My Female Body[1]
I sat on the carpeted floor of my third-grade classroom, my feet flat and my knees arched before me in the air. My flow-y, nature-green skirt with white flowers on it exposed the shorts I was wearing under it (I never sat “properly” in it, so they were a precaution). We were supposed to be watching a video about how bread is made in factories, but my attention was drawn away and to my calf. I swayed my leg back and forth, watching the fat, what I called the squish at the time, follow. I reached out, gripping it in my hand, watching the skin and fat pour out between my fingers. I sat criss-cross, and the squish, well, squished up against my thigh; I slid my legs flat, the squish leaked out the sides and looked like a pancake on the floor— there was no escape, no mistaking that this was my body. On this day, I decided I hated my body.
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I imagine all women have a time like this, one where they can pin-point exactly when they started to hate their bodies. I wonder how naturally this comes to us, if it is just an inherent part of life or if something tells us to hate ourselves. No one ever told me that my legs were too fat or too jiggly, I just looked at them and for some reason decided that for myself. When I was growing up, all my classmates seemingly had no issues with their bodies— they could wear all the skirts and booty shorts they wanted, while I couldn’t even manage to don a shirt with a neckline any lower than a standard men’s t-shirt.
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My breasts became a problem near the end of fourth grade, only a year after I’d discovered my squish. My sister and I would stand on our mom and dad’s bed, convinced it was a wrestling ring for some reason (we never even watched wrestling growing up). The bed frame was that natural/yellow/teak color that so much wood furniture was in the early to mid-2000s, and four wooden, decorative poles erupted from each corner, nearly poking the smooth ceiling. They were already a tad worn from our prior use. This particular day, we decided to be sumo wrestlers.
We spread our legs as far apart as we could, bending our knees at 90-degree angles. Did I mention we often took our shirts off? Again, don’t ask me why, but it had never been a problem before. I was probably eight or nine, so there wasn’t any chest development between my sister and I, who was seven or so at the time— or so I’d thought.
I pulled my shirt off, and my mom wandered in moments later. I imagine she froze for only a moment before grabbing my arm, pulling me off her bed, into my room, and throwing my shirt at me.
Put your shirt back on!
My child mind was very confused. I could take my shirt off before, and in my own opinion, the just-barely-pubescent breasts made the sumo fight more realistic. I shuffled my shirt on and sat there momentarily— why can’t I take my shirt off now? Tim (my older brother) and Annie (my younger sister) can. The idea of breasts being “bad” or “sexual” hadn’t occurred to me yet. Heck, the idea of a body being something to hide hadn’t even crossed my mind; I bathed with my sister, and my friends and I changed in the same room before going to the pool, so since when did I have to hide?
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For my senior high school orchestra trip, we went to New York City. Not only did we compete for trophies (we won first place that year), but the school also planned for us to see Fiddler on the Roof on Broadway, go to Times Square, and visit a Guy Fieri restaurant. Two things from Times Square stood out to me: 1) fake cartoon characters convincing people to give them money and 2) topless women. Most of the women wore tan cowboy hats with a black or dark brown band around the base and had the American flag painted over top of their torso.
We walked out of some generic tourist shop because my goal while in NYC was to get a cool hat (I don’t even think I have that hat anymore), and those shops were the only ones that would have what I was after. I stepped outside, turned, and there they were— a whole swarm of them! I know it’s not polite to stare, but I wasn’t staring because women aren’t supposed to have their boobs out blah blah it was more like they seem so confident in their bodies to be topless in front of these massive crowds of people.
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In 2019, it was groundbreaking for an astonishing six US States (Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Utah, and Wyoming) to legalize women being topless.[i] In 2022, a total of 33 US States legally allow women to be topless, another 14 have ambiguous laws on the matter, and three states constitute that showing the female chest in public is illegal.[ii]
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In middle school (6th-8th grade), I was in both orchestra and chorus. The school was in Howard County, MD, so once a year, our music groups all participated in Music in the Parks— a large music competition in Hershey, PA.
After our performances, we’d separate the charter buses between the boys and girls. We’d file onto the buses with our drawstring bags filled with shorts, tennis shoes, and our t-shirts, which were designed by a student every year. Now, buses don’t really have private places to change, so everyone just kind of stood within the seats and in the aisle as they pulled their shirts and pants off to change. Bag in hand, I would wander to the back of the bus, my grip getting tighter and tighter. We didn’t have forever to change, and we all had to be speedy so the boys could get back on and we could get to the park. I’d stand in front of the small bathroom door, waiting for the girl in there at the time to finish. There were bras everywhere, classmates just so willing to change in front of other girls, yet I felt confined to this miniature bathroom, with barely enough room to bend down and pull my cargo shorts up. I can’t let them see my body. I’m not like them. I am not them.
