Like every other girl in the world, I have body image issues.
I'm not overweight. I have been in the past, but at present I'm supposedly a healthy weight for my height - about 5'2" and 135 pounds. My measurements, on a good day, are 35.5-27-38. That's pretty normal. I've had a couple jobs where I spent 40 hours a week (or more) going through people's measurements, and if I came across my own, I'd think I had an okay figure.
...but when I actually look at myself in the mirror, or go shopping for clothes, I make myself miserable. I hate my hips, I hate my ass, I hate my breasts. I feel fat, like I'll never be attractive. I hate my fat, jiggly arms. I hate that sometimes the only jeans that fit are a size 11, even though I know that women's sizes are completely arbitrary numbers and sometimes the jeans that fit are a size 6. And beauty standards change at random and are also arbitrary and have very little to do with what people actually find attractive, anyway.
The really crazy thing is that knowing all of that just doesn't help that much. And even crazier is that I'm not even especially attracted to the super-skinny girls that we're being sold as the current beauty standard. I think curvy girls are hot, I like hips and breasts and if I see one more picture of a size 0 model in a corset that's just sort of vaguely encircling her waist instead of cinching it in (because there's so little there to cinch), I'm gonna scream. And actually, more than anything else I'm attracted to people's personalities, so this whole conversation is really moot.
I think the thing that makes it hard for me is clothes. Pants suck, I hate buying pants. Every pair of pants in the world makes my hips and butt look huge, except for this one pair of cotton capris I own. When I iron those so they have a sharp crease and wear them with heels, I look (or maybe mostly feel) like a 1950s movie star. And I know how to shop for the things that flatter my body type, that are supposed to cover my flaws...but especially here in New York, I find myself insanely jealous of these rail-thin girls who can wear absolutely anything. Skinny jeans, bubble skirts, any garment made out of latex. I see them and I want to look like that. It's hard to tell yourself that you're perfect just the way you are when you pass an actual model on the street while fabric shopping.
Even if I work out every single day, even if I starve myself, even if I had a perfectly flat stomach and skinny arms, my hips and butt aren't going anywhere. Those hips are part of my bone structure, and I'm never going to be a size zero. My freshman year og high school, I weighed 115 pounds, I looked like a crack addict, and I still had wide hips and a big ass. I know this, and I know I should not let it get to me, but somehow it feels like a personal failing.
One of my goals this year is to get the fuck over this nonsense. I want to learn to love my body, as ridiculous as that sounds. I want to stop wishing for a "bikini body" and instead celebrate how awesome it is that 1950s dresses fit like they're made for me. And I'm going to wear my goddamn skinny jeans, regardless of whether or not girls with 38" hips are "supposed" to wear them. I spent so many years trying to lose weight, made myself crazy with impossible diets, and now I give up! I'm going to learn to love myself the way I am, and say "fuck you" to anyone who says the way I am isn't good enough.
Showing posts with label manifestos. Show all posts
Showing posts with label manifestos. Show all posts
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
On sluttiness...
At this point, pretty much everyone knows I went to Catholic school. Catholicism has been a pretty heavy influence on my kinkiness, what with the penance and forgiveness and the saints and martyrs and their ecstatic suffering and so on and so forth. But Catholic school had a different influence altogether--all because of the idea of being a slut and the practice of slut shaming.
Despite the best efforts of abstinence only sex ed, pretty much everyone at my high school was having sex left, right, and center. It was also a small school, so everyone knew each other's business. And when a girl crossed some invisible, undefinable line, by performing the wrong sex act, or the right sex act on too many people, or with the wrong people, or in the wrong place, or did it and admitted to enjoying it too much, she was labeled a slut.
I was mostly a good girl. I had my (emotionally abusive) boyfriend and no one knew what we were doing in bed because he isolated me from my friends and he hated "sluts" and "sluttiness." I though his us-against-the-world, no-one-understands-our-love take on things was romantic, but really it was awful...but that's for another post. We had our quiet, dramatic, devastating, awful relationship and effectively hid what was really going on. And I was miserable for obvious reasons, but also, secretly, I was really jealous of the girls everyone else thought were slutty.
