Penning privilege: What I learned from SCBWI 2018

When I attend conferences, my goal is to learn and retain one important thing. Just one, because at conferences, we take in data with indiscriminate abandon, and even with pages upon pages of notes and hours of excited post-lecture discourse with bright peers, who can keep more than one big takeaway? The conference I just attended (SCBWI, LA, 2018) was focused on writing kidlit, so I figured I leave with something to do with craft, or sales, or networking.

I did learn writing things. They’re in my notes.

What I will retain, however, is an expanded sense of my privilege, as a writer, and as a person.

As a counseling psychologist I’ve spent years in the study of it, in the awareness-building of it, in the talking to my clients and peers about it. And still, there are those life moments where I see the world through a different lens and come into contact with the extent of what I don't know. This weekend was one of those times. 

I became aware of my class privilege, as well as my lack of it, while chatting with conference colleagues about travel. We swapped thoughts on places we’d been and where we want to go. One woman shared which European destinations worked best for her young family, during their yearly summer two-week vacations.  Another shared which hotel pillows she preferred, and which beds, and which had the best toilet paper. I was swapping info and learning info, because my family can afford to travel a modest amount, but at the same time I was thinking about how neither of my parents had even been on an airplane until they were in their thirties. Our family vacations growing up were spending three days in nearby Kansas City or Des Moines, baseball games and museums and Dairy Queens, a far cry from the Isle of Capri or Edinburgh. 

My mom is as much a bookworm as I and had always spoken of writing a book, but in looking back, when would she have had time to pen the next American classic? Between 12-hour shifts working the floor at the county hospital? Or maybe in the one-hour time slot between suppertime and running off to my sporting events?  My mother would not have had the privilege of writing, not like I do, with my career and my spouse’s career and the way my life is set up. I’m so aware that there are many people in the world like my mother, those who have words inside of them that could be beautiful novels, but who do not the privileges of time and resources for writing. And yet, while I can afford time to write, and I can take my kids on trips in a way my parents couldn’t, and I had the means to come to this conference this year, I do not have the privilege of this conference fee and travel expense being a drop in the bucket, a one-off, something I can count on doing every year, as it seemed to be to so many people I talked to.

I became more aware of my racial privilege, in a city with far more racial and ethnic diversity than what is typically seen in my home city of Lincoln, Nebraska. It was unlikely anyone was going to doubt my motives because of the color of my skin. I was aware that, as a writer, I do and will come under less scrutiny than my peers of color. As Malinda Lo, one of the conference presenters, spoke of, the difficulty level I start with as a White woman is relatively easy, especially compared with those from marginalized groups, whose default might be "medium" or even "hard." I also thought more about my writing and became increasingly invested in the idea of not letting my manuscripts reflect “default race” as White.

And then there was this new-old thing going on, that has to do with both privilege and oppression. I was aware of the slide of eyes down the bends and curves of my body; men, in a way that made no pretense of hiding sexual interest; women, in barely-veiled disapproval of something hard to pinpoint: my body, my clothes, the way I carry myself? I must note here, too, that this didn’t happen with every person I encountered by any means, not even most. But when it did, I felt it, right in the scarred-over places of my patchwork heart. As an overweight, overachieving, straight-A straight laced teen I would have reveled in the appraisal, even the “bad” attention, because it was still attention. Even ten years ago, when I was still adjusting to a new type of body and a new type of interaction with the world, I had loud internal monologue when out in public, one that screamed, “I have a body! I am not just a brain on legs! Please, please, do you see me?”

And now it’s different. Though sometimes I still feel like girl who at age ten wore women’s size 18 clothing pulled off the racks of Wal-Mart because that’s what fit and that’s what we could afford, I’m more adjusted to this size 8 self, used to the way my body feels, the way the world treats me. By the third day of this conference, though, I started feeling when someone’s eyes crawled over my body. I felt sad. What hurt is that the dip between my breasts and the cleft between my legs was apparently a much bigger deal than the space between my ears.

I had the urge to run up to my room and change clothes, put something “more modest” on. Something that would make me invisible, or at least, no longer an object. But the feminist within me rallied, pushed back, “But why?” I was wearing my favorite dress, the one I call “my happy frock,” because I wore it when I went to Hamilton and the fabric is woven with all of my favorite colors, and it is breathable and cool and L.A. is hot. Why would I swap out my happiest clothing for less-comfortable camouflage?

I left the dress on, but I stopped looking people in the eye. Carefully, carefully I kept my eyes facing forward, or at the ground, or on my phone. Even though I didn’t let myself go incognito, shame still led me to shrink down, back down, not be myself, the self that would look people on the street in the eye and smile.

In this body of gained and lost weight I have gained and lost privilege, yet overall, the objectification of me has merely shifted. As an overweight youth, I was a funny, maybe tragic aberration, and now, I’m a sexual commodity.  

As I sit here in the Los Angeles International Airport, at a charging station in my simple black peasant midi dress that I purchased for $25 at Old Navy, I think of the privilege that brought me here. I have the means and support to be across the country from home, taking time away from work and my family. I have a laptop that I’m plunking away on. I sip on a Dunkin Donuts iced latte and snack on M&Ms, because I could buy these things and because no one will judge someone my size for putting junk in my body. People do not clutch their purses closer when I come near, because I’m White and not seen as inherently criminal.

And the man sitting across the table from me cannot stop looking at my chest. I’ve got my eyes dropped to my laptop, because I need to need to need to need to need to finish this post, but also, I don’t want to look at his bushy eyebrows, red-alcoholic nose, frizzled hair. I don’t want to see him. But I know he’s there. Maybe before I leave, I’ll get brave and shoot him a return look, one that lets him know that I disapprove. A look worthy of Minerva McGonagall herself. But maybe I won’t, because I’m here alone and he’s bigger than me and I am, after all, a woman.

I’m coming home from this conference with more than I thought I’d leave with. A suitcase of new books, a notebook full of plot ideas, a bulleted list of things to discuss with my agent, a handful of writerly contacts to keep in touch with, a deepened understanding and relationship with my dear critique partner, and this, my one big takeaway thought, the one I’ll retain without help or review: I have privilege. I lack privilege.

And my fervent hope is that this post helps you to think more holistically about your own.