Understanding Body Resistance in El Salvador: A Qualitative Discussion of a Pilot Program for Embodied Empowerment

Introduction

This article evaluates the Body Resistance program, a pilot partnership between nonprofit organizations Pesas y Poder and Programa Velasco, that I facilitated as the program leader from June to August 2021 in an urban area of El Salvador. The program's goal is to facilitate women's reclamation of bodily autonomy and recognition of their shared struggle, thereby laying a foundation for solidarity and structural change around gendered body norms. For this reason, rather than focusing on individual indicators of physical or mental health, I developed a qualitative metric for understanding the program impact on “embodied empowerment.” As a pilot project with limited scope, a key objective is to identify meaningful concepts that address the goals, motivations, and worldviews of Salvadoran participants. To adapt concepts and methods to local experiences, I invited Salvadoran women to become co-designers of future interventions with a participatory methodology. Salvadoran women have been developing their own intersectional critiques, ethics, and conceptual approaches to exclusionary peacebuilding processes in their communities (Velasquez Estrada, 2022). This article points toward insights regarding their understandings and experiences of trauma, resistance, and embodied empowerment.

The word resistance trespasses across meanings from the physiological to the political. In the field of exercise science, ‘resistance’ is the force that opposes movement, and under the conditions of progressive resistance training, the body adapts, strengthens, and becomes increasingly capable of movement despite the exerted forces. In everyday use in English language, the word ‘resistance’ sometimes means that an organism has the capacity to survive a potentially harmful influence. In Salvadoran Spanish, resistencia often signifies clandestine political organization that sabotages an unjust regime, and it frequently refers to left-wing movements. In anthropology and sociology, resistance generally implies defiance of power and/or subversion of domination, even in subtle practices that do not overtly challenge authority (Scott, 1985). Latina feminists conceptualize a connection between playfulness and resistance, describing how both an irreverence towards norms and an openness to experimentation without self-judgment can destabilize systems of oppression (Lugones, 2003; Ortega, 2016). The conceptualization of “body resistance” that informs this analysis implies both individual and collective dimensions, the objective and intersubjective sense of this concept, and the capacity of political defiance to masquerade as mundane, apolitical actions, including playfulness in athletic pursuits. Thus, “body resistance” is a playful, strength practice that facilitates a social movement against harmful notions of the body.

Harmful notions about the body, ranging from the conflation of commercialized beauty with health to overzealous controls on sexuality and physical expression, remain rooted in misogyny, racism, classism, ableism, and heteronormativity; such ideas influence where and how we move, as well as what we feel and perceive. They structure our experience of both internal and external worlds, including our sense of spatiality and self (Young, 2005). Symbolic, structural, everyday, and political forms of violence converge to normalize constraints, internalize shame, and enforce these body notions and norms (Bourgois, 2001; Young, 2005). Oppression manifests itself in routines, mannerisms, posture, anxieties, and various ways of being, as well as neurological and endocrine responses to stress (Haines, 2019; Herman, 1992; Johnson, 2018; Van Der Kolk, 2014). Such trauma even passes from one generation to the next (Haines, 2019; Harris, 2018; Menakem, 2017). This continued, intergenerational oppression across Latin America is a form of coloniality (Carranza, 2016; Martin Alcoff, 2020).

Resistance to such violence, in the form of new movement patterns and play, is thus a decolonial act. The Body Resistance program builds on the social justice approach described by Rae Johnson (2018, p. 2), which leverages experiences of movement to change narratives and, ultimately, transform society. The program uses resistance training, i.e., the acquisition of physical strength, to strengthen solidarity and encourage critical reflection on the violence that shapes the body. In this article, with a feminist understanding of the workings of “slow trauma” (Markowitz, 2021), I describe how the Body Resistance program leverages athletic practice to confront injustice.

