Today is Love Your Body Day!

Love Your Body Day is a project of the National Organization of Women, which runs a Love Your Body poster contest every year. This year’s winner bears the message that “you are a masterpiece,” and you can send it to your body-loving friends as an e-card if you want. NOW is also running a blog carnival.

When we talk about loving our bodies, we often talk about loving what we look like. “Do you love what you see when you look in the mirror?” asks the NOW campaign.

There’s certainly something to be said for loving the way you look – and when you’re a woman in this culture, it’s easier said than done. But with all the focus on loving how you look, it’s easy to forget that the human body does stuff. It does some pretty remarkable stuff.

I think it’s important, revolutionary even, to fight a culture that says we’re never attractive enough, and that links attractiveness to worth and love. I think that learning to love how we look is a powerful political act. But I also think it’s important to think about what our bodies can do rather than simply how they look. After all, a core part of feminism is valuing people as whole people – not as sexual objects or walking stereotypes – and valuing them for what they do. So on Love Your Body Day, I want to take a moment to appreciate the things my body can do.

My body can stitch itself back together when it gets cut. This never ceases to amaze me.

My body has an organ in it that can stretch to accommodate a small human being. I don’t want it to do any stretching or accommodating any time soon, but the capacity is there, and that blows my mind.

More than a decade after it was cool (was it really ever cool?) my body still has the muscle memory to do the Macarena. That one is kind of embarrassing, but still kind of great. Mostly embarrassing.

My body can orgasm. Enough said.

My body can do this, and for that, I love it.

What can your body do?