Hey there, today's episode is hosted by the poet Samia Bashir.

Enjoy, and I'll be back on February 18th.

I'm Samia Bashir, and this is The Slowdown.

Thank you. to me a Bashir, and this is the slowdown. The other day, a friend asked who or what I thought I was.

I replied casually, offhandedly even, stardust.

And I mean, that's technically true.

But I don't think it was the answer my interlocutor was looking for.

Oftentimes, these questions are lobbed with the intention of cutting the respondent down to what the questioner believes is a more appropriate size.

Stretched out in a bathtub, with nothing at hand but the poetry of my own body and the water in which

it's immersed, I often find myself asking that same question. As I take in each of my physical,

so-called flaws, that question of what or who I am can turn markedly unkind.

I see scars here, stretch marks there, the ruptures on my hands and feet where my infant self, having been born, perhaps strangely, with six fingers on each hand, six toes on each

foot, was forcibly, surgically corrected. A rather curvy, black, American woman I long ago

grew accustomed to my body being subjected to the judgment of others and found wanting.

I know I'm not alone here, based on anecdotal evidence and on study after study,

including those which have shown the deleterious effects of social media on young women and girls.

What I know, too, is that at the end of the day,

the makeup of the body in question does not even matter to those

who would throw their biting grenades.

Today's poem, too, asks who we think we are.

That existential question can feel like judgment or threat, but the poet turns it back

toward the daily realities of our own agency. What I mean is this. We ourselves get to choose the

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