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What if I had embraced my body like those painted women in Times Square?
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But I never had the chance to feel confident about my breasts, about my entirely female body. At 22 years old, my mom and I traveled to Washington D.C. so I could have a surgeon remove them, as per my medical treatment for gender dysphoria. My mom and I zombied out of the house around 4am, as the surgery was scheduled for 9am, but we had to be at the hospital by 6am. She wasn’t happy about my decision, but she agreed to be my transportation to and from. We drove down the two-lane “highway” that leads right into DC (you can tell how close you are based on when the metal guard rails become little stone walls). She followed me around the hospital as I was ordered to go to the admin desk, then the prep area, just all over that place. I sat in a wheeled-hospital bed, separated from all the other patient beds by curtains. A short nurse told me to take my clothes off and hop in, then some other woman came in to do something I don’t remember, and then an anesthesiologist came in to explain the process of going under to me as a fourth woman put my IV in. Then, the man himself, Dr. Ramineni, came in to make sure I was all good to go. I laid in that bed for maybe an hour minimum before all those people came in, and that entire time, my breasts were sweating like it was 90 degrees in that hospital. These were my last moments with them, these mounds I was taught were things to be accepted, valued even, yet also things I had to hide. No one else besides me should see them.
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I keep pictures of my breasts in my phone, in the hidden folder on Snapchat. When I look at those pictures, something within me wants to remember what it was like having them. What did it feel like when I rolled over in bed and they would plop onto my arm? Could I feel them when I’d bend down to get something off the floor?
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I never let anyone else even see my now long-gone breasts, except for two times— the first time was when I dated this guy named Q for maybe two weeks (I use the term “dated” loosely). We met via OkCupid and decided to try going out. My mom drove me to the Inner Harbor of Baltimore, where we both met up (she was unaware of my dating life, it felt like something I couldn’t talk with her about, since there was already tension from my transition; I told her I was meeting a friend). He was a larger guy, black, with short hair. We were both in college, and he described himself as being open to dating all kinds of people, so I figured it’d work out just fine, given that I was only “socially transitioned” at the time, not having taken any medical steps yet. We wandered around the harbor, ate at a pizza place and had a fun time, so we scheduled a second date.
Going into this date, our plan was to watch a movie, Hannibal Rising, cook some chicken alfredo, and maybe get up to some mild adult fun. Well, what he didn’t tell me that his bedroom was actually the living room, so anything we got up to wasn’t guaranteed to be behind closed doors. We did watch the movie, and afterwards, he began to hover his body over mine a bit more, propping himself up with one of his arms. We began to kiss, and it slowly transformed into his tongue slinking its way into my mouth. It felt weird, and I was not a fan. But as we kissed, he slipped his hand under my shirt. Instead of smooth, naked skin, he was met with the mesh texture of my chest binder. Think of it like this: if a sports bra has like a bit more compression than a regular bra, then a binder is like a super super super sports bra. Those things are so tight and constricting that it’s only recommended that people wear them for eight hours maximum, and you even risk broken ribs every time you put one on. Q began to rub my chest over my binder, and then pulled it up so it bunched up near my collar bones. He slid a hand over my breasts, squeezing gently as his tongue continued to explore. He rubbed and squeezed at them, yet I felt nothing. Maybe he enjoyed them, but I certainly did not. I felt nothing when he touched them. They didn’t feel like something I could take confidence in. They just felt there.
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Melissa Febos shared her thoughts before having a breast reduction surgery, saying that “it was a bizarre sensation, to look at my breasts for the last time. There would be some of the same tissue, yes, and a new nipple cut from the old one, but the breasts I had spent so many years wishing different, their particular weight, would be gone forever.”[iii]
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Were my breasts also sacred?
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When my mom threw that shirt and me and closed the door behind me, I became aware of my body in a way I didn’t know was possible. This body was something to hide from the world, suddenly gross.
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I encountered the next worse step in puberty, the period, days before my 10th birthday. The plan was to go to Shadow Land, the local laser tag arena, to play a few games with my friends and siblings. But my body had other ideas.
I sat on the toilet at home, the bowl filled with a mixture of water and blood. Bile threatened to erupt from my throat as I felt the thick, clumped blood drip into the water from inside my body. I couldn’t stand from where I was, and I felt that I couldn’t call out for my mom to help. I felt embarrassed.
