What I Learned By Not Shaving My Legs Today

No one cares.

My first shaving memory is of losing a bunch of skin on my right shin in middle school. I don’t know what I thought I was doing but I was assured by the gush of blood that I was doing it very wrong. My best friend and I had decided to both shave the same night and wear skirts the next morning. I remember going to school in the skirt with the biggest band-aid I could find on my leg. Failure, thou art my middle name.

My next memory around shaving is going to beach day, 7th grade, and hearing one of my classmates commenting on the hair falling out of another classmates bathing suit as she contentedly read her book in the sunshine. I made the mental note to lock my legs together lest I be singled out as similarly disgusting.

I got away without scrutiny only because I was such a late bloomer, not having the token signs of puberty until well into freshman year of high school by which time I had made the strict decision to just not show any skin. Did I care that it was 90 degrees? Nope, I’ll stay inside with the air conditioning and my pants thank you very much. Fortunately even in high school few guys wanted to see me without pants and those who I allowed only got to do so in the darkest of dark and their hands were only allowed to touch what I wanted them to touch, namely my pretty, perky, hairless boobies

My next memory relating to body hair is my best friend from high school telling me that a girls hairiness comes from her fathers side, not her mothers. This was by far the worst news I got in high school. Scarier than any pop quiz and in the long run it has caused me more anxiety than any of the social scrapes I wound up in. My father remains one of the hairiest people I have ever encountered. None on his head of course, but imagine Austin Powers and then add some more.

It is worth throwing in here that I’ve found that most women have a part of their body they are really self-conscious about. Thighs, stomach, upper arms, whatever, usually something no one else would notice. All the women I know have one spot that if you point it out they’ll cry. I like the way my body is shaped but if you make fun of me for being hairy I will probably excuse myself to the bathroom for an hour or so to alternately shave and weep.

And then in college my best friend was from Texas and would go a week without shaving, wearing dresses each day and not caring at all. So I tried it and guess what I realized, no one cared!

And then I did it again this week. I even threw my legs over a cute boy in a cab and he happily caressed my cactusy calves.

I’ve been anxious about body hair for as long as I can remember having it. I am a Jew after all. We’re not known for being smooth, hairless creatures.

But I’m starting to regard my hair like I regard my bosiness. Anyone who isn’t into that quality is never going to be into me. So I should just let them go now.

Real Beauty And Real Ugly

Dove just put out a new ‘Real Beauty’ video and it’s been getting a fair amount of press in the feminist-blogosphere.

I simultaneously love and hate the feeling I get from watching this video. On the one hand it’s making my mascara run and on the other hand it couldn’t be cheesier.

It reminds us that yeah, maybe your mom pointed out that you have a large jaw when you were a kid, but why is that so worrysome? Why is that the first thing you mention when indeed it’s just fine? Why is that sort of unhelpful criticism the stuff that our subconscious are made of?

Yes, it’s helpful to remember that you are your harshest critic, that no one is looking at you and being distracted by how horribly large your ears are. They’re just bad thoughts, unhelpful for anyone. And that quick hit of self-confidence is useful in our society.

However, Alexandra at Feministing makes a great point as well.

At the same time, though, Dove is cementing a whole slew of beauty standards even as it pumps up self-esteem. Sure, maybe we’re prettier than we think, but the metric hasn’t changed. In part I’m talking about the obvious, physical scale of feminine beauty. For one heavy-handed example: one of the women central to the film thinks she has a large jaw; her new friend, however, says “she was thin so you could see her cheekbones, and her jaw was a nice thin jaw.” This version of the message–that you’re thinner than you think you are–reinforces the assumption that thinness is valuable. The take-away might be immediately gratifying. But by accepting the worship of slenderness within a supposed challenge to mainstream standards, the video entrenches fat-shaming further. [x]

This stuff is sneaky, not because there is some sort of puppet master pulling strings, but because it has been around us so long that it has seeped into us and it just sits there waiting to be awakened.

I agree with Alexandra that “I don’t think that Dove is doing bad work for this world. I just want us to build another, better one.” I think we’d rather be allowed to be ugly, like Brienne.

Why does the twist ending have to be “she was beautiful all along”? Why can’t we just let her be brave and strong and awesome and loyal and determined and kind and ugly?

Even if you are well-intentioned and mean it to be a sort of “everyone is beautiful” message, it still kind of feeds back into a culture where a person – and specifically a woman – has to be physically beautiful to be valuable.

