Chill out, crybabies. No one is forcing you into slavery by having an opinion you don’t like, or even by being adjectively rude about something they think you should do. So you can go ahead and spare us your declarations of independence to your personhood cuz everyone already knows about it. All you’re doing is broadcasting your weakness and frailty by announcing how you own your body and you can do what you want and your decisions are yours and blah blah blah. You’re not changing anyones opinion and didn’t suddenly become a respected crusader for autonomy, you’re just being a brat and calling it empowerment.
Whether it’s a friend or family member who thinks your ugly tattoo is a mistake or your haircut is unflattering or whether it’s society collectively holding a standard that your sedentary lifestyle and poor diet is unhealthy or even whether it’s a mixture that moral opinions about your duties to civilization or whether you should be having sex or abortions or sex-abortions or abortion-sex – announcing that you own your body is changing precisely zero peoples mind. And if you’re not trying to mind-change your alleged slave masters then what is it you think you’re even doing? We get that your poor relationship with your parents or lack of parent has caused you to find security in offbeat ways that manifest themselves in not exactly knowing who to rebel against except “everyone” but you really outta do yourself a favor and chill out.
If you can’t handle directly being told what to do, let alone implicitly judged by a standard you either can’t or have no desire to achieve then your biggest problem is with yourself. People and groups of people will tell you what to do and you can’t change that by speech making. Sometimes it is appropriate. Sometimes it is manipulative or rude or just people being bossy or jerks. Feel free to inform them, Glinda-to-Wicked-Witch style that their comments are rubbish and “have no power here” and that they too should “be gone, before someone comes and drops a house on you too”, but if you are finding yourself pre-emptively ringing the town crier bells to announce your independence then you know you are the one with the control issues.
“I own my body” as a prerequisite to doing what you want with, to, or in it, is a poor slogan to make your own. There’s a reason it is adopted by the least confident victim-centric minded (usually overweight females) hustlers of the world. It’s not a mentality to aspire to.
Not to mention the question of who owns the rest of that girls legs and her feet…
Besides all that though, there’s the fact that it just isn’t true… You don’t own your body. You *are* your body. It’s you and and you have certain responsibilities. People commenting on those responsibilities are not usurping control over something you own – they are reminding you of your obligations. If a person comments on actions you’re not obligated to do and you don’t want to do them then say so and forget about it. You’re not a civil rights hero for being aware that you don’t have to do anything and everything another entity says you do.
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