As I barely lifted my butt off the toilet seat to reach into the cabinet across the bathroom to grab the pads my mom told me probably just days prior, it didn’t click. It was me and my body, forced against each other, like Romeo and Juliet (I wouldn’t find the love aspect of this relationship until many years later).
I ripped the flimsy yet obnoxiously loud packaging open, pulled it from the sticky side of the pad, and then stopped. Mom never showed me how to put this thing on, and now that I was confronted with my own body, I had to figure out how to use it as soon as possible. I guess my young mind didn’t think to put the softer side facing upwards, so I stuck the thing onto the bottom of my underwear, so that the part that absorbs everything was facing down.
This style of pad was not helpful in the slightest.
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In her graphic memoir, “Fun Home,” Alison Bechdel describes her own experience in getting her period. She explains that in her diary, which she wrote in every day, she avoided even writing the word “menstruation” or “period;” instead, she opted to represent those weeks with a simple “x.”.[iv]
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Columbia University reported in 2017 that girls across America feel unprepared for puberty, especially those from low-income households. Specifically, the girls surveyed “feel they lack the information and readiness to cope with the onset of menstruation.”[v]
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Melissa Febos developed breasts earlier than her peers. Her own and others’ reactions to them were anything but present— “until age 11, I was a confident, athletic child…Then, my breasts arrived: huge, heavy and first among my peers. They marked the before and after of my body.”[vi]
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The most devastating thing about getting this period was that when it came that time each month, I couldn’t even go to the pool. When I was in middle school (grades 6-8), I went to a week-long sleep-over Bible camp; the camp itself as actuallyfun, located on the Jersey Shore, with beaches in any direction. The first days of camp had their routines: get there, bring our things to our shared rooms, and then as a group, go take the swimming test, which you had to pass in order to use the pool, so we all just got it out of the way immediately. One year, I think my seventh-grade year, we were in our shared room, all getting into our swimsuits. I meandered towards our counselor, and keeping my voice as quiet as possible, explained:
I can’t take the swim test, I got my puberty thing-
Your what?
You know, the monthly thing.
Oh! You’re on your period! I have some tampons if you want one, do you know how to use them?
No…
Oh. Well that’s okay! I’ll just tell the lifeguard that you’ll take it later on this week.
Okay, please don’t tell the lifeguard that I’m on it, please?
She nodded in agreement.
When the time came for all of us to go swim, I joined the crowd, but I was the only kid, girl or boy, who was still in their regular clothes. Everyone lined up at the edge of the pool, the first kids jumping in. All we had to do was swim to the other end of the pool. One after the other, everyone jumped in and took off. Once they were halfway down the pool, there went the next person. I stood and watched— and stayed quiet when they asked me why I wasn’t swimming. She’s going to come back and do it later was all our leader told them. But in my mind, I was sure that everyone knew I was on my period. I knew, so everyone else had to, too.
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According to historian Lara Freidenfelds, “how American woman manage and approach menstruation is called the “’modern period’… It’s the idea that your body does not undermine your ability to be productive at school or at work,” Freidenfelds said in an interview; “it’s a body that doesn’t smell or have cramps.”[vii]
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I wonder how we learn to hate a body. Is it like writing, where if you are with it enough, you can see flaws in it that others may not? Or maybe we’re taught— being in society for even one day will show you how women are taught to hate their bodies, even at ages as young as two or three.[viii]
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In sixth grade my sister and I got separate rooms, as we were getting older, and keeping two teenage girls in the same small bedroom is not a good idea for most parents. So I got my own room, and my mom and I went to IKEA to pick out some bed spreads, maybe a lamp, and a mirror. I looked at the mirrors, watching reflection walk from one to the other. My mom brought me to one that showed my head, shoulders, and entire torso. She stood behind me, her hands on my arms.
What do you think about this one?
The mirror was a variation of a square. There was a square in the middle, lined with straight cuts in the glass. There were smaller squares at each corner of the middle one, so it looked like it had little ears and feet. Arched rectangles connected the smaller squares. All in all, it was a chunky square. When I stood in front of it, I asked my mom
Why do I need one in my room? Can’t I use the mirror in the bathroom?
Everyone needs a mirror in their room— what if you wanna do your hair or try on an outfit?
Fine, I’ll get this one. I pointed to the square-ish one in front of me.
I never did my hair in that mirror, nor did I try on my outfits. I knew how I looked in my comfort clothes of baggy pants and a t-shirt a size or two too large.
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I think a short time after we got the mirror hung up, I considered covering it with newspaper like the teenage girls would with pictures of cute boys in those early 2000s movies. But I wanted to cover mine entirely.