I like Brienne because she flies in the face of that. She doesn’t have to have her makeover moment. She has the purest and most noble heart of anyone in the series, she’s a fantastic fighter, she’s valuable – and she’s ugly.  [x]

I think we’d both much rather a PSA that tells me that I don’t need to always need to be beautiful. That would be a paradigm shift I’d pay into.

If you are a woman, everything revolves around whether or not someone wants to fuck you. Instead of addressing “all bodies are beautiful” how about, “it is not necessary to be universally fuckable”? [x]

I’ll See Your Vanity And Raise You A Screw Off

“The mirror was often used as a symbol of the vanity of woman. The moralizing, however, was mostly hypocritical. You painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her, you put a mirror in her hand and you called the painting Vanity, thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness you depicted for your own pleasure…” [x]

It is not vain of me to appreciate my own reflection if it is equally not bad of you to “compliment” me on it. That is a double standard. You’re allowed to appreciate my beauty but if I do then its funny or rude?

If you feel like you need permission to indulge in vanity, this is it.

You are allowed to think you look beautiful, pretty, handsome, dashing, lovely, what have you.

You are allowed to take tons of selfies.

You are allowed to get lost in your own eyes in the mirror.

You are allowed to strut your stuff.

You are allowed to think you’re a pretty rad person.

You are allowed to love the fuck out of yourself. [x]

I remember one day when I was a kid at summer camp I was looking in the mirror and realized that my eyes weren’t just brown like my mom always told me but they had green in them. Green that reached towards the center and back out again like a zig zag watercolor. I remember thinking, wow, that is so beautiful. I’ve never noticed that before. And when I turned to my friend and said “Hey, my eyes have green in them!” she said “Were you just staring into your own eyes in the mirror?!”

Why is that so bad? They are beautiful and I’m not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of looking at beautiful things.

For a very long time women have been told that whatever they’re doing is the wrong thing.

Womens’ supposed greater sex drive was an argument for their inferiority, but once the assumption became reversed, no one argued that mens’ lustfulness was a sign of a fundamental irrationality that should preclude them from business and politics. Rather than a handicap, a large sexual appetite was positive once it came to be seen as a characteristic of men. Women, being passionless, supposedly lacked the drive and ambition to succeed. Much like sex, the public realm of work was dirty and distasteful, hardly suitable to womens’ delicate sensibilities.
When Women Wanted Sex Much More Than Men

F you. I’m going to look on the mirror when I want and avoid it when I don’t and there is nothing you can say to change my mind. I have autonomy over my body and my actions and my actions towards my body. If you call me vain or make fun of me for announcing that I am a sexy minx then I don’t have any room for you in my life.

Remember, self love is

 

A Hypothetical Conversation with my Brassiere

Me: What the fuck are you doing?

Bra: I’m just living my life man.

Me: Yeah, well can you live your life without stabbing me? That would be really helpful.

Bra: Hey guess what, I didn’t ask to carry around your sweaty, heavy tits all day, okay? If you want me to work for you I gotta do me.

Me: Dude, that is not how this works. I purchased you so you do what I say, ok?

Bra: That is both funny and offensive. Aren’t you supposed to be some feminist blogger or something? Aren’t you supposed to be allergic to phrases like ‘I own you’?

Me: YOU ARE A BRA! STOP MESSING WITH MY SHIT!

Bra: If you don’t like the way I play then don’t wear me. It’s no hair off my balls.

Me: You know that isn’t an option. If that were an option I wouldn’t have spent time and money at a freaking soul-sucking Victoria’s Secret store. If it was a viable or comfortable option for these big old bags of fat that you fail to properly carry-

Bra: Oh, so you admit that I’m more comfortable than going without me!

Me: Well, yes, but only-

Bra: You said yes!

Me: I said ‘yes, but’!

Bra: You said yes. The yes in a ‘yes, but’ still counts as a yes!

Me: Now who sounds like a scary misogynist?

Bra: Oh get off your high horse. You still need to type that word into google to spell it right.

Me: Shut it.

Bra: I am more comfortable than hangin loose. So just deal with it.

Me: Yeah, barely. When I stand with my arms down at my sides, yeah. But I really like to move them in front of my body you know. Typing, picking items up, writing with pencils, eating with forks. You know, without adjusting you every minute.

