Frances

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The first time I was put on a diet I was 18 months old. 

The paediatrician took one look at this hungry toddler and chastised my Mamma: “Signora, what do you think you’re doing, fattening up a pig?”

Back then, there was no one word for ‘child’.

When we got called in from the playground, the sisters collectively addressed us in the masculine: “Bambini!”

In a world where girls and women are linguistically sidelined, I concluded that it must belong to someone else.

An illegally short while later, my body became something to eyeball, rate and feel up. My feminist role model, who’d marched for procreative choice, turned the fight against my appetite.

Like a turkey voting for Christmas, I bought into the system and acquiesced to my role of human knickknack.

Many years later, a clerical error at the Job Centre ended in a visit to Brighton.

The lack of a constant, judging gaze was unsettling. Had I become invisible?

I discovered that the opposite was true. Here, my value wasn’t limited to what can be perceived by sight or how small I could shrink myself.

It expanded to the intricate web of experiences and emotions that make me human. I moved. I stopped wearing heels. I got hairy. And nobody loves me any less for it.

In the ten years since emigrating, I took my Mamma to our hometown’s first Pride march. I overheard two strangers discussing how, in a language so pigeonholed in the gender binary, we can create space to include everyone. 

These threads that pull people closer, they’re made of the same stuff that stitched me back together.

It just takes a little longer when the piece is so big and complex.

This project is a beautiful opportunity to celebrate my rental suit on my own terms, a part of me but not the whole.

I see all the bits that have gotten softer and a little crinkly –

I never thought I could cherish them as much as I do.

It’s the privilege of ageing not as a portrait but as a complete human being. I’m really grateful for that.

After we took the photos on what was a pretty hot afternoon, we went to the nud beach to cool off in the sea and, as her offering, Frances gave me a Calippo. And I’m including this extra photo as Frances made me laugh so much – and this really made me smile.

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