Program Structure Rationale

Body Resistance is a trauma-informed intervention because it takes the connection between mind and body as its starting place for collective healing. Throughout this article, I will refer to mind/body to signify this embodied consciousness, which takes shape through gendered, habituated movement (Young, 2005). With this embodiment as a starting place, trauma can be understood as the sum of social, behavioral, psychological, and physiological adaptations that follow in the wake of a violation of autonomy and dignity; such experiences take a myriad of forms, ranging from chronic stress or discipline to singular events, producing a diversity of traumas (Haines, 2019). As a “trauma-informed intervention,” the program recognizes both the somatic and political dimensions of these sadly ubiquitous experiences (Haines, 2019). As will be explained in what follows, the program is therefore structured around two guiding practices: (1) respect for the autonomy of participants by facilitating the development of their own self-knowledge and expertise in their own body, and (2) the synthesis of physical activity with social support to reconnect with ourselves and others.

A major component of this pilot program involved identifying potential adaptations of healing practices to the specific context confronting Salvadoran women. Trauma is not an unproblematically generalizable experience; instead, it constitutes a multitude of ways that violence and intersecting oppressions become housed in the body. At a practical level, I identified a shared language with participants, engaging in moments of cultural translation, adapting, and connecting activities and conversations to their daily lives (and my own). Conceptually, I encouraged the women to arrive at their own definitions of trauma, resistance, and embodied empowerment.

Recognizing the importance of connecting programming with the community's needs, goals, and worldviews, I recast activities by asking the women to name key movements in their daily lives. The naming exercise serves a dual purpose by offering a pedagogical tool to instruct future cohorts on athletic techniques with words that make greater intuitive sense to them, and by demonstrating to women that their daily lives are athletic. The movements in which they already engage, such as “medir la tela” or “anda en moto,” have parallels in strength training, and acknowledgement of these similarities allows the women to see forms of strength in which they already engage.

I grounded the discussion groups in concrete examples and empathy, rather than abstract concepts, and allowed these conversations to flow in unexpected directions. In doing so, participants redefined the boundaries of the pilot intervention and its study, providing a window into experiential lessons that shifted the meanings of trauma, resistance, and empowerment. In her seminal work, Herman (1992) identifies three common pathways to healing in the U.S. context: creating a safe environment, developing a narrative, and reconnecting with the community. For Herman, trauma represents a rupture in the Self that becomes a repressed memory engraved upon the central nervous system and often leads to physiological symptoms. We must adapt this concept and these pathways to the Salvadoran context, in which violent events are not a rupture from the daily norm, but instead, a continuation of that norm (Brigden & Hallett, 2021; Martin-Baro, 1994, p. 125). Too often, the field of psychology draws conclusions based on research with wealthy, white participants in the Global North, whose experience of violence dramatically differs from the global majority (Henrich et al., 2010). For example, in contrast to the U.S. sexual assault survivors and war veterans discussed by Herman (1992), among the women served by Programa Velasco, trauma is not a memory that outlasts its survival function, but rather a reasonable response to an expectation of vulnerability to future violence, i.e., an ongoing oppression. For this reason, Martin-Baró argues that in El Salvador we must engage in “an analysis of trauma as a normal consequence of the social system's way of functioning” to understand the chronic impact of exploitation and political oppression (1994, pp. 123–125).

This context of “normal abnormality” limits our capacity to create a safe space for healing and further complicates the capacity to speak the “trauma story” and thereby mourn the event through the reconstruction of narrative. Under conditions of ongoing oppression and chronic violence, silence becomes a survival strategy. The command to “Ver, Oir, Caller” (see, hear, shut up), which haunts Salvadoran daily life and fragments communities across generations, requires continued precaution to avoid not only direct violence, but also potentially damaging gossip and distrust among neighbors. Similarly, in war-torn 1980s Guatemala, Linda Green (1994) argued that women frequently somaticize violence when chronic precarity demands silence for survival; such internalized terror erupts in health consequences that must also be read as political and social memory and potential resistance, ascribed within the body (Green, 1994). Silence/concealment are key coping mechanisms in a context of continuing violence, not destructive impulses. Furthermore, the physical symptoms of trauma can be interpreted as corporeal communication and political expression, rather than dysfunction or individual health problems.

