thinking about more gender and body stuff lately, i think i figured out something about myself!
(long-ish ramble ahead about body image and also nipples/mammary glands)
so like, on the one hand, i don't 100% vibe with my actual physical body, especially where breasts are concerned...i think if i had the opportunity to, i'd get top surgery to remove them. they are a prominent and uncomfortable reminder of my agab, which i have many complex feelings about.
on the other hand, however, i tend to depict myself with nipples in critter form, akin to the arrangement you see in many nonhuman mammals. you can see examples of it here, here, and here if you haven't already seen what i mean! at first glance, this probably easily gets my gender mistaken by others, so why would i bother including such a detail?
honestly, i wasn't entirely sure for most of this time myself, other than it just felt comfy and looked appealing to me!
i then had a few small conversations with some folks about their own preference for nip nops for gender-affirming reasons, and came to the realization that actually, i feel similarly! but not in the way that i identify it as affirming feminity...
...rather, it's an affirmation of nonhuman feelings. i like tummy nips because the specific arrangement of 6 - 8 of them communicates that the critter you're looking at is more animal than human!
in hindsight, this aspect of it is embarrassingly obvious and i don't know why i didn't catch on sooner. ah well, you live and you learn~
the other part of why i gravitate towards it, i think, is because there's the slightest bit of taboo surrounding it that eschews the suffocating expectations of modesty placed on me since childhood by an oppressive religious cult.
i recall watching tummy nips become a more common design choice for many folks' fursonas a few years back, and the attitude shift that came with it. in my memory, people seemed kinda cagey about it at first, in part because the trait is more reminiscent of a true animal rather than an anthropomorphic one, and also because the nipples themselves are exposed. god forbid we see any exposed 'female-presenting' nipples, that's waaaay too sexual! i'm glad to see it's more widely-accepted these days in furry circles!
in a vaguely similar vein, the cult i grew up in hammered home at a young age (i got a school dress code violation at the ripe age of 7) that my body was something dangerous and immoral that needed to be covered up, lest it end up being a sexual temptation to the men around me. what a disgusting and violating thing to plant in a young child's head
all that to say, showing the nipples on drawn depictions of myself also serves as a way for me to reclaim my body as my own, and that something so often seen as sexual is just a normal part of me that can exist regardless of how others may perceive it. i am allowing myself to grow comfortable with my own existence, and embracing my physical body in any way i can!
well, i hope that all made sense! i've joked in recent months that i'd consider getting tummy nip tattoos, though really, i'm not sure i'm brave enough for it...maybe i could do temporary for now, and really consider it in the future. either way, thanks for reading! ^w^
