Wanna be more than you're thinking of.
Apr. 28th, 2012 01:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
momebieThis is a response to (response to? echo of? fist bump of solidarity for?) the article at xoJane called A Timeline of One Girl's Relationship With Her Body.
I have been debating where I should post this, if I should post it at all. I wanted to post it to a different blog, but it felt too much like an admission, mixing the person I am with the person I want to be. At the same time, I didn’t want to lock it away. It has been my experience that we are taught not to share our defeats, only our victories, and that even those closest to us rarely know what’s happening inside of us. What’s happening inside of us is just as important as what’s happening outside of us, even though we often don’t admit it to ourselves. It’s in deference to this thought that, though it’s here under relative anonymity--in that you guys know I’m me, but other people simply stumbling on it may not--I leave this unlocked. So here, in admiration and support of the original post, is another girl’s timeline of her relationship with her body. I hope that this turns into a cacophony of voices and inner thoughts, because it’s in silence that we lose most of ourselves to the world around us.
2 – My earliest memory is of infant swimming lessons. It feels so good, when you’re young, to simply move in new ways. This is a thing that still hits me sometimes; always as if it’s the first time I’ve realized it.
6 – My Barbie dolls look nothing like me or anyone I’ve ever met. I explore them. I compare them to myself and to each other. I lay them on top of each other in an approximation of what I consider sex to be even as my older cousin sniggers about it next to me. The Ken dolls and New Kids on the Block figures stand on the sidelines with my He-Man toys, ready to go on adventures that the girl dolls don’t get to join in because I need them to stay safe and teach me how I’m supposed to be. They never do.
7 – I have a friend of the opposite sex and we tell people that we are going to get married when we’re older. Our parents don’t want to explain to us that it won’t work, because I am being raised Presbyterian and his family is Jewish. His mother does tell me that one day some boy will want to kiss the freckle under my ear. I don’t understand the comment then. I don’t understand the intimacy of such an act, and I still don’t, because no one has.
8 – This is the year I first kiss a girl. It is not my ‘first kiss’, because I kiss her shoulder and then we hear her mother coming so she never kisses me back. There is a tug in my stomach that I won’t really understand until I am in high school. It is shame. This is not the way young ladies are supposed to want to kiss. My body feels awkward to me. The body of my parents’ daughter is housing someone else entirely whom they will not approve of.
10 – My friends are kind of mean sometimes and they don’t always include me in what they do, but they’re my friends and I don’t know who else to hang out with. Sometimes they play a game on the bus called titty twister. It hurts, having my sensitive nipples pinched and twisted through my shirt. I am the most common target for this because I am quiet and won’t tattle and also have breast buds that stick out, unlike their still-flat chests.
12 – I feel huge inside my skin. I’m not. That’s a common theme in my life. That summer my parents’ camping buddies bring their granddaughter and her friend with them. They are a few years older than I am and make fun of how I look in my one-piece bathing suit, because I don’t have a defined waist and because I already need a bra. I think about the way the girl’s stomach wrinkles when she sits down and how, if someone so thin wrinkles in the middle, then there will never be hope for me.
13 – I desperately want to shave my legs. I am covered in hair, though it’s blond and near invisible. My other friends can shave their legs even though they don’t really need to, but my mom refuses to let me until I sneak behind her back one day and do it anyway.
14 – In high school everyone seems really thin. I suck in my gut—which isn’t really sticking out that much—and pray people don’t notice me. I refuse to swim at pool parties, or I spend the whole time wrapped in a towel or under the water. I start eating fat free foods and counting calories with my friends. It’s the last thing we have in common and even though I think it’s stupid I keep doing it, because no one wants to be alone.
15 - Sometimes I wear clothing that’s too big for me so I can hide in it. My favorite sweatshirt is from the Gap, one of those fuzzy monstrosities that has GAP embroidered on it in large block letters that they might not even sell anymore, and it’s a men’s large. (Here in the future and 70 pounds later I still own the sweatshirt and it’s still too big for me. The frayed sleeve cuffs and paint from homecoming activities that will never wash out are comforting.) One day I’m late to Global Studies and as I bustle in the sleeve catches something on the board in the back of the room and sends detritus flying. One of my classmates says ‘I told you she was big’, not bothering to keep his voice down. His friend sniggers in response and I want my sweatshirt to become a womb.