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I felt like I was just a body— not me.
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Just a body. What does it mean to be just a body? When are we just a body?
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- After any type of disaster: crews are still searching for bodies. They’re not searching for people, they’re looking for bodies.
- After someone has died of natural causes. At my call-center-for-funeral-homes job, nurses tell me I have a body ready for pickup for eight hours straight. There’s no more person in the body, it’s just bone, organs, muscles, skin…
- When I hooked-up with a guy who’s name I didn’t even know because I was lonely and freshly “de-flowered” and wanting to experience more of the sexual world. He was just a body to satisfy a need.
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Like I said, I don’t even remember his name. I think it started with a “G,” Gavin? Greg? Gordon? Doesn’t matter. I drove home that night— it was only five something in the evening, but the sun was steadily descending. Maybe halfway through the two-hour drive, I called my friend Sam:
I feel weird.
Weird how? Did something happen?
Well after the sex he asked me to be his boyfriend. I didn’t think he was cute at all, so of course I said no. But doing a random hookup… it felt weird.
Well maybe it’s just not for you?
Maybe…
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In hook-up culture, we’re bodies. We bodies have needs, needs that other bodies are to fulfill. The American Psychological Association reports that the effect is like a treatment for loneliness— “those with more depressive symptoms and greater feelings of loneliness who engaged in penetrative sex hookups subsequently reported a reduction in both depressive symptoms.”[ix] But this works in opposite ways too: “participants who reported fewer depressive symptoms and fewer feelings of loneliness who engaged in penetrative sex hookups subsequently reported an increase in both depressive symptoms and feelings of loneliness.”[x] But what if you don’t fall into either of these categories?
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The hook-up day went like this: I woke up, went to the gym, ate minimal food afterwards, drove two hours to some town I didn’t know the name of in northern Minnesota, sucked off some guy whose name I didn’t know, got my insides rearranged, and drove the two hours home. We were just two bodies, satisfying each other. The creaking of his bed was endless, his bedroom was too warm— do people really do this nearly every day? Did I want to resort to these sorts of relations with mildly attractive guys?
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Can I find a real relationship? One built on more than just sex? One where I am more than a body for someone to use?
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I stared out the window at the town below as the man whose name I did not know thrust into me. There were people at the gas station, cars pulling into pumps and back out onto the main road. They’re not bodies out there. Those are people, filling up their cars with gas, going home to families after work, being productive, not sitting on some stranger’s dick.
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I wanted to be more than just a body.
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But— I was just a body, a nothing of a person. I was only good, usable as a body. I didn’t feel like a person, not like the ones below in the town. I was a body that was changing in ways I didn’t want.
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Was I always just a body?
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I wanted, no, I needed to regain control of my body. I didn’t want to be the girl who squeezed her legs every time she sat down, just watching the skin seemingly pour out all over. Gaining control of our bodies, maintaining bodily autonomy, is a hill that this girl did not want to climb. And so, she didn’t. She didn’t but he did.
Notes:
[1] Note: “My Female Body” is an excerpt from a larger work, The Body of a Frog: A Memoir on Searching for Ways to Love an Unconventional Self
[i] Feuerherd, Ben. Free the nipple: Going topless effectively legalized in six states. (2019). NYPost
[ii] Topless Laws. gotopless.org
[iii] Febos, Melissa. The feminist case for breast reduction. (May 11, 2022). NYTimes
[iv] “Bechdel, Alison. Fun Home. (2006). Mariner Books
[v] Study Finds Girls Feel Unprepared for Puberty. (2017). publichealth.columbia.edu
[vi] Febos, Melissa. The feminist case for breast reduction. (May 11, 2022). NYTimes
[vii] Ibid
[viii] Wonderlich, Anna L., Ackard, Diann M., Henderson, Judith B. Childhood Beauty Pageant Contestants: Associations with Adult Disordered Eating and Mental Health. (2007). The Journal of Treatment and Prevention, 13(3), 291-301
[ix] Garcia, J. R., Reiber, C., Massey, S. G., & Merriwether, A. M. (2013, February 1). Sexual hook-up culture. Monitor on Psychology, 44(2). https://www.apa.org/monitor/2013/02/ce-corner
[x] Ibid
Aarron Sholar’s book, The Body of a Frog: A Memoir on Searching for Ways to Love and Unconventional Self is forthcoming from Atmosphere Press, and his essays have been nominated for The Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. He is a transgender writer who holds an MFA from MSU, Mankato and a BA from Salisbury University. He serves as Prose Editor for Beaver Magazine.
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