In Praise of the Unclaimed Body

Your body was not born for an audience.
It was born for you.

Before anyone desired it.
Before anyone commented on it.
Before anyone compared it, rated it, cropped it, filtered it, or sold it back to you.

Your body was once just a place you lived.

Not a product.
Not a performance.
Not a negotiation.

Just… home.

And somewhere along the way, the world began knocking.
Softly at first.
Then louder.
Then with algorithms, mirrors, likes, stares, expectations.

It told you:
Be desirable.
Be chosen.
Be wanted.

As if being seen was the same thing as being valued.

But there is a quiet truth no one teaches you:

A body that has not been claimed by the gaze of others
moves differently.
Breathes differently.
Belongs differently.

There is a kind of innocence that has nothing to do with morality
and everything to do with sovereignty.

It is the state of being in your body
before it becomes a stage.

Before you learn to look at yourself
as something to be consumed.

Before your skin becomes a message.

This is what I mean when I speak of an untouched body.

Not pure.
Not chaste.
Not holy.

But uncolonized.

A body that still feels like yours.

And if you have already been seen,
already been wanted,
already been touched,
already been pulled into the machinery of desire—

this is not a sentence.

Nothing about you is ruined.

You do not lose ownership of your body
the moment someone else enters it.

You can always come back.

You can always choose again:
What you show.
What you give.
Who you allow.

Because your body was never meant to be public property.

Not for boys.
Not for men.
Not for the internet.
Not for the market.

It was meant to be a place where you live, not a place where others visit without permission.

And the most rebellious thing a girl can do in this world is not to be modest.

It is to be unavailable to what tries to use her.

Slow.
Private.
Self-owned.

Your body does not owe anyone a performance.

It never did.

— L.P.