The Body on Stage

The first time I was photographed for a press shoot, I spent the entire night before trying to make my body smaller. I ate nothing. I did extra cardio. I stood in front of the mirror pulling at my stomach, my thighs, the soft places that I had been taught to hate. The photos came out fine. I looked professional. But I also looked afraid. The camera sees what you feel, and I was feeling that my body was a problem to be solved rather than an instrument to be played.

I have struggled with body image for as long as I have had a body to image. The entertainment industry amplifies this struggle in specific ways. You are told, explicitly and implicitly, that your size, your shape, your skin, your hair, all of it is part of your product. That your voice is not enough. That you need to be a visual package, and that the package needs to meet certain specifications. I have been asked to lose weight by people who have never heard me sing. I have been told my natural hair was not polished enough for television. I have looked at my own album cover and wished I looked like someone else.

But here is what I have learned from performing. The body on stage is not a visual object. It is a source of power. When I move with intention, when I let my hips sway because the rhythm asks for it, when I throw my head back because the note demands it, when I use my hands to shape the air around the melody, something shifts in the room. The audience stops seeing a body and starts feeling a presence. And that presence does not depend on meeting anyone's beauty standard. It depends on inhabiting your body fully, without apology, without hesitation.

I started working with a movement coach who changed my relationship with performance. She did not teach me choreography. She taught me awareness. Where is my weight right now? Am I holding tension in my jaw? Is my breath shallow because I am anxious? She showed me that every physical habit carries an emotional message, and that on stage, those messages are louder than the lyrics. A performer who is disconnected from her body broadcasts disconnection to the audience. A performer who is fully in her body invites the audience into their own embodiment. It is not about how you look. It is about how you occupy space.

I have started dressing for my body instead of against it. This sounds simple but it was revolutionary for me. I stopped buying clothes that I hoped would make me look thinner. I started buying clothes that felt good to move in, that complemented my skin tone, that made me feel like the artist I want to be rather than the version of myself I thought the industry wanted. The difference on stage is immediate. When you are not worried about whether your outfit is hiding the right things, you are free to focus on the song. The garment becomes a tool instead of a constraint.

There is a specific vulnerability to singing while Black and female. The history of our bodies being commodified, judged, policed, and consumed does not disappear just because you are on a stage. Every choice you make about your presentation is loaded. How much skin to show. How to style your hair. Whether to wear makeup or go bare-faced. Whether to move in ways that could be read as sexual or in ways that could be read as asexual. There is no neutral choice. Every option carries a meaning that someone in the audience will project onto you. I have learned to make these choices consciously rather than defensively. To decide what I want to say with my body rather than trying to avoid saying the wrong thing.

The body is also where the voice lives. This is obvious but I forget it constantly. My breath is controlled by my diaphragm, my support comes from my core, my resonance is shaped by the spaces inside my skull and chest. When I am kind to my body, when I feed it well, rest it enough, move it regularly, my voice responds. When I punish my body, when I deprive it, when I push it past exhaustion, my voice suffers. The relationship is direct. The body is not separate from the art. It is the vessel of the art. And vessels need care.

I want to say something to any artist who is struggling with how they look. Your body is not the obstacle to your success. The belief that your body is the obstacle is the obstacle. The audience does not come to see perfection. They come to see truth. And truth lives in bodies that are present, alive, responsive, and real. A body that breathes. A body that sweats. A body that carries its history openly. That is the body they want to witness. Not the body from the magazine. Not the body from the filter. The body that holds the song. Your body. Exactly as it is.

I still have hard days. I still catch myself pulling at my reflection. I still feel the old programming when I see a photo of myself mid-performance, my face contorted with effort, my body in an unflattering angle. But I am learning to love those photos. Because they show the work. They show the moment when the self-consciousness dropped away and the music took over. They show me being fully in my body, doing what it was made to do. And that is beautiful. Not in spite of the imperfection. Because of it. The body on stage is the body being fully itself. And that is always enough.