In the context of silence and concealment, physical movement can provide a particularly relevant, visceral means to engage with and express trauma (Haines, 2019). Strength training fosters resilience, increases a sense of agency, practices healthy nervous system responses, and facilitates positive relational connections to Self and others (Khoudari, 2021; Whitworth et al., 2017, 2019). High-intensity and functional movements may offer special benefits for coping with trauma (Mastrorillo, 2023). A key step for trauma survivors is the reestablishment of a sense of autonomy and control, followed by social reconnection and recognition of our mutual interdependence (Herman, 1992). Encouraging survivors to take ownership of research and program development fosters this recentering of self. Creating community in that process, building empathy for how others inhabit their own bodies, fosters the recentering of solidarity. Thus, I hope to practice “trauma-informed research methods” to explore how spectacular and mundane violence(s) intersect within our bodies (e.g., Brigden, 2022; Markowitz, 2021).

Methodology

The qualitative methods employed for this pilot study offer only a limited plausibility probe for the development of future work in El Salvador. The sample of participants was not random. I personally selected women from a working-class community in San Salvador for the program, based on our long-standing friendships and my belief that these individuals would likely commit to attending. I had met them several years prior through my volunteering at the non-profit organization Programa Velasco, where they had previously received services, and we had a pre-established rapport. Ultimately, budget constraints limited the size of the pilot. We invited only four Salvadoran women to participate in the program: two dyads of mothers (one of whom is a grandmother in her sixties) with their daughters. The youngest woman in the program, still a teenager, lost interest and participated only sporadically; she is therefore omitted from this discussion. All the participants confront serious economic hardship and have experienced violence.

Initial Assessment

In the orientation and initial assessment, not a single woman could describe a moment of joy in their body, nor a single visceral memory of pleasure. The question was met with complete silence, blank stares, and shrugs. In the initial assessment, women also conflated emotions and sensations. Rather than indicating confusion, the lack of boundaries between sensation and emotion might signal an understanding of body/mind that does not make clear-cut demarcations: a rejection of the binary between flesh and thought. Some of the commonplace sensations that the women did recognize included thirst, itching, and cold. The women engaged in apparent distraction strategies by frequently redirecting the conversation, presumably to avoid further probing of the specifics of sensations and emotions.

Nevertheless, the women took ownership of the moment, leading us to a deeper understanding of the context in which they live. The conversation often shifted toward discussions of childhood abuses, corporeal punishments, and painful accusations of their sexual improprieties. After lunch, we encouraged the women to walk through the park and continued the discussion while moving through the serene landscape. During that walk, one woman released an angry rant about the brutality of the U.S.-bound clandestine migration route, passionately describing the injustice of kidnappings and rapes suffered by immigrants. Another woman responded incredulously, “but haven’t you ever wanted to go?” and received a shouting reply, “Of course! But not into that!” Our path through the park seemed to call attention to the absence of any path away from their daily pressures. Our walking and physical mobility seemed to suddenly highlight their immobility in life: a moment of escape that made their feeling of being trapped more poignant. Even when they leave home, there is nowhere to go. The experience of that emotion and sensation may not be disentangled. In this way, walking and moving the body during the workshop opened new conversations that were unavailable to us while sitting at the table.

After the conversation about listening and responding to the body, one of the women's children asked for water. His mother denied it, dismissing his thirst. However, the child asked another adult who provided water. At the end of the workshop, after nearly an hour in traffic during our return trip, the child began to dance with the need to use the restroom. His mother denied him access to a readily available restroom as punishment. The child struggled and whimpered, “I can’t stand it. I can’t stand it.” However, she remained steadfast because she had told him not to drink. This parenting interaction, immediately after a conversation about the importance of listening to the body (including explicit discussion of thirst), illustrated the intergenerational nature of silencing strategies for dealing with the body and the difficult starting place for the program.

I did not directly intervene in this parent-child interaction, out of respect for the tenuous position of mothers within household power dynamics and as an acknowledgment that the women must engage in a long-term, slow-moving process of dialogue to introduce concepts of bodily autonomy. The goal of the program is not “education” or the imposition of new norms of bodily autonomy but instead empowerment to allow women to adapt these concepts and norms to their own lives and relationships. At a later session when the risk of a confrontation in front of the child that undermines maternal authority had passed, I raised questions about how women listen to basic physical needs and respond.

