thoughts on body knowledge
I’ve been thinking a lot about what we, as women, know about our bodies and how that affects…well, everything. Everything from our self-esteem, to what we expect out of intimacy, to the instances in which we do or do not seek medical care are informed by our knowledge of our bodies.
I have always been aware of my body, but I rarely thought about it. Unless I was shopping for jeans or being catcalled, my body wasn’t really of any concern to me. Sure, it did weird stuff like skip months of menstruation. And sure, sometimes I got random sharp pains in my vagina and on my right side. And sure, sometime I got turned on and my whole lower half tingled. But so what?
I didn’t start thinking about my body, really thinking about it, until I was 18. That was when I had my first serious boyfriend. For the first time, I found myself in physically intimate situations and I felt some responsibility to be well-versed in my body’s contours and mechanisms. These are the Things I Knew About My Body When I Was 18:
I had big breasts (32DD).
I had “child-bearing hips” (direct quote from a 22 year-old man, to me, when I was 14).
I had a “good body” (see: “nice figure”—see also: “hourglass”/“skinny”).
My hips were striped with white stretch-marks.
My thighs did not touch (“thigh gap” was introduced to my vocabulary at 15).
Blood came out of my vagina sometimes (supposedly every month, but almost never every month).
My lower abdomen hurt like hell when I bled (once a month or not) and right before.
Discharge came out of my vagina (and stained my underwear).
Hair grew on my legs, and between my legs, and under my arms (and other places, but these were the places I was supposed to remove it from).
My appendix was on my right, my stomach was on my left.
As the list above suggests, I was taught about my body primarily through objectification. Almost everything I knew about my body had to do with how it was perceived by other people. I knew barely anything about my anatomy. And the worst part, in my opinion, is that the conversations I had about my body when I was 18 (and for too long after) were limited to boys negotiating access to it and my mother saying my clothes were too tight or revealing.
My girlhood was shaped by fundamentalist Christianity—a culture that discourages open discussion about sex (we were told: don’t have it) and feminine health (periods were something to be whispered about, an event that needed code words). There is a story in the Bible about a woman who has been bleeding for years and when she touches Jesus the bleeding stops. It was a story I had heard many times, but it frustrated me because I couldn’t picture the woman. I imagined she was middle-aged…walking through the desert in a flowing dress and headscarf…with a stream of blood gushing from her arm? Or her leg? Or her hand? I wasn’t sure. I wondered, Did she get blood on Jesus when she touched him? Didn’t he think that was gross? When I was 14 our pastor said, in a sermon, that the woman was experiencing her period. A years long menstruation. Which made so much sense. I remember wondering why I had never connected those dots. I also remember many people—mostly women—being very upset that he said the word period at the pulpit.
Even though it was shrouded in secrecy and shame, I can’t say growing up in that environment left me with no knowledge about my body. I learned a lot. I learned that my body was distracting, and, by default, a sexual object (shoulders and knees were a particular point of distraction, which I didn’t really understand). I learned that pain was an inevitable consequence of my womanhood (shout-out to Eve) and should be dealt with quietly. I learned that my worth was determined by my “purity”—the invisible measure of how many men I allowed to touched me. I learned that legal matrimony (not mutual respect, desire, or intimacy) was the sole prerequisite for sex. For all the disapproval and secrecy, people in church sure had a lot to say about girls’ bodies. These are the things that were absent from my body education:
Non-baby making related information about female reproductive organs. Until a couple years ago I didn’t know, really, where my uterus or ovaries were.
Anything about female sexual desire and/or pleasure (that was not centered around guilt/shame).
An adult woman who encouraged self-love and exploration, was available to answer questions and guide inquiry.
The absence of this knowledge, and the prevalence of guilt/shame, led me to engage in a lot of sexual situations I did not want or enjoy. It caused me to suffer from debilitating endometriosis pain without seeking treatment. I don’t think that having different/more knowledge would have necessarily stopped those things from happening, but I do think it’s important to acknowledge that I didn’t listen to my body when it was in pain, or wanted pleasure, because I didn’t know what to listen for.
A lifetime of objectification, shame, and silence led me to consent to a lot of things I did not actually want because my understanding of my body and, consequently, myself was that it existed for male pleasure. At 18 years old, I didn’t know where to begin when it came to physical intimacy. I let my boyfriend take the reins, and I couldn’t see that he didn’t respect me or my sexual decision making because I understood my role in physical intimacy to be that of an object—not a person with the right to express desire or discomfort.
Since conversations about bodies and sex were absent from my childhood it’s been very difficult for me to feel comfortable speaking openly about my body. Having a lot of gynecological health problems has forced me out of my comfort zone and I am trying, slowly, to push back against the shame and guilt that governed my adolescence and my knowledge about my body. This post, alone, has taken literal months to write. But this is why I started Woman Problems. I know the women in my life didn’t have open or healthy conversations with me because they didn’t know how, not because they didn’t want to. Because no one ever had those conversations with them. I get that. But I want to have those conversations. Which is why I am writing all this down. And why, when my younger sisters ask questions about sex or their period, I push past my discomfort and answer them.
What did you know about your body when you were 18? What do you wish you knew? How has your body knowledge affected the way you move through the world?
Thank you so much for this article. I am trying to learn how better to express my wants, needs, and desires without feeling such guilt and shame. It’s a process of unlearning and relearning but this article helped me see I am not alone in figuring out how to advocate for myself.
"A lifetime of objectification, shame, and silence led me to consent to a lot of things I did not actually want because my understanding of my body and, consequently, myself was that it existed for male pleasure.... I understood my role in physical intimacy to be that of an object—not a person with the right to express desire or discomfort." Incredible; this reminds me of Melissa Febos's writing on empty consent, but you take it to such an embodied place.