The Body Is Not the Exhibit: The Difference Between Representation and Being Seen

[A Personal Essay and Response to the Met's Most Current "Exhibit"]

I believe larger bodies belong everywhere.

They belong in art. They belong in fashion. They belong in film and television. They belong in fantasy, mythology, romance, and every other place where human beings tell stories about themselves.

A woman in a larger body should not have to apologize for taking up space.

That is why I found myself struggling when I encountered an artwork that many people praised as inclusive. I wanted to see it as a celebration. I wanted to see it as progress.

But instead, I felt something unexpected. I felt observed. I felt like the body was being displayed, but the person had disappeared. That distinction matters.

Because there is a difference between representation and objectification.

Representation says:

“Here is a person.”

Objectification says:

“Here is a body.”

The difference is not whether a body is visible.

The difference is whether the humanity remains visible.

I Have Lived in More Than One Body

My perspective on this subject is personal.

My weight has fluctuated throughout my life. I have experienced being considered petite. I have experienced being more mid-size. I have experienced my body moving further away from the narrow standards that society often celebrates.

The person did not change.

My intelligence did not change.

My creativity did not change.

My dreams did not change.

But the way people perceive a woman can change when her body changes.

That is something many women learn: society often sees the body before it sees the person.

Some people might say my perspective is biased because I have personal experience with this subject.

Perhaps it is.

But lived experience is not the absence of understanding. Sometimes it is where understanding begins.

When your body changes, you become aware of things you may not have noticed before. You notice how quickly people categorize women. You notice how often bodies become public conversations. You notice how easily a person can be reduced to appearance.

The question is not whether bodies change.

They do.

The question is why we attach so much meaning to those changes.

A Body Without a Person

What disturbed me about the artwork was not the existence of a larger body.

I want to be very clear about that.

Larger bodies deserve to exist in art.

Curvy bodies have existed throughout history. The human form has been represented in countless ways. A larger-bodied woman can be sensual, powerful, sacred, beautiful, and desirable.

The body itself is not the problem.

The question is whether the body belongs to a person.

One of the details that affected me most was the absence of faces.

Faces matter.

Eyes matter.

Throughout art history, the face has been one of the strongest ways we recognize individuality. Eyes tell us there is someone looking back. Someone with thoughts. Someone with a story.

When you remove the face, the body can become a symbol. A concept. An object.

Sometimes removing faces is an artistic choice meant to create universality or abstraction. But when a group of people has historically been treated as something to examine, judge, or categorize, that choice can feel unsettling.

Because there is a difference between:

“Look at this person.”

and:

“Look at this body.”

Inclusion Is Not a Favor

One of the deepest feelings underneath this conversation is something many people who have experienced exclusion understand:

The feeling of being told to be grateful.

Grateful that you were included.

Grateful that someone finally made room.

Grateful that someone decided you were worthy of being seen.

But true belonging should not feel like charity.

As a child, I remember the feeling of being allowed into spaces where I was not always treated as an equal. Being included, but with the unspoken message that I should appreciate the invitation more than I should expect respect.

That feeling can follow people into adulthood.

Representation should not communicate:

“Look how generous we are for including you.”

It should communicate:

“You were always supposed to be here.”

Larger-bodied women do not need scraps of representation. We do not need to accept being a symbol of progress simply because invisibility was once the alternative.

We deserve full humanity.

The Problem With Tokenism

This is also why representation can sometimes miss the mark.

A person can be included and still feel reduced.

A character can have diversity and still feel like a statement instead of a person.

The difference between tokenism and representation is whether the person is allowed to have a complete existence.

A person is not only their body.

They are not only their skin tone.

They are not only their gender.

They are not only their disability.

Those things can matter deeply. They can shape experiences. They can influence how someone moves through the world.

But they are not the entirety of a human being.

As a writer, this is something I think about constantly.

I write women who are cartographers, researchers, archivists, healers, warriors, and leaders. I write characters with different histories, cultures, bodies, and experiences.

I have characters whose disabilities are part of their lives but not their entire identities.

I have characters whose gender identities are important but not the only thing that defines them.

I have characters whose bodies reflect the lives they have lived.

Because people are not categories.

They are stories.

The Stories We Allow People to Have

This is where representation becomes bigger than appearance.

A larger-bodied woman should not only be allowed to exist as a statement about body positivity.

She should be allowed to be the heroine.

The love interest.

The villain.

The genius.

The adventurer.

The person whose story matters.

For too long, larger women have often been placed into narrow roles: the funny friend, the side character, the person who exists to support someone else’s journey.

But audiences are hungry for more.

We are not asking to be included as an exception.

We are asking to be included as human beings.

A woman’s body should not determine the size of her story.

What True Representation Looks Like

True representation is not simply putting a body into a room.

It is allowing that body to belong there.

It is allowing someone to exist without becoming an exhibit.

The answer is not to hide larger bodies.

The answer is not to return to a world where only one shape is allowed to be beautiful.

The answer is to stop treating certain bodies as unusual.

Let larger-bodied women be goddesses.

Let them be warriors.

Let them be lovers.

Let them be scholars.

Let them be ordinary people.

Let them be complicated.

Let them be human.

I do not want my body erased.

I do not want my body turned into a spectacle.

I want to be seen as a whole person.

Not a category.

Not a symbol.

Not an object.

A person.

Because the greatest form of representation is not simply being looked at.

It is knowing that someone sees you looking back.