I am so raving mad right now I could drool. Today I was at a lesson with a Chinese male teacher, who, every so often, starts ranting about how much he loves exercising, and how I should, too. First thing wrong with that is he’s bought into the idea that because I’m the size I am, I don’t exercise. Second, why is he commenting on what I do with my body? I know, it’s a cultural thing. A teacher is allowed and expected to convey all his wisdom upon the student, without dissent. Today I’d had enough and said, “What makes you think I don’t exercise?” He went into a long lecture about how he thought that I was fine, but I should do “more”, that I’m very beautiful and life will go better for me if I’m thinner, and ultimately, he’s only saying what’s right for me, and really his information is not just coming from him, it’s coming from the heavens! I was raised in a fundamentalist Christian cult, and I just don’t play that, “God says” crap anymore. I stared at him, although he was expecting a nod, because I couldn’t have said anything “nice” if I opened my mouth, and he moved on. He’s only been in this country for a few years, but how could he not know that I know that my life would be easier if I was thinner? Like no one's ever told me to lose weight before. How do I explain that I love myself so much and it took so long to get there that I'm not going to risk becoming someone who runs to the bathroom and pukes after dinner just so I can have a so-called easier and better life? That I don't need to attract men in order to get them to do my bidding to feel powerful or to get what I want? I got in my car to drive home and started thinking about the Chinese men in my life.
I have a Chinese healer who just yesterday was telling me that I was very lucky, that I had a lucky face, and that everything would turn out all right and not to be sad or depressed. He’s a master with herbs and I feel better for taking them. He’s also very attached to me being smaller. Every time he massages me, he notes the size of my belly, saying how much smaller it’s getting. Of course, he thinks it’s because of his treatments; I think it’s because of my being so completely stressed out lately, some of it good stress, but some bad. He started telling me that I had a very good heart (agreed), that I’m beautiful (beholder, etc.) and that I was very nice and sweet (he’s on shaky ground there), and then says I’m not like some other women who are like tigers. He scowls. I just smile and say thank you. If you’ve ever watched Karate Kid, you know how we treat our elders and teachers. Again, we listen and even if we disagree we don’t say anything. Always respect. It was ingrained or beaten into me as a child, and I admit it has served me well as I come into contact with indigenous elders from other cultures.
To top it off, there’s a former lover, the only Chinese man I’ve ever dated, who because I’m back in the dating pool again, thinks he ought to get in on some of the action. Unfortunately, back then he said some things about my body that really *broke* me, for a while. In spite of a lot of work on my own, the wounds didn't start healing until another man loved all those things, and *told* me repeatedly how he loved them.
As I drove, I got so sleepy I couldn't wait to get home and crawl into bed. A few miles later I realized my sleepiness was actually my anger, repressed!
Ahem. I understand that after 4,000 years of patriarchy you might not know that the tiger is a Goddess. In fact, I also know that when you call a woman a “white tiger” you mean to say she’s a sexual predator. She has sex with men and then kills them. I know that chamber pots are shaped like the gaping mouth of a tiger. You piss into the mouth of the goddess. If a girl is born in the year of the tiger, her parents will often lie and use the year after or before instead. In the 1950’s a bounty was paid by the government for tiger “pests”.
But actually: the White Tigress is alive. She is the primordial earth mother goddess of China, Xi Wang Mu, the Queen Mother of the West. Two thousand years ago her devotees were legion. One thousand years ago, you neo-confucians diminished her by binding her feet. You made her the wife of some other god. You put her statue in a dark corner of the temple. You told people not to worship her because she’s not that powerful. You let her decay.
She is angry. She isn’t trying to kill you. She has sex with you so you can die and be reborn. It’ll feel like dying but you won’t. She is unbound and she is stalking the streets. She is big, the biggest cat on the planet, and she has big-ass unbound feet, and she is NOT fucking nice! I wear her symbols, along with the Guan Yin medallion. Alas, the available ones are indirect and derivative --“nice”—the peaches of immortality that only Xi Wang Mu can confer. I wear her colors in my clothes and in my hair. They are the colors of masculine and feminine coming into balance, white and black, tiger and dragon, death and rebirth, yin and yang. Don't watch out, just watch.
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