Summary of Evidence of Impact

After the initial assessment, I analyzed evidence of the program's impact using the qualitative indicators described above as guideposts. While acknowledging the limitations of such a small pilot, I find sufficient evidence to justify an expansion of the programming and call for further research into its long-term effects on a broader group of participants.

The women developed their own, original understanding of what “body ownership,” “empowerment,” and “resistance” mean to them. At the concluding workshop, Lucy told the group that “There is no ugly woman, only poorly presented/arranged.” She discussed how beauty and health should not be conflated, noting that “it's the clothing, lack of makeup, they don’t groom themselves [to be beautiful].” She recognized a key difference between body imagery and wellness. Lucy has long resigned herself to being fat because her sister was the thin one. However, now beyond being resigned, she says, “I see myself in the mirror and I am equal to everyone else.” This statement is a form of body ownership and a succinct expression of resistance to the influence of unreasonable beauty norms.

It was clear that fat shaming and the policing of women's sexuality often go hand in hand. Lucy's mother-in-law Vilma frequently hurled insults at her body, telling her that she looked pregnant with twins. When I asked Lucy why Vilma treated her this way, she explained that a false accusation of sexual impropriety rendered Lucy unworthy in Vilma's eyes; Vilma had initially mistaken Lucy for a single mother because Lucy had been temporarily caring for an abandoned child. Lucy blames this unfortunate first impression and a difference of opinion over Lucy's way of dressing for Vilma's incessant and ongoing criticism of her belly.

Sexual norms, fat shaming, and expectations for clothing frequently limit women's possible activities, and Lucy formed her own analysis of this during an individual interview. As a teenager, Lucy enjoyed softball, but the team received a uniform of shorts that often doubled over and bunched around her ample glutes and groin. She described her youthful body as “chubby with a great deal of thigh,” and consequently, the shorts felt revealing and sexualized. Girls with a slender build felt less exposed, and they were more likely to continue in the sport: an example of how fat shaming and sexual policing together create an unequal playing field among women. Lucy's body shame ultimately led her to abandon softball. Lucy often discussed how we dress the body, the consequences (emotional and physical) of that dress, and who gets to control these decisions. She put fashion at the center of understanding corporeal discipline and empowerment.

Given the role that clothing plays in body shaming, Lucy understands buying clothes as a form of body resistance (see also Young, 2005, p. 74). Her controlling mother-in-law insisted that Lucy change her style of dress. Lucy remained proudly defiant, saying “I bought my own clothes.” For Lucy, this consumerism and fashion choice are forms of body ownership and expressions of autonomy. Body resistance thus becomes tied to financial independence and Lucy's capacities as an entrepreneur.

The women articulated a relationship between power structures, their emotions, and physical sensations. At the third in-person workshop, the women demonstrated a greater capacity to identify sensations and connect them to movement patterns. For example, Lucy identified when her lower back, rather than her hamstrings, engaged during an exercise. Silvia reported an emotion of unease and fear in response to the sensation of water touching her chin for the first time in the swimming pool. The women later reported feeling relaxed and comfortable in the water. The women critically evaluated their access to recreation and health-related activities. They created neighborhood maps, identifying potential resources for continued movement, and recognized multiple territorial barriers, such as gang borders, that limit access to such resources.

Racism appeared in the conversation unacknowledged by the participants. For example, the women identified the locations of accessible swimming pools available for their use, and after overcoming the initial discomfort of deep water, they all reported enjoying swimming. However, one woman stopped using the free pool when her children became dark-skinned due to sun exposure: “They looked like Blacks,” which is also why she trims the boys’ curly hair short to avoid an Afro hairstyle. Concerns about racial markers limit access to otherwise pleasurable recreational activities or modes of dressing/being in the body. Fear of being marked as an outsider also becomes a source of intimidation when entering white/wealthy/foreign spaces.

