On February 28, to conclude the 2024 Black History Month programming at Bryn Mawr, author and activist Sonya Renee Taylor came to speak to the campus about her work, philosophy, art and libratory practice. Renee Taylor’s website describes her as an “activist, thought leader, spoken word artist, and founder of The Body is Not An Apology global movement.”
The Great Hall was full of students, excited to support Sisterhood*’s Black History Month programming and to hear from the New York Times Bestseller. “Thank you for volunteering, encouraging your friends to attend and showing up to events,” said Black History Coordinator Month Kaili Martinez Beasley ‘27. “Black History Month truly felt like a campus-wide celebration.”
The event was hosted by Sisterhood*, with support from the Enid Cook ’31 Center, the President’s Office, Wyndham, The Impact Center, and Conferences & Events. Renee Taylor spoke with Kaili Martinez Beasley ’27 and Alexie Coleman ’27 about her work and philosophy.
Renee Taylor discussed the inspiration behind “The Body is Not An Apology,” and how the phrase “wanted to be in the world beyond me.” She told a story of her friend who was in a wheelchair feeling panic over pregnancy, and how she felt as though she couldn’t ask her sexual partner to wear protection, since she already felt apologetic about having sex as a disabled person. The conversation regarding disability, sexuality and the shame of just existing in the world encouraged her to comfort her friend by saying, “The body is not an apology.” As the phrase left her lips, she knew it needed to be a poem.
I can’t destroy you and love myself, because I am you.
Sonya Renee Taylor
The Body is Not an Apology movement encourages rejecting capitalistic expectations and instead just enjoying the experience of existing. Her work revolves largely around political resistance through the rejection of shame, and through the radical choice to love yourself despite the fact capitalism and white supremacy want you to hate yourself. Radical self-love, to her, is “the idea that you came here with what you need.” Every person is born into the world with a familial, personal, and economic circumstances that create a narrative about what a person can accomplish, “The work has always been to shed that story, so I can move into my truth.”
Renee Taylor spoke about how people think about their bodies and a desire to change one’s physical form, “‘The more control I have, the more likely I am to have the resources I need.’” She quoted Elizabeth Gilbert, saying, “‘You are afraid of surrender because you don’t want to lose control. But you never had control; all you had was anxiety.’ If I’m just in it for the experience, what is there to be ashamed of?”, asks Renee Taylor. Renee Taylor encouraged the audience to cheer and clap when they felt inclined: “The feeling is repressed, let it out!”
Renee Taylor referenced how her self-identifiers presented immediate obstacles by being a “dark-skinned, Black, fat girl.” Sonya Renee Taylor sees life as “set of conditions,” which helps her to move beyond the shame that is supposed to be attached to these attributes. There are identifiers, but they do not mean you cannot “be absolutely divine” in difference and disability. “I came here to be a Black, queer, fat, bald-headed, dark-skinned woman, and that is perfect!” For her, it’s just about working with what she has been granted. “Life is just one big ‘Legend of Zelda’ game!”, she laughed.
She continued, adding “What happens if we start from the premise that we are inherently divine and enough? What things that we built from a place of not believing that, fall away then?” Renee Taylor challenged students to see themselves beyond their physical bodies. She explained that she chooses to live within the “liberatory imagination of the world I want to see come into being. Liberation is an internal practice … [and about finding the] freest, most authentic version of myself and allowing it to exist.”
The power you gain from releasing yourself from the expectations of your body of it are central to Renee Taylor’s movement and life. She spoke of the power of letting go of her hair, and freeing herself from the societally reinforced attachment to hair she has as a Black woman. She initially decided to simply shave her hair “for 30 days of healing” in 2011, because she felt she couldn’t lead a movement about bodies without directly contrasting what the world says is beautiful, and releasing herself from the pressures she placed on herself about her hair.
The release from the expectations of beauty eventually allowed for joyful transcendence of the body. “I’ve always related to the body as spiritual, physical, emotional and corporeal,” explained Renee Taylor, “Ultimately, we transcend the physical relationship with the body. I’m ultimately concerned with the soul of the body.”
Renee Taylor acknowledges this philosophy is a work in progress. Her thinking has undoubtedly evolved over time. “In the book, I said that daily radical self-love is a thinking, doing being process. I don’t believe that doing is the answer to anything, actually,” she laughs. Today, Renee Taylor focuses on “simply being.” She encouraged her audience to evolve joyfully, too “I invite you to change every day, if you can.”
Renee Taylor explained her current role in the world and with the movement. “My job is to be endlessly curious about the world around me. I don’t feel pressure, I’m just trying to have an experience. I’m just trying to be in awe. The more I need to know, the less I am able to be in awe,” Renee Taylor shared. She gestured around to the Great Hall, “Part of these institutions is inherently stifling to the experience of just being in awe of life.” She said that students need to “change [their] orientation to the thing [they’re] doing” when they’re in the classroom.
“[College] should just be free, first and foremost! … [Students in the U.S.] are spending six figures that you don’t have so you can ‘learn enough’ to be considered ‘good enough’ to get a career so you don’t have to be broke for the rest of your life!” As students cheered in agreement, Renee Brown joked, “They’re never gonna have me back here!”
