This past Saturday, I was reminded of why I carry so much shame.

When we got to the charco (swimming hole) in Naguabo, I took off my long dress and wrapped a sarong around my waist. My wife said: You don’t need that. I shrugged and I’m sure my face flushed.

She’s just saying that because she’s my wife.

(It’s important that I mention how much my wife loves me and my body, and always compliments me. My shame is not due to her at all.)

We climbed down to the water, me with that sarong still around my waist, and I didn’t take it off until we were by the water’s edge. We swam, sat in the water, and met the man who’s lived in the area all his life (we’ll call him Miguel) and serves as a self-appointed historian, tour guide and lifeguard. We learned from Miguel that there’s fool’s gold all over the riverbed that can be traced to a nearby gold mine that the Spanish colonizers stripped of all its ore. Miguel told us about the work the community had to do after Hurricane Fiona damaged the area, and he told us about the petroglyphs.

A writer I met during my trip, Carina del Valle Schorske, told me about the swimming hole and the petroglyphs. She said you had to climb over and under boulders along the river’s edge to get to them. It wasn’t an easy climb and was a precarious one. I declined doing it the first time we went to the charco. Said we weren’t equipped. That was a half-truth.

In order to climb to the petroglyphs, I had to swim to the far side of the river. That meant I’d have to climb in my bathing suit, a modest one piece, no sarong to cover up the spots I am self-conscious about.

We decided to go back the day before we left.

I’ve long said I get my heavy hands and Flintstone feet from my indigenous ancestors—Taínos and Mayans who made their homes, lives and complete civilizations in the rainforests of the Caribbean and Central America. I do not have dainty feet. I can’t wear the Manolo Blahnik strappy sandals Carrie Bradshaw slipped her tiny feet into in Sex and the City.  My feet are chunky like my hands. They are made to climb mountains barefoot, and my hands are made to wield machetes to carve a path through tall grass and thick hanging vines. (I was shamed for and teased about this too throughout my life. A former lover once whistled the entire Flintstone song into my work voicemail back when I worked in corporate America.)

I feel more myself in the forest than I do anywhere. It’s been this way for a long time, so when I entered the rainforests of Puerto Rico, I felt my body open up, a knowing enveloped me. I imagined myself, my ancestors living here, climbing here, making a life here.

So I never doubted I could climb over those rocks, steady myself on the rock edges, down a slippery boulder. Of course I could do it. This is what my body is made for.

It was shame that stopped me earlier in the week, and I almost let it stop me on Saturday. What made me do it? Signs from the forest that beckoned me—a large bright orange butterfly dipping and circling, the pull of the current. I wanted to see for myself these symbols I read so much about. So I went. I felt the shame and went anyway.

It was a group of us, including a husband and wife whom I’d just met, and Miguel, the self-appointed steward. I kept up with him easily. I listened when he said: Put your foot here, climb through here. “¿Estás bien?” He asked. I nodded and kept going. A few times, he put out his hand to help me climb up a particularly steep slope or precarious crossing. I declined. Said: Yo lo hago. I saw the look of surprise that crossed his face. More than once we had to stop to wait for the couple behind us.

I was stunned to see the petroglyphs carved into the rock—the symbology and imagery of the original Taínos are one of the more enduring things left behind by the natives. I’d never seen anything like it. I mean, I’ve read about them and have seen images online and in books, but it’s a different experience to see them firsthand.

We kept going to see more further down the river. To view them properly, you had to hang onto a rope and grapple down the rock. When I traced the lines of one of the petroglyphs, I felt a current run up my arm.

It was on the climb back that it happened. I was giddy. I’d pushed past my shame to do something I’d been wanting to do and that felt really natural to me. Exploring always invigorates me in ways nothing else does.

Miguel said: You have to stop eating hamburgers.

I laughed nervously but said nothing.

He kept going: Eat fruits and vegetables.

He stopped and peered back at me. We were climbing. I was keeping up with him. The couple lagged behind.

I said: “I don’t eat hamburgers” because the truth is it’s a rare occasion when I do.

He asked: “¿Entonces que comes?”

I didn’t answer and kept climbing.

“Comes vegateles? Frutas?”

I am a rabbit. I love all things green. Ask my wife. But I wasn’t going to tell this man this. What I put and don’t put into my body is none of his business.

Finally he said: Porque te veo… and he let the silence linger. I knew what he was saying in his quiet: You are fat, you have cellulite, you should lose weight.

Then he said: No puedes comer chuleta tampoco, and he laughed.  (You can’t eat pork chops either.)

By then we were approaching the swimming hole and I knew how to get back, so I slipped passed him and made my way, my insides burning. I knew he was watching me. I knew he was staring at my body.

Why didn’t I say anything?

He’d helped me climb, was gracious enough to take me to see the petroglyphs, and shared so much of the history of the place he obviously loves and cherishes.

He was very kind and generous otherwise.

He’s an elder.