These simmering concerns must be interpreted in a historical context of racial erasure. Salvadoran state and popular narratives espouse a national identity of ethnic Mestizaje, largely denying the continued existence of indigeneity in the country following the 1932 Matanza (a genocide of indigenous peoples following a peasant uprising). The national myth also omits African ancestry from its narrative, despite clear empirical evidence that Black people played an important role in the country's economic and social development, contributing to the cultural and genetic heritage of contemporary Salvadorans (Tilley, 2005, pp. 208–21). As noted by Tilley (2005, p. 53), however, “…it is one thing to assert a universal mestizaje and quite another to say that physical features associated with the old racial categories have no social weight.” Her analysis points to how racial stigmatization has survived, despite widespread denial (including by women in the program) that race as a category of difference matters in contemporary Salvadoran society.

Class markers surfaced more explicitly in conversations than racial markers as a cause of concern or barrier to mobility. On several occasions, women articulated a coherent analysis of class privilege and structural inequalities, related to their own struggles with health and wellness. Women discussed the visual “tells” that betray class status. Silvia claimed that “you can just tell [about class background] by looking.” She also recognized such tells in how women talked about their experience during the war period; if they did not discuss the war as a time of personal suffering, they were from wealthy classes. Lucy believed that other women often claimed to be educated and looked down on her, and they convey this disdain in subtle physical mannerisms that hinted at their attitude.

The women repeatedly grounded their analysis of moral responsibility in gender dynamics that place women at the center of ethics and action. Stories about the enforcement of sexual morality and dress codes consistently cast other women as antagonists. For example, when Lucy wore shorts and a bare midriff, a female neighbor intervened on behalf of the neighbor's husband, explaining to Lucy that her husband had fallen in love with Lucy upon seeing her naked legs and warning Lucy that he could not be expected to control himself. In these stories, women also played the role of mastermind, manipulating the emotions of men who periodically lose control. Within this framework, women create chaos and suffering for other women.

Mundane stories of violence often follow this schema, and women who cannot (or do not) defend themselves also bore implied responsibility. The program participants most clearly and collectively articulated this mode of analyzing events during the workshop using exercise bands. We discussed how women can become trapped in abusive relationships. Lucy recognized the integral role of psychological abuse in perpetuating the physical domestic violence she endured. She claimed that her relationship “hurt more in the mind than in the punches,” and her husband and mother-in-law's capacity to make her think “I am bad” kept her in a violent situation. This puts women at the center of the plot, even in a story of domestic violence. Lucy believed that years of physical and emotional abuse from her mother and sisters rendered her vulnerable. In a story she told, the culpability of a murder fell on a woman who engaged in malicious gossip, inciting a man to violence; the sharing of this story led to a consensus among the participants that women often mastermind conflicts. In the participants’ analyses, emotional abuse between women played an important role in the violence inflicted by men.

Women, not men, are therefore viewed as ethically culpable for outcomes—even the “pasmada” women who have suffered severe trauma. As explained by Lucy, “it's women that eat and bite each other with words.” This commonly held belief represents an impediment to solidarity among women, as relationships quickly turn to distrust and blame. However, women's roles in these narratives are also an acknowledgment of agency, implying the potential for women's power and positioning women's betrayals as a rational response to the structures in which they live. Lucy also offered an analysis of the imperatives faced by women to behave duplicitously with one another, focusing on male promiscuity: “the men misbehave with so many women. So, women feel insecure and must compete.” In other words, women find themselves in situations of economic dependence on male partners, and in a context of uncertain male loyalties, this scarcity creates pressure to undermine potential rivals. Envy stems from socio-economic insecurities and uncertainties. A patriarchal economy thus undermines solidarity, and women's individual coping mechanisms may undermine collective resistance. This highlights the role of financial independence in healing processes that aim to build community among women.