16 - Suddenly a boy likes me. He’s new in town. He plays the bass. He smiles a lot and wants to hold hands during class and I let him even though I’ve always found PDA to be embarrassing, because no one has ever wanted me before. The boy likes my body, except for when I won’t give it to him, and then he hates everything about me. I’m ugly. I’m fat. I’m a cocktease. I stop eating because ‘fat’ is the only one of those I know how to control. I can’t change my face and, no matter how much I try, I cannot bring myself to want his body. This is partially because I do not want to have sex with a boy, but that isn’t a thing I admit to myself. Mostly I chalk it up to the normal, small town, protestant shame.
He eventually simply takes what he wants and after that my body is not mine. My body is hollow. When I finally find the strength to be finished with him he tells me that he hates me and that he liked me because I had a nice rack. I’m crying, because no one else will ever want me.
18 - Then, less suddenly, another boy likes me and my body. He tells me so and I don’t believe him, though I learn to want to have sex with boys, because that's what people in relationships do. He keeps telling me. He tells me for 11 years and I still don’t believe him.
21 – In college I lose weight instead of gaining it. I’m reasonably active and I probably don’t eat enough. I’m still giving too much credence to the words of a toxic person, but I am practicing allowing myself small dribbles of vanity and trying to see myself the way others say they see me. I look better naked than I do with clothes on, and there’s just as much shame in pride as there was in hate.
25 - I get a desk job and my personal life falls into disrepair. My size eight jeans grow tight. My size ten jeans grow tight and I cut into the sides of the waistband to try and relieve some of the overflow of pudge. I do the same with my size twelves, but by the time I hit fourteens I’ve given up. It takes several years for me to realize that my weight is a disguise. If I’m fat people don’t look at me. Glances slide right over me and I’m safe and free to become who I want to be, not who the male gaze wants me to be. It’s a surrender masked as a victory. Every once in a while I pretend to reel the white flag back in and make an effort. I pretend my battle flags aren’t simply white flags dyed with a mixture of social construct and fear.
29 - I am multiple people. I am a person trying to fix bad habits and repair road damage. I am a person who doesn’t care what you think about how she looks. I am a person who sometimes spends too long looking at herself in the mirror or in her phone’s camera. I can’t look away, because I’m fascinated by myself, because I am a person who hates the way she looks yet is coming to terms with it. But I’m getting better. I’m finally listening to me. In a lot of ways I’m still very young, reveling in every new movement I discover and posing dolls so I can figure out how to map myself. It won’t be easy, but it doesn’t have to be as hard as it used to be, either.
I have been debating where I should post this, if I should post it at all. I wanted to post it to a different blog, but it felt too much like an admission, mixing the person I am with the person I want to be. At the same time, I didn’t want to lock it away. It has been my experience that we are taught not to share our defeats, only our victories, and that even those closest to us rarely know what’s happening inside of us. What’s happening inside of us is just as important as what’s happening outside of us, even though we often don’t admit it to ourselves. It’s in deference to this thought that, though it’s here under relative anonymity--in that you guys know I’m me, but other people simply stumbling on it may not--I leave this unlocked. So here, in admiration and support of the original post, is another girl’s timeline of her relationship with her body. I hope that this turns into a cacophony of voices and inner thoughts, because it’s in silence that we lose most of ourselves to the world around us.
2 – My earliest memory is of infant swimming lessons. It feels so good, when you’re young, to simply move in new ways. This is a thing that still hits me sometimes; always as if it’s the first time I’ve realized it.
6 – My Barbie dolls look nothing like me or anyone I’ve ever met. I explore them. I compare them to myself and to each other. I lay them on top of each other in an approximation of what I consider sex to be even as my older cousin sniggers about it next to me. The Ken dolls and New Kids on the Block figures stand on the sidelines with my He-Man toys, ready to go on adventures that the girl dolls don’t get to join in because I need them to stay safe and teach me how I’m supposed to be. They never do.
7 – I have a friend of the opposite sex and we tell people that we are going to get married when we’re older. Our parents don’t want to explain to us that it won’t work, because I am being raised Presbyterian and his family is Jewish. His mother does tell me that one day some boy will want to kiss the freckle under my ear. I don’t understand the comment then. I don’t understand the intimacy of such an act, and I still don’t, because no one has.
8 – This is the year I first kiss a girl. It is not my ‘first kiss’, because I kiss her shoulder and then we hear her mother coming so she never kisses me back. There is a tug in my stomach that I won’t really understand until I am in high school. It is shame. This is not the way young ladies are supposed to want to kiss. My body feels awkward to me. The body of my parents’ daughter is housing someone else entirely whom they will not approve of.
