08.02.16
Reclaiming Femininity
I was twelve the first time I was cat-called. It was a grotesquely sticky day in late July, and I was wearing a yellow spaghetti strap dress that clung loosely around my still-boyish figure, walking to my friend's house a few blocks away. When it happened, I didn't even comprehend what it meant. All I felt was a huge surge of discomfort rush over me, like the sharp, frigid Maine beach waves I knew so well as a kid. But instead of afterwards feeling exhilarated like I did at the beach, I felt something that would become sadly familiar: shame. I walked quickly past the landscapers' truck, trying to inconspicuously tug my dress down as I distracted myself from the whistles and chuckles echoing throughout my head by wondering whether my friend had gotten her TV privileges back yet.
Yeah. Women, or should I say girls, are sexualized before we dictate how much or what TV we watch, before we decide our own bed times, and often before we get our periods. The bottom line: it begins when we are still children, when our brains are at our peak susceptibility for developing anxiety and body image disorders … which I, and many other women I know, did. The specificities of my disorder I'll save for another time, but it began shortly after my thirteenth birthday, when I realized that I didn't look like the airbrushed girls in magazines and was getting teased by boys for the acuteness of my chin.
The funny thing about getting teased by boys, though, is that it became a kind of honor. If, of course, you were teased in the right sort of way. The pretty girls got their pencils flicked off their desks, their training bra straps snapped, and paper shot down the front of their shirts. In eighth grade, I knew a boy for whom basketball, as we may call it, was his favorite sport. In whole, he probably scored enough paper down the front of my Aeropostale shirts to beat the Celtics. The thing is, though, not only did I start to let him, but I began to like it. I wanted the attention because it felt like a form of positive acclamation towards my body. Thus commenced the years of searching for male approval in order to feel beautiful.
The decisions I made thereafter, such as to purchase the short skirt versus the long one, began as active choices but transformed into subconscious ones. I stopped wearing my favorite pair of baggy jeans since they weren't tight around my butt, and I ceased to wear my hair up because boys notoriously like girls' hair long and down. Sex hair, duh! I was turning myself into the sexy I thought guys wanted, rather than developing my own kind of sexiness, my own femininity. To be clear, my intention is not to dissuade you from buying the short skirt at all -- my point is to buy it because you like it, because you feel good in it, because you feel like you. Don't put the lengthy skirt back because it doesn't show off much leg, despite the fact that you love it. Alternatively, buy it, own the fuck out of it, and show off your individual splendor and grandeur.
Of course, this is easier said than done, as minds are very tricky things. For me, it was and still is a huge process. The journey of reclaiming and discovering my own femininity began because I reached a breaking point this past winter. I was fed up with constantly feeling disappointed when I didn't receive adequate male attention, fed up with invariably longing to be with a person romantically, fed up with feeling ashamed of my outfits because someone would deem them either too promiscuous or too modest, and fed up with actively supporting feminism while treating myself worse than how I'd treat an enemy (which, I have noticed, is far too common among women my age. So many of us want to help and support each other, but we often simultaneously neglect ourselves).
Luckily, this breakdown of mine could not have occurred at a better time. “It’s all about timing, sweetheart,” my father informed me on the drive home for winter break in December, as I sat in the passenger seat crying my eyes out.
He continued. “In second grade, two girls proposed to me.”
… What?
“The first grew up to be one of the richest women in the country. Had I known that then, I definitely would have said yes.” We both burst into laughter, and my tears melted from salty droplets of grief into those of gratitude. He reached his right hand from the wheel and patted my arm. “And here I ended up, happy as can be. You’ve got to be positive.”
These words stuck with me because 1. I loved the idea of proposer #1 avenging all her rejecters by becoming immensely successful, and 2. Putting the elements of my life into perspective and embodying positivity were things I’d never actively done or tried to do, and my father’s words made me realize that I needed to in order to rebuild myself and heal, in order to regain the kind of pure happiness and assuredness I lost the day I stepped onto the sidewalk, wearing my yellow spaghetti strap dress.
A huge part of my self-restoration was deciding to set no creative limits and completely embody my artistry. Painting this piece was one of the most exhilarating internal experiences I've ever had, for with each brush stroke I was making a promise to stop jailing myself off from the person I truly am, to stop being the scared, fragile girl behind bars, and to become the driven, self-assured woman I know I have in me.
Just yesterday, as I synchronously unpacked boxes for my apartment while dancing and singing to my favorite songs, on came the classic ballad, At Last, by Etta James. It is a love song, but instead of picturing it as being sung to a lover, I decided to think of it as a song dedicated to oneself. I listened to the lyrics, and suddenly I realized that I had done it. I looked in the mirror, and, finally loving the woman looking back at me, belted, "for you are mine. . . At last."