Bra: That sounds like a personal problem.

Me: A problem which I paid a company a decent amount of money hypothetically to help me with! Listen, I paid 50 bucks a pop so I could strap you to my erogenous bits for upwards of 14 hours every day. The least you could do is just… you know hold my tits in one place so they don’t bounce around painfully while not stabbing me, pinching me or digging into my back making rolls that I don’t actually have.

Bra: So now you’re fatphobic? Is that it?

Me: No, I just want to look like me without painful tits-ness. I don’t even really mind the way I look without a bra except for how I need to run up and down stairs all day and that’s just a no-go. And honestly you’re only marginally helpful in those instances anyway.

Bra: I don’t really know why we’re having this conversation. I’m not going to change.

Me: *Changes into a different bra*

Gosh, This is Hard

Lately among my friends and favorite internet places I’ve been hearing the same story come up over and over again. “I’m a feminist, but I’m not eating.” “I’m a feminist, but I’m not telling anyone about my abortion.” “I’m a feminist, but I’m in an abusive relationship.”

To me, saying I’m a feminist is like what I imagine it felt like to say “I’m a christian” in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. “I’m a good person, I give to charity. Yes, I’m doing some un-church-sanctioned things in my bedroom but hey, that’s what repentance is for and Jeezy gives me lots of opportunities for it.”

We can adopt an identity and take pride in it because it’s tenets are beautiful. Look at this thing I found the other day. It’s so beautiful. I want to live in a world like that. I want to create a world like that. And as soon as I stop popping my zits I’ll find the time.

My friend (and idol in both feminism and writing) wrote a beautiful piece about the intersection of her personal body issues and her political beliefs. Molly Crabapple outed her abortion story online, which will make you cry.

“The relationship you have with the world is just like any other relationship. Every now and again, even if it’s pissed you off for no good reason, you have to look it in the eyes and say: I love you.”
- I Wrote This For You: The World Loves You Too

It can be hard to rewrite the script you have running in your head whether it’s the voice of the clergy telling you not to masturbate or the voiceover from a Special K commercial telling you that eating a chocolate will “ruin your day.”

Sometimes admitting that it’s hard is all it takes to be

Treat Yo Self

Last night I slept over with The Yankee after a very long week of working a lot and seeing him not at all.

I just sort of called to tell him I was on my way over.

And when I got there and he tried to hug and kiss me I suddenly started feeling so horribly claustrophobic and very not in-the-mood-y, which of course led to guilty and self-loathe-y, followed by indignant and righteously indignant because, hey, I’m a badass feminist blogger, I should be able to go see the guy I’m seeing and then not have sex with him and then not feel bad about it. But I can’t. Not that I said any of this out loud. I just started watching Buffy.

So I announced we should go to bed and when we got there I grabbed his wandering hands and wrapped his arms around me and apologized for inviting myself over and then not even sexing him.

He laughed, “I get to hold you in my arms. What are you apologizing for? This is amazing.”

My point isn’t any of that stuff. In fact all that stuff is completely beside the point. Forget it all.

My point is that in the morning I felt differently. I had needed 8 hours of cuddling just for my body to remember that touch can be pleasant and antagony free. After a long week at a very frustrating job where I felt all the bad feelings and every word out of anyone’s mouth felt like an attack, every touch a remonstration, my body forgot that every human interaction isn’t bad or demanding or cause for worry.

We like to think we’re smarter than out bodies, but we’re really not. You deserve a thing. Treat yo self to it.

My Beautiful Wrinkles

One day I’m going to be old and wrinkled.

My crows feet will be as beautiful as these. And when I don’t own a hairbrush (Oh, right, I already don’t own a hairbrush) and my hair is ridiculous then it will look this fabulously ridiculous.

We manage to find men without concealer and botox attractive, I think we can love ourselves as much. It just takes practice. Like playing the piano.

People are so afraid of women who aren’t looking for approval.

I like the way I look. If you don’t, oh wait, yeah, I didn’t ask if you did. And that’s why I’m the hottest bitch in this club.

 

Menstruation Appreciation

I’ve been finding a lot of really cool menstruation art lately, and that’s not something I ever thought I would say.

And it’s really cool.

Even though any guy in his 20′s should be fine with talking about periods I still get mortified by my own, and it’s really cool to find art that does something other than avoid or dance around the whole thing, opting for kool-aid-esque blue liquid and calling the female half of the population dirty.