10 – My friends are kind of mean sometimes and they don’t always include me in what they do, but they’re my friends and I don’t know who else to hang out with. Sometimes they play a game on the bus called titty twister. It hurts, having my sensitive nipples pinched and twisted through my shirt. I am the most common target for this because I am quiet and won’t tattle and also have breast buds that stick out, unlike their still-flat chests.
12 – I feel huge inside my skin. I’m not. That’s a common theme in my life. That summer my parents’ camping buddies bring their granddaughter and her friend with them. They are a few years older than I am and make fun of how I look in my one-piece bathing suit, because I don’t have a defined waist and because I already need a bra. I think about the way the girl’s stomach wrinkles when she sits down and how, if someone so thin wrinkles in the middle, then there will never be hope for me.
13 – I desperately want to shave my legs. I am covered in hair, though it’s blond and near invisible. My other friends can shave their legs even though they don’t really need to, but my mom refuses to let me until I sneak behind her back one day and do it anyway.
14 – In high school everyone seems really thin. I suck in my gut—which isn’t really sticking out that much—and pray people don’t notice me. I refuse to swim at pool parties, or I spend the whole time wrapped in a towel or under the water. I start eating fat free foods and counting calories with my friends. It’s the last thing we have in common and even though I think it’s stupid I keep doing it, because no one wants to be alone.
15 - Sometimes I wear clothing that’s too big for me so I can hide in it. My favorite sweatshirt is from the Gap, one of those fuzzy monstrosities that has GAP embroidered on it in large block letters that they might not even sell anymore, and it’s a men’s large. (Here in the future and 70 pounds later I still own the sweatshirt and it’s still too big for me. The frayed sleeve cuffs and paint from homecoming activities that will never wash out are comforting.) One day I’m late to Global Studies and as I bustle in the sleeve catches something on the board in the back of the room and sends detritus flying. One of my classmates says ‘I told you she was big’, not bothering to keep his voice down. His friend sniggers in response and I want my sweatshirt to become a womb.
16 - Suddenly a boy likes me. He’s new in town. He plays the bass. He smiles a lot and wants to hold hands during class and I let him even though I’ve always found PDA to be embarrassing, because no one has ever wanted me before. The boy likes my body, except for when I won’t give it to him, and then he hates everything about me. I’m ugly. I’m fat. I’m a cocktease. I stop eating because ‘fat’ is the only one of those I know how to control. I can’t change my face and, no matter how much I try, I cannot bring myself to want his body. This is partially because I do not want to have sex with a boy, but that isn’t a thing I admit to myself. Mostly I chalk it up to the normal, small town, protestant shame.
He eventually simply takes what he wants and after that my body is not mine. My body is hollow. When I finally find the strength to be finished with him he tells me that he hates me and that he liked me because I had a nice rack. I’m crying, because no one else will ever want me.
18 - Then, less suddenly, another boy likes me and my body. He tells me so and I don’t believe him, though I learn to want to have sex with boys, because that's what people in relationships do. He keeps telling me. He tells me for 11 years and I still don’t believe him.
21 – In college I lose weight instead of gaining it. I’m reasonably active and I probably don’t eat enough. I’m still giving too much credence to the words of a toxic person, but I am practicing allowing myself small dribbles of vanity and trying to see myself the way others say they see me. I look better naked than I do with clothes on, and there’s just as much shame in pride as there was in hate.
25 - I get a desk job and my personal life falls into disrepair. My size eight jeans grow tight. My size ten jeans grow tight and I cut into the sides of the waistband to try and relieve some of the overflow of pudge. I do the same with my size twelves, but by the time I hit fourteens I’ve given up. It takes several years for me to realize that my weight is a disguise. If I’m fat people don’t look at me. Glances slide right over me and I’m safe and free to become who I want to be, not who the male gaze wants me to be. It’s a surrender masked as a victory. Every once in a while I pretend to reel the white flag back in and make an effort. I pretend my battle flags aren’t simply white flags dyed with a mixture of social construct and fear.
29 - I am multiple people. I am a person trying to fix bad habits and repair road damage. I am a person who doesn’t care what you think about how she looks. I am a person who sometimes spends too long looking at herself in the mirror or in her phone’s camera. I can’t look away, because I’m fascinated by myself, because I am a person who hates the way she looks yet is coming to terms with it. But I’m getting better. I’m finally listening to me. In a lot of ways I’m still very young, reveling in every new movement I discover and posing dolls so I can figure out how to map myself. It won’t be easy, but it doesn’t have to be as hard as it used to be, either.