Based on her own experiences, Lucy said that the way to work through being “pasmada” is by talking and listening to other women. According to Lucy, these conversations of (and in) the body help women to arrive at a clearheaded analysis, potentially leading to action to change their situation. The women acknowledged limitations and vulnerabilities without expressing negative judgment. They also explained their own bodies, including their strengths and weaknesses. During the body-mapping exercise, the women were asked to outline their bodies and draw sources of strength. I asked, “Which parts of your body have facilitated your survival?” After several weeks of program participation, the women located power in their minds/brains and hearts, as before, but they also began to discuss new sources of strength, including their feet. As explained by Silvia, “they carry you to a goal,” supporting the entire body. Lucy drew and discussed inflammation in her abdomen but also discussed a past c-section, and how that part of her body hurt, even when she laughed. Despite its association with illness, pain, and criticism, Lucy talked about how her abdomen had survived and given her love. Lucy acknowledged her limitations and vulnerabilities without expressing negative judgment. In doing so, she also began a collective narrative, joined by other women, who shared stories of hysterectomies and gallbladder surgeries that became final chapters in long histories of pain, allowing them to move on with their lives.

Lucy drew her hands as another source of strength. She remembered flipping a large tire as an exercise in a previous workshop and explained the strength she encountered while doing so. It brought back memories of her childhood, when her father taught her how to lift sacks of corn. Lucy usually recounts her childhood as a source of mourning, bitterness, and mistreatment. However, in this moment, she made a visceral connection with her hands, reopening a positive childhood memory.

I asked the women to describe each other's strengths. Lucy praised Silvia's discipline and consistency, and Silvia recognized Lucy's desire to learn and curiosity, her physical force, and her presence and engagement. Program staff participated in this round of discussion, explaining their own sources of strength and their observations. We drew attention to Lucy's contagious smile and Silvia's voice. The yoga workshop continued this line of discussion as we began to move and orient our posture and breathing to the exercises. Both Silvia and Lucy began to recognize more places of power and strength in their bodies; Silvia now discussed how her hand had been injured but remained strong, and Lucy talked about her expressive face as a source of influence, a social power. When asked what superpower they would choose if they could have one, Silvia chose heavy lifting and super strength; Lucy did not need one.

The women evaluated their own needs and desires. Silvia's primary motivation for participating in the program was improved physical health, and she expressed concerns about diabetes and its potential impact on the kidneys and eyes. Silvia says that the program met this need. During a follow-up interview after several months, she reported that her bloodwork indicators had improved substantially. Her doctor weaned her off all medications for cholesterol and diabetes, which gave Silvia great joy and a sense of ownership of her body. Silvia attributes the health improvement to increased weight-bearing exercise and the changes in diet that access to weight training motivated her to undertake. The newfound confidence in her wellness habits allowed Silvia to advocate successfully with medical professionals. Silvia clearly articulated her desire to avoid dependence on medications for the management of her health.

Similarly, at the concluding workshop, Lucy reported greater confidence walking to and from church several times a week, thereby recuperating gains in mobility lost during the quarantine. In this way, she evaluated the achievement of a key desire for her body. During a follow-up interview months later, Lucy announced that she had acquired a tire to flip at home, continuing an activity that made her feel powerful during the workshop.

The women identified shared struggles with their bodies, and they encouraged other women to affirm and accept themselves. The women empathized with one another as they shared stories of sexual violence and their strategies for navigating doctors’ offices. Lucy shared a story of how she received the blame for men's aggressive sexual behavior toward her, simply due to the way she was dressed. The story prompted Silvia's own memory of a time a man when attempted to rape her in front of her children, and while she said that she had been able to fight off her assailant, she comforted Lucy, reminding her that “there's no choice” in such situations.

The emphasis on becoming your own expert and listening to your body addresses the women's experiences in a key site of disempowerment: the doctor's office. In doctors’ offices, women routinely receive harsh body criticism and blame, often being told that their health problems are their fault for a lack of discipline or self-care. Their doctors tend to unproblematically link obesity to other health conditions, when the science underpinning these causal relationships remains ambiguous. Doctors routinely and uncritically use BMI as a primary marker for health, and they advise women to lose their “panza” (gut), even when it seems that a distended abdomen is not likely due to excess fat.