On the one hand, I didn't really want to be a good girl. When I heard about someone's ill-advised threesome or the girl who put on a sex show with her boyfriend at a party, taking requests for positions...everyone else acted disgusted, while I was secretly frustrated and turned on. I wanted to have adventures, I wanted to feel overwhelmed and taken over by sex. I wanted to lose control. But I was stuck in an awful relationship and vaguely terrified at the thought of the girls whose names were written on the bathroom walls.
I've gotten over a lot of that stuff. The boyfriend dumped me, I came to terms with the fact that I do, in fact, want someone to control me sometimes--but I want it to be consensual and sexy and not scary and abusive. I'm in an awesome relationship, I'm having those adventures I wanted. It's great.
And the results of watching other girls get whispered about and laughed at and slandered in graffiti stayed with me. On the one hand, it gets me incredibly hot when I'm called a slut in bed. I do the things the bad girls did in high school, and the leftover shame makes it super sexy.
On the other hand, I still have moments, even on websites designed for kinky people (where I'm pretty much 100% sure that no one cares) when I have a hard time talking about things I'm into, things I enjoy. It took me months to admit online that I enjoy anal sex, because on some ridiculous level I was sure someone, somewhere would be judging me for it. And after the first few play parties I went to, I spent days wondering if I'd done too much with too many people, if someone was laughing at me behind my back.
I've gotten over some of that fear...but now I want to make more of a conscious effort to get rid of the rest. I'll hang onto the hot remnants of slut shaming. I'll keep getting turned on by the thought of being a bad girl, a dirty girl, a slut. But I don't want to let those stupid girls in high school control me to the point where I'm dishonest anymore. I don't want to care what people think of me because of what turns me on. It's ridiculous and it's time to stop.
Despite the best efforts of abstinence only sex ed, pretty much everyone at my high school was having sex left, right, and center. It was also a small school, so everyone knew each other's business. And when a girl crossed some invisible, undefinable line, by performing the wrong sex act, or the right sex act on too many people, or with the wrong people, or in the wrong place, or did it and admitted to enjoying it too much, she was labeled a slut.
I was mostly a good girl. I had my (emotionally abusive) boyfriend and no one knew what we were doing in bed because he isolated me from my friends and he hated "sluts" and "sluttiness." I though his us-against-the-world, no-one-understands-our-love take on things was romantic, but really it was awful...but that's for another post. We had our quiet, dramatic, devastating, awful relationship and effectively hid what was really going on. And I was miserable for obvious reasons, but also, secretly, I was really jealous of the girls everyone else thought were slutty.
On the one hand, I didn't really want to be a good girl. When I heard about someone's ill-advised threesome or the girl who put on a sex show with her boyfriend at a party, taking requests for positions...everyone else acted disgusted, while I was secretly frustrated and turned on. I wanted to have adventures, I wanted to feel overwhelmed and taken over by sex. I wanted to lose control. But I was stuck in an awful relationship and vaguely terrified at the thought of the girls whose names were written on the bathroom walls.
I've gotten over a lot of that stuff. The boyfriend dumped me, I came to terms with the fact that I do, in fact, want someone to control me sometimes--but I want it to be consensual and sexy and not scary and abusive. I'm in an awesome relationship, I'm having those adventures I wanted. It's great.
And the results of watching other girls get whispered about and laughed at and slandered in graffiti stayed with me. On the one hand, it gets me incredibly hot when I'm called a slut in bed. I do the things the bad girls did in high school, and the leftover shame makes it super sexy.
On the other hand, I still have moments, even on websites designed for kinky people (where I'm pretty much 100% sure that no one cares) when I have a hard time talking about things I'm into, things I enjoy. It took me months to admit online that I enjoy anal sex, because on some ridiculous level I was sure someone, somewhere would be judging me for it. And after the first few play parties I went to, I spent days wondering if I'd done too much with too many people, if someone was laughing at me behind my back.
I've gotten over some of that fear...but now I want to make more of a conscious effort to get rid of the rest. I'll hang onto the hot remnants of slut shaming. I'll keep getting turned on by the thought of being a bad girl, a dirty girl, a slut. But I don't want to let those stupid girls in high school control me to the point where I'm dishonest anymore. I don't want to care what people think of me because of what turns me on. It's ridiculous and it's time to stop.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
