I read a blog article by Courtney Meaker earlier today that one of my friends and colleagues had posted on Facebook and it has stayed with me all day. It is called "Walking While Fat and Female - Or Why I Don't Care Not All Men Are Like That." And in the light of the recent tragedy at the University of California, Santa Barbara, I feel that it's time to come clean. And this is hard for me. These kinds of reactions and events are the majority of the reason why I cut my breasts off. In 2000, I had a breast reduction. There were multiple reasons why, but it took me a long time to realize what the major one was - I was ashamed of them. This is wrong on so many levels.
Firstly, no one, NO ONE should be ashamed of their bodies. A person shouldn't feel that their body is too fat, too thin, too tall, too short, too light, too dark, too female, too male. A person shouldn't feel ashamed that they feel like they aren't in the right body. A person shouldn't feel ashamed about the things a body does to keep itself healthy. Because a person isn't their body. A person is their SOUL.
I hit puberty way early. I was 11 when I got my period, and I developed breasts almost literally overnight. I seriously thought I had been bitten by something. And one of the things that I immediately noticed was that people started treating me differently. Why? Because we as a society perpetuate women as a sex object. It wasn't just my male classmates. The girls got in on it as well. I spent almost all of my middle school life being bullied, groped, stared at, and having comments made to me. The older middle school girls would corner me in the girl's bathroom and beat me up. I hid it from my parents because I was ashamed. The girls did it because I was a threat, I was competition. Some of the middle school boys would often touch my breasts, my butt, or even my crotch. I had a counselor tell me that I invited the touching because my shirt was too tight. It became my fault. Some male teachers stared at me, wouldn't look me in the eye, or sat me in the front row.
I responded. I told them to stop. That was seriously horrible. Then I hacked off my hair to try and make myself look more boyish. I wore baggy t-shirts and jeans. I slouched. I wasn't as diligent in my personal hygiene. I had hoped this would make people back off, or not look at me. I skirted the hallways, would hold my bladder until I couldn't walk I had to go to the bathroom so badly, or eschewed human interaction altogether, hiding in the cool quiet of the school and public library. It didn't work. It made it worse. I now had ridicule to add to the pile, comments about my sexuality, or that I was crazy. And it was still MY fault.
So I changed again. In my period of hiding and observing, I found that males were easily led. I was powerless, but my sexuality had lots of power. I could garner attention, favor, importance...for absolutely all the wrong reasons. This led to a boyfriend who was significantly older than I, and that led to sex extremely early. And it was, of course, my fault. I made him feel sexual toward me, it was MY fault that I had turned him on, and now I had the "responsibility" of doing something about it. I became overtly sexual. I figured, if men were going to sexualize me anyway, I should get something out of it. I wielded my power, but I never experienced loving interaction or relationships.
Then after an extended amount of sexual abuse from an authority figure ("to protect and serve") when I was 14 and 15, all I could feel was shame, guilt, and despair. I'd been told repeatedly that this was all my fault and I believed it. I thought it wasn't other people, it wasn't sexualization of women and girls, it wasn't people seeing harassment and abuse and turning a blind eye to it, it was all me. And I was powerless. I couldn't make them stop. I equated love with being physically pleasing. That was a successful relationship for me. And above all, I didn't trust anyone. Add on top of this that since about my sophomore year in high school, I had been struggling with my sexuality, and this all devolved into me being wrong, being broken, being an anomaly.
It continued through college. I endured being "jostled" on the sidewalk, on the streets, in the hallways with hands on my breasts. I walked back to my dorm as fast as I could, ignoring the whistles and cat calls of "Nice tits!" and "Hey baby, how much?!" I was outwardly sexually aggressive and outgoing, but never again the one important thing - outspoken. I survived silently, awash in shame and feeling dirty, unworthy, and horribly disfigured and ugly. I had E cup breasts. And they were my enemy. I taped them, locked them down with bras that were so tight and ill-fitting that they left bruises on my shoulders and they still were a C cup. I hurt all the time. My anxiety was so high, my stomach was in constant upset. Squashing my body down led to headaches, backaches, and my breasts were so sore and tender from being crushed.
And then one night, I went to a bar with some friends, and I don't remember much. Except when I finally became aware of my surroundings, someone was having sex with me. And there were other people in the room. And they were talking about my breasts, and about my weight, and about how fun this "fat, dumb, cow" was to screw. And then someone gave me something to drink, and it went away again. I woke up in the common room of my dorm. I still don't know where it happened, or who it was, or if it was even someone I knew. And I thought it was all my fault. I had somehow provoked them, or perhaps I had rebuffed them, and they roofied me. I was used to getting propositions all the time, and this was the first indication that it didn't even matter if I resisted, some males would just take what they wanted. And I did the worst thing possible. I stayed silent. And I got lucky. I emerged broken, but not pregnant or having contracted an STD. I considered that lucky.
It got to the point that I would lay in bed and cry with the thought of getting up in the morning and having to put on clothes and go outside. I had been toying with the idea of having a breast reduction, but now something had broken loose in me. I wanted it done and done as fast as possible. The doctors tested me for thyroid conditions and then told me my breasts were so large because of my weight. I dropped down to 160 lbs. I was now thin...with enormous breasts. They didn't go anywhere, and not having any weight behind them only made them more pronounced and I was yet more noticeable. Now I was often asked if I was a stripper, if they were real, could they touch them? I retreated into the guise of a cold-hearted ice princess, and earned the reputation of a "man-eater." And when it came time to have my surgery, I begged my surgeon, a wonderful woman, to make me as flat-chested as a boy. "Chop them off!" I sobbed, "I never want to see them again!"
I went under with E cup breasts, and woke up with C cups. My surgeon explained that once she got into the tissue, she realized that because I had been a swimmer all my life, and a butterflier specifically, that I had 6 inches of pectoral muscles that had contributed to my breast size. "I took everything I could safely," she told me. And it helped. I wasn't gawked at as much, I wasn't groped...as much. It diminished, as did my back pain, shoulder pain and headaches. It was one of the best things I had ever done. But it didn't stop the shame. It doesn't cut off the shame, the guilt, the fear of being taken advantage of. That all has to come from within. That has to come from the place where you're okay with yourself. That's a place that I have to struggle to trek to every day, and some days, I never get there.
It's taken a lot of therapy and a lot of years for me to even get to the place I am now. A place where I can say "Don't talk to me like that." or "Your behavior is unacceptable." I'm in a relationship where sex is not "a thing." It's safe. But I still struggle with the concept of love, or being loved, or what loving feelings really are or mean. I still don't trust anyone. I still avoid crowds from fear of being touched. I'm body shy, to the point where there have been many people who have commented on the amount of portraits I snap (I refuse to refer to them as "selfies"), but rarely is there a full body shot. And if I must be in revealing situations, it takes an enormous amount of energy and I am exhausted at the end. I still look in the mirror at my breasts, and now my belly, rounded in my late 30s, and sigh. I still wish I had no breasts at all. I still find I have to push down shame and guilt. But I know it's not my fault. I know that I'm better, because I'm not crying in my closet. Well, not often.
Please don't be me. Please don't be silent. Please interfere. Please speak up. Please shout and scream and fight and protest. Please be part of the change. Please know that you are smart, amazing, talented, and are part of the joy in this world. Beauty, sex, bodies, shape, size, gender - they have nothing to do with it. Be proud of your body because it is what carries around a beautiful soul.