After our swimming and lifting clinic, one of our discussions focused on the strategies women use to get doctors to listen to them. Overwhelmingly, the women agreed that doctors do not listen to women, but they listen to men. The women role-played scenes from a doctor's office and performed the reactions they receive upon their entry into that space. One woman impersonated a doctor by adopting a look of scorn and distraction, yawning in an exaggerated way, and rudely asking her patient, “and you… what happened this time?” ³

The women developed a gendered analysis of the relationships between patients and doctors, claiming that female doctors do not treat female patients any better than male doctors do. However, rather than focus on deeply internalized forms of misogyny that might explain this anti-woman bias, the analysis centered on the belief that female doctors have some sexual or romantic interest in their male patients. When asked if male doctors treat female patients better for the same reason, the participants responded that male doctors also dismiss female patients but treat male patients with respect because they easily become friends; they believe that men know how to talk to one another as equals and enjoy one another's company. Apparently, women do not. Leaders of future iterations of the program must consider how competition among women, even in a caregiving situation with clear professional boundaries, is the norm, and how such expectations might inadvertently disrupt relationships within the project.

Furthermore, “everyone knows that men do not ‘suffer well/endure’ [aguantar] pain.” As a result of this common knowledge, women must engage in a series of strategies that emphasize the appropriate level of pain for doctors to take their complaint seriously. For example, Lucy explained that “It is important to overreact to pain, like it is the end of the world, but not if it is at the dentist. If you want them to remove a molar, you have to act like it does not hurt or they say the nerve is involved and won’t do it.” The other women in the group agreed with this assessment. Women must perform their pain, but not too much. Women must carefully improvise a performance appropriate to their specific ailment to ensure that doctors respond with the correct treatment. ⁴

The most compelling evidence of the program’s impact comes from the women's own desire to continue with the workshops in the future. Silvia frequently repeated that the home workouts “felt good” and she felt “content and relaxed” after doing them, and the program “gave her more energy.” The participation of the women also encouraged their children and created a sense of solidarity across generations. Lucy said that with the home workouts “the children also put themselves to do with me … I feel more united with my children, and they have united more with me.” All the women have requested continued programming, and several other women in the community have requested to be included in programming in the future. The participants are eager to invite their friends to a future program.

Discussion

The Body Resistance program battles deeply internalized oppressions in a context of widespread violence. Social media, medical professionals, neighbors, and relatives inundate women with messages and imagery that damage their self-worth and restrict their bodily autonomy. Given the depth and daily onslaught of these degradations, a maximally effective intervention requires more time and sustained engagement with participants.

Furthermore, program team members have also internalized body shaming messages, and prior to leading future activities, they should take appropriate time for reflection, dialogue, and training on the multitude of ways that their own bodies suffer symbolic and structural violence. This urgent need for embodied inclusive practices and fat phobia training for program staff becomes apparent on a variety of occasions, in which deeply held, painful ideas about our own bodies surfaced in discussions, often unintentionally expressed. For example, in the changeroom for the swimming activity, one team member, a relatively fit woman occupying a position of class privilege relative to participants, complained about her own body shape. She repeatedly asked me (the program instructor) for advice on how to lose fat from her stomach, in front of program participants. Such discussions (a) confuse participants about the purpose of the programming, conflating physical fitness with the goal of the course and (b) actively harm women, who compare their own bodies unfavorably to the woman who expressed discontent with her shape. This moment, and several other encounters during the program, demonstrates the need for a deeper discussion on how program staff experience the intersections of class, race, gender, sexuality, and fat phobia in their own bodies.

The program should also focus on capacity building among the women, rather than having a cisgendered, white, foreign woman as the key leader of activities. Ideally, Salvadoran women who identify as fat and/or disabled would lead the program for other working-class Salvadoran women with non-conforming body shapes. The need for this body representation among the program leadership becomes most apparent in the concluding workshop, when Silvia announced that “the goal is to have a body like Noelia [me, the program leader].” The positioning of a cisgendered, white, athletic, foreign woman from a privileged class background as a role model for working-class Salvadoran women potentially reinforces racist, classist, and fat phobic stereotypes. In summary, I recommend extending and deepening such programming in El Salvador in the future, led by Salvadoran women rather than foreigners.