BODIES
“I write for those women who do not speak, for those who do not have a voice because they were so terrified, because we are taught to respect fear more than ourselves. We’ve been taught that silence would save us, but it won’t.”
Dear Hadley,
When I was little I wanted to be a boy because boys had less restrictive underwear and less fussy hair and when the weather was warm they could play sports shirts vs skins.
And even though I didn’t know a lot of things at age seven, I knew for sure that my skin was the same as their skin. So for adventures in the woods, or basketball in the driveway, I’d ditch my t-shirt.
I felt comfortable. I felt free. The sun felt good on my chest.
When we were teenagers, your mom and I walked around the house in very little clothing. We’d sleep in cotton sports bras and tiny cotton shorts and we’d go from bed to breakfast without putting on anything else. We’d dry our hair in our underwear with the bathroom door wide open — just like our mom did. No one commented. No one questioned.
At home, in the house our parents built, your mom and I were real. We were safe.
My torso is long. Your mom’s is too. We wore jeans and t-shirts and our stomachs sometimes peeked out — a benign slit of a bare teen midriff.
The High School Principle would pass in the the hallway and shake his head at our slivers of exposed skin. “Cover up” he would say.
The men who enforced the dress codes told us what was appropriate and what wasn’t. We could understand, right? The way the things we wore were distracting for the boys. So we walked around self-consciously tugging on the edges of our shirts the way our girl friends with long legs pulled on the hems of their shorts.
I wasn’t sure if the problem was my t-shirt or my body or the rules. I just learned that when girls walked, men watched.
When I was in college I was at a bar with my best friend. As we stood in a crowded corner, talking, I felt something push into my back. A hand, poking, grabbing, groping, the way I’d learned strangers hands did at bars.
I reached back to swat it away, but it wasn’t a hand. The man behind me had pulled his penis from his pants and was pressing it into my lower back. Using my body for his own pleasure.
I screamed. “Sorry,” he smirked before he walked away, into the crowd. Besides the slipperiness of the skin, it didn’t really feel much different than the burn of the eyes.
During my junior year, I woke up groggy and confused in an apartment that wasn’t my own. The boy who owned the apartment was gone and I didn’t remember anything after a certain moment the night before. I found my clothes and underwear, folded and stacked neatly on a chair across the room. I never folded my clothes. I was too scared to say anything—he was the friend of a friend, I had chosen to hang out with him, he had a public career. I wondered if I had done something wrong. I went and got the tests one needs to get after something like that. Everything was fine, except not really. Everything was the same, except all different.
At my first real job, I wore skirts to work. Skirts and shirts that had buttons and needed be ironed and high heels. It made me feel grown up. It put me at eye level with the ones who were six feet — which made it feel easier to get a point across. Men would watch with those same eyes. I walked tall, my strong legs carrying me steadily, and I felt my own power. The power to keep walking. The power of self control. The power to not turn my own head at whatever passed me by.
But then I wasn’t sure whether I had power at work because I was good at work or because I was good at having a body that men watched. So I started wearing pants and crewnecks. No skin exposed. I needed to know for myself that I was promoted because I was smart and not because of the way my skirts made them feel.
I now recognize: it doesn’t matter what you wear.
You must remember: it’s their problem, not yours.
I walked to the grocery store this morning. Six blocks. A stranger at the construction site down the street whistled. Another stranger yelled, “smile, baby” from the open window of his slowed car. I was sweaty, just back from yoga. My hair was a half-undone ponytail. But those details of how I looked, or how I thought I looked, or how any woman looks — they don’t matter. Obviously they aren't the point. But it still just shocks me that it’s always. It’s a good reminder of how it isn’t even you.
I live in a city and I walk everywhere. I bring headphones with me most of the time. So I don’t have to hear their words. Or so I can at least pretend I don’t hear them.
I remind myself to keep my head high, but I don’t usually look at them. I don’t usually meet their gaze.
Except when I feel safe and strong. Except when the sun is shining and there are other people around and there is enough distance between us. Under those specific and not common circumstances, I look the whistler, the shouter, the mmmmmm’er right in the eye and say the thing that I’ve been silently thinking for years:
You disgust me.
Stop it.
I say those words without a smile. And my voice does not shake. Because when I say it, I brace my whole body so I am solid, stone.
They’re not used to a reply, they’re not used to the eye-to-eye.
Their eyes are always moving, up and down.
The construction worker, the guy in the car — their intentions are different, but all these years later, it still feels the same as the High School Principle.
Observing.
Commenting.
Blaming.
I didn’t want to believe this. I hardly want to admit this. But experience has proven what others have long warned: having a female body makes us less safe.
Now, I don’t run outside when it’s dark like I used to. When I walk home at night, I walk fast. I gather my long hair and pull it all in front my shoulder or tuck it into my jacket. I hold my phone in one hand, my keys in the other—in case I need to use something sharp. It’s not until I see the light of my building and the presence of my doorman that I finally stop glancing behind me, finally can relax.
It's exhausting to move through the world always on guard.
People will say things like, “you are not your body.” And what they’ll mean by that is that you are so much more than how you look. That’s true, Hadley.
But the other half of the truth is that you are your body. And your body is yours.
The unsolicited comments, the unwanted advances, the ones that reduce you down to a single part, might make you question that truth. All that stuff might make you wonder whether your body is available. It might make you wonder (even just subconsciously) if your value hinges on your physical form.
In case you ever need a reminder, in case you ever need someone to help you stop the internal questioning: the answer is no. No a thousand million times. No no no.
(All that stuff can also make it hard to understand who is worthy of actually sharing your body with. It can make you wonder whether you’re sharing because you want to or because you think it’s what women are expected to do. But more on that in some other letter, some other day.)
It’s easy to criticize your body when it always feels on display. It’s easy to obsess about the aesthetics and placement of things when just walking down the street on a Tuesday afternoon forces you to consider your appearance.
Disordered eating. Dysmorphic seeing. Of course these disproportionately affect women. It’s not biology. It’s the world.
All of this, right now, is the experience of being female in this world. And not just my experience, Had—this is the experience of my friends, of the other women walking, the other women simply trying to peacefully exist in their bodies. It’s 2017 and, still, this is the price we are paying for our double X pair.
I used to detach from my body. Sort of float above it and watch it, like the strangers did. Objectification is easily internalized, even when you know you’re strong, even when you know it’s wrong.
But now, at 31 years old, I live here. Firmly rooted in these parts, in this self. I stand in my skin with unwavering ownership. Arriving here—arriving back home to myself—took time. So many years lost, worrying and wondering.
Hadley, I hope you find a way to stay in your body. To hold court there.
I hope you use your voice and aren’t afraid to speak up, to speak out, to say no. (And also to say, yes.)
I hope you find friends and lovers with whom you can share your experiences. People who will stand by you and listen to you and support you. People who will care for you, with you.
Mostly, I hope you don’t have to deal with any of this.
Mostly, I hope the world is different for you, different for your sister, different for all our sisters.
You are loved and seen and heard, Hadley Elizabeth.
Aunt Liz
