Body Work: In the Text and Under the Flesh
To be a writer is one thing; to write about your self is another. Body Work by Melissa Febos deconstructs the anxieties that eat away at a writer’s mind as they begin the creative process. Febos bonds with the reader by leading them through her own vulnerable experiences and missteps as she navigates the literary world. She effortlessly creates a unique take on the craft book by pairing successful writing moments with professional missteps. By removing her ego and embracing her fears, she explores how writing aids in healing the trauma that lives silently in the body—specifically through her experience with the connection between the female body and craft.
She opens every section with varied approaches, underscoring one central truth: just because you suffered does not mean your character must. Febos points out a common pitfall: in memoir, writers often assume their work must center around the darkest traumatic event they have faced. “I'll say it again, ... the resistance to memoirs about trauma is always in part—and often nothing but—a resistance to movements for social justice” (17). At first, this connection felt a bit abstract. As writers, we like to believe our craft has nothing to do with social justice. However, Febos highlights the deep link between women, writing, and literature’s stigma around victimhood. She notes later, “We have been discouraged from writing about it because it makes people uncomfortable. Because a patriarchal society wants its victims to be silent” (21). Febos establishes this foundation so we can understand how a woman’s experience with her body and trauma directly challenges the social hierarchy surrounding it. As the old double standard goes: if you wait to have sex until after marriage, you are a prude; if you sleep with someone before, you are a slut. Febos asserts that the wounds from trauma can originate from either end of that spectrum, urging writers to stop letting society shame them into staying silent.
Similarly, Febos insists that you cannot avoid the “I” in writing. When telling your story, you must acknowledge the narrator as much as the event. She admits to the reader that even she holds back from revealing internal struggles out of a fear of appearing self-indulgent. “I often tell my students about the importance of authorial distance. The I of their narrator is not the I that writes the book” (136). What exactly does that mean, though? Are we not simply narrating our own experiences? In her twenties, Febos worked as a dominatrix under the name Justine. She excitedly shared a chapter from her first memoir—detailing sexual sessions with clients—with her psychotherapist. But rather than admiring her literary eminence, her therapist offered a sharp critique: “You’re still acting like Justine” (40). Febos then admits, “I had been telling the story I had been telling myself as those events happened, not the story of what happened” (40).
I find this moment compelling because it reflects my own biggest struggle as a writer. The body of work suffers when you merely narrate an account of how you wished things happened. Febos makes an excellent point about why the “I” needs distance and closure. When wounds are still fresh, our minds protect us by keeping us from fully processing and healing. To overcome this, we must take time to comprehend the event, process it, accept it, and then document how it shaped us. The book's title is a clever double entendre: Body Work refers not just to shaping the body of text on the page, but to doing the labor on the physical body that carries the trauma.
As I wrestle with this in my own writing, I wonder how my perspective as a woman writing from a female body contributes to my narrative—and whether, out of a desire to make the story feel more "consequential," I have held back the raw truth of what occurred. Febos concludes that recounting what happened and how it affected you can feel self-indulgent precisely because it demands absolute honesty about how the experience shaped you. Openly sharing humiliating moments or an assault might feel overly dramatic, but it is the truth of what happened. To succeed in memoir, the narrator must reveal the past self who experienced the event through the lens of the present self who now writes it.
However, writing about trauma does not mean everything must be bleak. Throughout Body Work, Febos reminds us that trauma, relationships, and sex can also be liberating. Writing about sex does not have to be vulgar to be profound. In her work, her relationship to her body and her womanhood was deeply tied to the empowerment she felt as Justine, as well as the freedom that came from shedding her fear of judgment and embracing the gritty reality of her work as a domme. Doing this requires us, as the central characters in our stories, to embrace the full spectrum of the human experience—to “be more human to ourselves” (76). Febos clarifies that a writer must learn to view the event through three distinct lenses simultaneously: their own personal outlook, the reader’s perspective, and the narrator’s stance.
Near the end of Body Work, Febos offers a line that encapsulates why nonfiction authors publish: “The trust of shared experience...served as a testimony to my past relationship to those events” (147). We carry our trauma deep within us, and writing gives us a way to release that internal pressure. Body Work successfully teaches and empowers writers to better understand their role as narrators while steering clear of common storytelling traps. Its most powerful premise remains: having open wounds does not make a woman any less whole. Whether you embrace your sexuality or have had it taken from you, both are stories worth telling. Be vulnerable, and be honest—it is the only way to make the body of work truly work.
