The notion of stretching someone's skin across your frame to experience their life is something I think about regularly, and I feel that it is not a unique feeling. Consider how many times we think about “being in someone else’s shoes” and, more specifically, the jealousy that stems from that desire. What if that feeling was deeper than simply having someone’s opportunities and more focused on having someone’s comfort in their own body? The value of skin that is acceptable and fits cannot be measured.

As a fat-bodied, genderfluid, femme-presenting non-binary person, I must do this work to make space, or create an example for those like myself who are underrepresented. The work isn’t perfect, and the theory may be flawed, but getting the ball rolling is the end goal. My experience is both unique and collective. The work I make is about the value of bodies and the value that is intrinsically prescribed to humanity by social standards that have far outlived their expiration date.

-J.C. Neihardt