I was stunned and ashamed and just wanted to get away.

I read recently about how both Ariana Grande and Selena Gomez addressed the public about comments made about their bodies.

Gomez responded to body shaming comments in an emotional TikTok video: “I just wanted to say and encourage anyone out there who feels any sort of shame for exactly what they're going through and nobody knows the real story. ... I just want people to know that you're beautiful."

In the past, Gomez addressed the constant conversations around her body, saying being “skinny” wasn’t worth depriving herself of her favourite foods.

In a recent article in Vogue, experts say that “commenting on someone’s weight — regardless of intent — places an inordinate amount of focus on appearance as a tie to self-worth and overall value, meaning keeping thoughts and assumptions to oneself is usually the best route.”

Women’s bodies are judged, policed, picked apart, in ways that men’s bodies are not. This man had missing teeth, his feet were horrid, a nail was jagged and yellow, he had scars up and down his legs and arms, and his face was wrinkled and pock-marked. Yet he felt he could judge me and my body.

Why do people think it’s okay to comment on someone’s body? My body, dimpled and veined, got me across those boulders. My body kept up with this man who’s been climbing those same rocks for decades. My body pulled me up and over and down and through to get to those petroglyphs. My body didn’t give up or get tired. I wasn’t lagging behind because of my extra weight, so his comment wasn’t about my abilities or lack there of, they were about how my body looks.

I’m still rolling this around my head. I still feel the shame and humiliation in my body. I’m not sure why I’m writing this. Perhaps I hope to exorcise his words, his judgment, his callousness.

Perhaps it’s because I can rage on the page the way I couldn’t rage at him. Ese atrevido!

Of course he isn’t the first person to comment on my body. People do this shit all the time.

The time in my 20s when my then boyfriend’s cousin told me I needed to tighten up. I was still sweating from a rollerblade mission from uptown to the West Village and back. The man’s belly bulged over his jeans. When I pointed this out, said: You need to get on rollerblades, he laughed and said: I’m a man, it’s not the same.

The time when at 8 months pregnant, I was crossing the street in my old neighborhood, my body swollen from a really difficult, high-risk pregnancy, and a man in a passing car yelled: Damn, you got fat!

The way my grandmother greets you by telling you “estas delgada” or “estas gorda.” The time she told my daughter that she looked better now that she’d lost weight. I whirled around and scolded her: she looks beautiful all the time! Stop it! Abuela didn’t speak to me for the rest of the evening and left without saying goodbye.

I have done this too. I recently told a friend who was going through a difficult divorce: Wow, you lost so much weight. I immediately apologized and chastised myself.

I hate it that I am comforted when I see that others have gained weight, and I feel those ugly pangs of envy when I see that someone has lost weight or gotten in shape.

My dear sister friend Angelique recently talked about how much she loves her bigger body, her curves, the way her thighs quiver. Inside I long for this kind of self-worship. I want that so badly for myself.

I have to work on loving my body so when someone says some nonsense to me, I can brush it off and swell with love and pride for all this body does and pushes.

I am perfectly imperfect.

When we got back to the apartment after the incident at the charco, I dolled myself up, put on a long, off the shoulder dress, heels, jewelry. I wanted to feel good. I wanted to remind myself of my beauty and strength.

My wife has been affirming me since. She always tells me I look great. She loves my strong legs. If I’m climbing stairs in front of her, she always reaches for my muscular calf. Says: “damn, mmmmm.” And the woman worships my ass in ways that make me giggle. She particularly loves a dip in the small of my back. She reaches over and palms the spot frequently, says: This is my favorite. (She compliments my brain too, my stories, etc, but that’s not what this essay is about.)

“I love you as you are. You are beautiful.” She’s said over and over since I was shamed. I don’t think she said it because she’s my wife. That night I believed her.

I wrote this on the plane back to New York. I was flown to Puerto Rico as a member of the first cohort of the Letras Boricuas fellowship, funded by the Mellon and Flamboyan Foundations. The acceptance rate was 4%. They flew the fellowship recipients of 2021 & 2022 along with some of the judges down to PR for a weekend at a posh resort, where we met, talked and celebrated. I journaled earlier in the week about how many of us talked about imposter syndrome, and despite how affirming being granted the fellowship was, it didn’t quell the imposter syndrome that eats at us. This despite winning this prestigious award. Despite being widely published. Despite all the accolades and love we get for our stories and poems.

This morning I’m thinking about how these kinds of comments about our bodies contribute to this imposter syndrome because they make us question our worth. Experts say that commenting on someone’s weight “can focus their self-worth on their weight or appearance and reaffirm problematic thoughts that their weight is of high importance in establishing their value as a person.”

I have no wise conclusion. Writing this has not and will not rid me of all my insecurities and won’t make me go out to buy a short dress. I hope I always have the audacity to continue to venture and explore no matter my hang ups. And maybe one day I’ll catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and think: Look at that beauty.