It’ll soon be almost a year since I took a sabbatical from art criticism. I needed a break from the routine of the monthly column. It had become one of too many items on my work plate, which felt overwhelming, considering that around this time last year, I was going through the brain fog of the first trimester. If you’re a creative person who has been pregnant, you may have experienced this fuzzy feeling — there’s a sudden lack of transparency in the ideating process. The fluency or ease with which you otherwise were able to perform suddenly vanishes. I remember struggling to complete my sentences, combing through my brain for the right word, which felt so within reach and yet elusive. I’m afraid to admit this, because as people who have been conditioned to perform as women, we have had to train ourselves to work against our body’s limitations in order to feel like we deserve equality. 

Women were historically kept outside of the paid workforce because our bodies were seen as weak, and our psychological constitutions were deemed too emotional because of our capacity for empathy and kindness. The fact that we menstruated was grounds enough to keep us from being employed. The fact that our wombs could be impregnated made our presence in most public domains feel like a liability. Our place was confined to the hearth, or to the living room. In many places, this continues to be the norm. 

I’ve been thinking a lot about how I have lived my whole adult life feeling like I have had to perform professionally in opposition to my body. I’ve had to suck it up and medicate myself through period pain to show up for a pre-planned meeting, or to stick to a deadline so that I would not be considered as untrustworthy or flaky. I have visited biennales and done artist studio visits while pregnant or with a toddler, so that I didn’t lose the assignment in question, even though, as a mother with an infant or as a pregnant person, I have struggled to find the faculty for attentiveness that art viewership demands. All of these facts point to how I have always been a disabled body trying to function in a world designed for able-bodied cis-heterosexual men. The world I have inhabited and continue to inhabit continues to disregard principles of equality, and more importantly, equity. An equitable world would be one in which concessions were made for bodies that exist outside the norm; one in which we would understand, finally, that the notion of meritocracy is indeed a myth and there is only privilege that decides who gets access to the best opportunities.