ABSTRACT
Crissy grew up in a small town in northern Ontario of mixed racial and ethnic background; her mother is aboriginal, and her father was white French Canadian. For her, racial oppression always seemed to be inextricably intertwined with gender oppression, and the schoolyard taunts often targeted her as both aboriginal and female. As she grew into adolescence, much of the body shame she experienced focused on her weight. Her attempts to make herself less noticeably aboriginal by staying thin gradually became more desperate, and increasingly dangerous. Eventually, her lifestyle of drug and alcohol use shifted, and she began working at a bank, where she quickly began to rise within the institutional ranks. She teaches movement classes that draw on an ancient cultural tradition emphasizing a holistic approach to human experience and well-being, and finds that having acne complicates her body image as a teacher.
