We’ve Got to See Each Other.
Being a female is complicated, and not complicated at all. And yet, as a 33-year-old woman, a mother now, a wife now, I cannot believe at times how difficult it is to just BE. I cannot believe all of the many “truths” that have guided me, have harmed me, and have informed so much of my younger life. I remember when I first read of the “Male Gaze,” and how I instantly felt sick to my stomach, as if every questionable encounter I had had with a man suddenly came rushing to the forefront of my mind. I suddenly remembered being a 6-year-old girl, decrying my “hairy legs” in a school photo, sneakily shaving my legs one night, getting caught, getting in trouble. I remember hating my thick and unruly hair, being teased, getting it relentlessly brushed and styled, and still agonizing over every little flyaway that appeared. Then, like an unexpected tsunami hitting a sleeping village, I remembered: getting breasts, large ones, when I was barely 12. Weeping when I had to buy a bra for this first time, simply because a part of me knew that this was the end of some kind of era. Then, the men. I was about 12 when I was targeted by a man for the first time. Waiting outside a store for my mother, my younger sister playing behind me, a man in cool leather jacket began chatting with me. Though I cannot recall his face, I can recall the bench I sat on, in minute detail. I can feel the mild terror again, feel the warm panic that crept up my skin he inched closer to me, as he told me I was beautiful, as he invited me to his place. It was the first time I, a child, employed the tactic we women know well: how to say no without saying the word. How to charmingly turn down an advance, which is a true instinct with which we are born. I asserted my age, that I would have to check with my parents before I could go anywhere, that I was in middle school, anything to alert this man that I was a CHILD. I only realized as an adult that this was unnecessary. This man knew I was a child. The tsunami overtook the village, houses ruined, lives lost. Nothing left but murky, depthless pools of brackish water.
We women have got to SEE one another. We all have this story. We all, instinctively, have hidden who we are from a very young age. We had help, certainly. Mothers who encouraged us to be cute, but not loud. Fathers who lifted us up, but shooed us away when it was time to WORK. Or worse, parents who exploited us, laughed at us, gleefully crushed us. Many of us never had a chance to be girls. And those of us who did? We did so at a cost. Our girly pastimes have always been the brunt of every joke; colors associated with girls are despised by boys, avoided by them like these colors could burn their very skin if touched. Girls are reviled, and yet. They are sexualized from birth. The moment a pregnant mother reveals that she carries a girl, statements such as “you’ll have your hands FULL when she’s a teenager (wink)!” There are pageants for toddlers, who are decked out in makeup, perms, expensive gowns, and for what? We are sold the “Male Gaze” before we even leave the womb.
We women need to SEE each other, because not one of us would disparage the other if we could really shed the vitriol we’ve been taught. Girls begin body-shaming themselves, and one another, before they even hit double digits. They make themselves smaller, physically and mentally. We women have got to stop this, because I know we all cringe when we read these things. We remember being girls. We remember our first realization that our bodies were not really ours; that our bodies were things to be loathed, changed, pinched, and starved. None of us wants children to go through what we’ve already gone through, and yet. Here we are.
I see you, woman nervously pulling on the hem of the shorts you forced yourself to wear to the park. I see you fretting over the veins in your legs, the lumps you’ve accrued from two pregnancies, back to back. I see you, young woman hunched over on the train, earbuds drowning out the hum of passengers. I see the layers of makeup you’ve expertly applied, and I’m impressed by your talent. I see you chasing adulthood, but I desperately hope you cherish your childhood anyway. I see my own face staring back at me, eyes darting to every wrinkle, every line that seems to pop up, so suddenly. I see myself starting to feel powerless, starting to sink into criticism and disgust. But then I imagine any of the women I know, the women I love, feeling this exact way, and I stop myself. I cannot treat myself like this, and its like a tiny wave begins to ripple in a vast blue ocean.
If we are really going to heal, we women need to SEE each other.
