I never really understood why people would get so nervous and hyped up for the release of round breaks. I mean, maybe that was because I have never broken before (meaning I advanced to the next round). It really wasn’t even all that: 15 people standing over a ledge with obnoxiously long sheets of paper rolled up, waiting for us to countdown from 10 until they dropped them down into the commotion of students anxiously awaiting their speech and debate fate. Then, you look for your competitor number and if you don’t see it, you can take your suit off and put on the leggings, sweater, and flip flops you have been thinking about since you put on your heels at 5:45 a.m. But, this time I patiently waited with my teammates for the paper to drop. I looked the same way I always did, not expecting to see my name up there. Then, my friend Matt started screaming. He broke and when I went to congratulate him and he stopped me, “Kayla, look.” I looked up for my competitor number and it was there. I had made it to quarterfinals for the first time in my entire life and I didn’t know what to do with myself. I had been in speech and debate for three years and this was my first out-of-state tournament, so for my teammates who had done this before, this was easier to handle, but for me, who thought her rants about body image were meaningless, I was speechless (no pun intended).

     It never occurred to me that on December 6th, 2016 I would be able to spread my message further than I ever had before. Yeah, I know it was only a speech and debate tournament, but it was the first time I had ever stepped outside of my comfort zone and competed by myself, so it turned out to be a really big deal for me. The speech and debate community was one that I never really found myself too involved in. I usually just did what was required for my debate class and that was it. However, after about a year of competing, there was something about it that I fell in love with: being heard. Speech and debate was a way that I could express myself and share a message that I was passionate about.

      After finding out that I was moving on to quarterfinals, before entering the room, I was performing in, I went to the bathroom, looked at myself in the mirror to give myself the mental pep talk I never thought I would need to give. This was my chance; my chance to use my medium to impact someone else who might be dealing with the same thing as me. I could do this. I could stand up on that stage and speak the words that had changed my own life, to hopefully change someone else’s.

      For me, it was body image. My entire life I have struggled with body image issues. I was never confident and never felt very good about my body based on the societal norms I saw in the media each day. But, fairly recently I decided to challenge those so-called norms and work to create a new standard; one that makes all genders feel accepted and comfortable in their own skin. One of the easiest ways for me to this was to use resources, such as the ones speech and debate provided me with. I chose topics and pieces that aligned with my opinions about body image. One of the poems I found that truly inspired me I found in Lytton Bell’s “Body Image” called “Spanx.” It reads,

 

            Now I must reduce myself to fit inside your meager  expectations

shrink my potential down to being merely

decorative

conventional

stifled

even the name of your contraption urges me to

 punish myself for my non-conformity

 I am more than what you asked for

 deal with it.

     Reading this poem for the first time brought tears to my eyes. It is short and sweet, but it meant so much to me because it hit so close to home. I had never had a way to express how I felt about my body. It was something that I kept bottled up inside because I didn’t think people would understand how I felt. Well, there was an artist who wrote exactly how I felt and published it for the whole world to see. If she could do that, then I could write and perform speeches about my experiences and opinions about body image.

     That tournament at George Mason University didn’t turn out the way I had expected it to. It turned out way better. For the first time, I was able to stand up as a quarterfinalist in a room full of people and say that beauty standards are overrated and it felt really good. I never had a fear of public speaking. Of course, I would get nervous right before the performance, but ever since I was a little girl, I liked talking in front of people. It was something that came unusually natural to me. This community helped to give me a voice; one that I didn’t know that I had. One I didn’t know was going to impact people in the way that it did until that day. Speech and debate allowed me to stand up in front of a crowd and express these words to all different kinds of people from all over the country. This really helped me appreciate the opportunities I have been given. Having an outlet in which I could be heard was a truly life-changing experience, not many people have the opportunity to express themselves the same way I did with debate.

     Today, I use this to step outside of my comfort zone. I allow myself to be outspoken. I am no longer afraid to say how I feel and I am more inclined to fight for what I believe in. Every day I give myself that same pep talk I did before my round. I look in the mirror and I say to myself, “Kayla, you can do this. You can go out there in the world and speak your mind.”

     Through speech and debate, I was able to prove to the world that what I had to say was important and meaningful. I believe that for everyone, that we all have something to share whether we think that people will agree or disagree with us. I was lucky enough to find a place in which I could do this and I should continue to appreciate my experiences from speech and debate and use them in my future. I hope to continue spreading the message that I set out to with speech and debate. I want to join the Florida State University forensics team and continue to share my message and perform the audiences of people all over the nation to ensure that people know across the board, that they don’t have to conform to what society says is “acceptable.”