I'm Flaunting My Deformed Body In Teeny-Tiny Rompers For The Rest Of The Summer

Sorry not sorry if my confusing shape makes you uncomfortable. It makes me uncomfortable too, but I refuse to let that (or you) stop me. So I even took a picture. And I'm posting it here.

All I have to say as a precursor to today's featured AJPT story, for whenever you want to read it:

I am so proud of Carla for writing her story and showing off herself and helping free other people to do the same thing. I am so grateful that she is publishing this here for you. She has heard more than enough from me already and would love to hear from you in the comments too, if you feel like it.

Love and all my thanks,

Jane

Just try to be in a bad mood while wearing an animal-printed silk Ulla Johnson playsuit with dangling beads at the shoulder. Impossible, even with inflamed chub rub.

By Carla Sosenko

I am used to being stared at. As a 48-year-old New Yorker, I am also used to staring back—or worse —depending on my mood.

I’m stared at so much because I have Klippel-Trenaunay Syndrome. (If you’ve heard of it, it’s probably because of me. I sort of won’t shut up about it lately.) K-T is a congenital vascular disorder whose markers include, for me, legs and bum cheeks of different sizes, and a giant, misshapen, birthmark-splashed back. My body can be confusing to people.

“I spent our whole date angling my body and he fell for it. It was exhausting.”

They will often ascribe my anomalous lumps and bumps to things like pregnancy or an injury. (I know this because they tell me. People are pretty great.) To be honest, my body can be just as confusing to me. Even now, when I give fewer fucks than ever before, when I have just written an entire memoir about life in an unconventional body, there are times I feel self-conscious.

Actually, since the book came out in May, there are times I think I’m more self-conscious than before, or at least more aware of my body as a three-dimensional thing. In the years it took to write the book, my body became intellectual property, content, something I could disconnect from in order to study it.

In the post-publication era, I’m spending a lot of time talking and writing about my body—including right now—while being inside of it, which has been a hell of thing.

I am seeing photos of myself on book tour taken by good-natured, wonderful people who don’t know my preferred angles and lighting, and sometimes those photos feel like a cold slap across the face. Photos that I haven’t engineered perfectly have always had that effect on me.

This one below is from a few summers ago.

I’d fallen in love with this gold-foil shirred Molly Goddard dress and wore it to a reading of a play I wrote. When a supportive, loving friend sent me this shot after the event, I wanted to jump off a bridge.