Something that’s actually

Ghost-me and Body-me

Last night the Yankee and I were cuddling and he said my body was so perfect he feels so honored to get to touch it, nuzzling my neck. I froze.

I could hear in his voice he meant it only as a compliment to the girl he likes. But somewhere on it’s journey from my ears to my brain it morphed into ‘your body is amazing, why don’t you share it?’ I heard it in the context of him showing it off to a friend like a sandwich he just bought “This is amazing. You should get one too. Here, have a bite of mine first. Right? I said it was good!”

And I just laid there, right next to him but miles away.

Sometimes I think of body-me and me-me as being completely different people with different likes and dislikes. Sometimes I imagine dropping body-me off at a spin class and ghost-me sitting in the juice bar for an hour reading John Green. I imagine dropping my body off at orgies to be enjoyed like a vegi tray, just a token of my appreciation for my invitation (which, she considers, is sort of a compliment in itself) but I don’t need to stick around. The rest of me can use the time to catch up on Shameless. I let my body walk home from the party while ghost-me takes the train, it’s slower but safer, and I care less what happens to body-me anyway.

Sometimes it feels like they’re unlikely friends from an after school special. They can be BFFL’s inside but then once there is a pair of eyes nearby they drop hands and pretend not to know each other. Ghost-me walks behind body-me, inconspicuous, no one notices her trailing behind, looking down, hips decidedly not swaying. Noticing in awe the attention her friend gets, wondering how she does it.

There is so much to be said about the effect of prolonged objectification of women on women.

The American Psychological Association has found in recent years, that self-objectification has become a national epidemic. The more women and girls self-objectify, the more likely they are to be depressed, to have eating disorders, they have lower self-confidence, they have lower ambition, they have lower cognitive functioning, the have lower GPAs. How does this connect to women in leadership? Women who are high self-objectifiers have lower political efficacy. Political efficacy is the idea that your voice matters in politics and that you can bring about change in politics. So if we have a whole generation of young people being raised where women’s objectification is just par for the course, it’s normal, it’s okay; we have a whole generation of women who are less likely to run for office and are less likely to vote.
-Caroline Heldman, PHD, Associate Professor of Political Science – Occidental College

We learn that sex is about being desired, staying desired.

So how does this translate into real life? Women spend a lot of time and energy trying to please men. We learn early on that we are being looked at – that we are to be looked at. That we are performers. It took years before I actually started enjoying sex. YEARS. I think what I enjoyed most about sex, when I was younger, was the feeling of being desired. The actual sex part was super boring for the first while.

We learn, as girls and women, that the performance is more important than the actual feeling.

-Facials, feminism, & performance: On f**king men in a patriarchy

None of this is new information for me. I’ve been noticing this tape running in my head for years. Now I just have the opportunity to deal with it.

The worst part is that I know this man doesn’t feel this way about me.  I know that if I announced over dinner tomorrow that I didn’t want to have sex with him anymore he would ask me about the decision, tell me he was really bummed and then when we had talked it out and understood each other he would ask me about my day again or the latest episode of Girls. He would ask me about my latest blog post or if I’d read any good articles lately.

The problem isn’t him. The problem is the fact that I’m a patriarchal woman, a woman raised in the patriarchy and I have a loop running in my head telling me that even though this is different from the street harassers it really isn’t.

His touch of my face or my hair or my leg might as well be a whistle on the street. And I’m afraid that no matter how kind the soul adoring me is I’ll always hear that. And, like in the ending of Lady Han when her lover comes back to marry Hanjo after she’s gone crazy, they can be together forever but his love can never undo her insanity.

Eating Disorders, Self Harm and The Nearness of You

In the play I’m working on right now there is a line about a table.

One character says I like this table.

The other says I grew up with this table.

And the first one says That’s why I like this table.

I like the things that make you… you. The house you grew up in made you you. The freaky fungus that makes your toenails look demonic. Your weird sleep disorder that makes you guzzle an inhuman amount of coffee each day makes you you. And I love you.

And your body, the body you sturm und drang against, it also makes you you. And I thank it every day for the gift it has given me; the nearness of you.

The capacity to have everything you think, everything you are all in one package that I can eat and travel and talk and cuddle with.

So you can thrash against your body all you want, but when you want to hurt it just remember how much I love it, if only for it’s ability to press our hearts so close together.