day 5
I’ve been thinking a lot about control today. Who gets a say in how we express ourselves, our sexuality. How old were you the first time someone said your outfit was inappropriate? I was 11 or 12, the first time I was catcalled, sexualised without even having had my first kiss. Wearing a powerpuff outfit for World Book day (it IS a book okay?!? I checked…) and walking home in my neon pink tights, face smeared with glitter and high off wearing something outlandish, but even the idea that it was something sexual? It seemed eons away from the girl in the pink tutu.
People are constantly assigning values, labels to your sexuality as a teen too. It’s remarkable how effortlessly I remember being called easy or frigid, by someone sneeringly in the school corridor or at a party, their face flashing pink and blue in the smoke filled light. The first time that you were made aware that your queer crushes were deemed somehow perverse or strange. My mum, I know, is worried about what I’m writing on here. She’s agreed to * maybe * read it once the 40 days is up, but sent me a text last night saying, “Remember once something is on the internet it’s there forever!!”.... Which sounds vaguely like a threat, but I know she meant well.
Some of my friends masturbate in front of the mirror, I’ve never done it, and wonder how I would feel if I do. Repulsed? Aroused? Both?
There’s a part of me which has undertaken this “experiment” to wrestle back control from all these different narratives. It may seem strange that choosing to deny myself something is an empowering act, but I seem to have a habit of considering my sexuality divorced from myself. What I mean by that is, sexuality can just be a performance for somebody else or just a distraction from real intimacy, but it’s so rarely about our bodies, when sexuality just pours out of us, from our core in a raw way. When I dance is probably the only time that feels true. Self love, even can become an unhealthy place, a place where fantasy and infatuation run riot and idealising unobtainable people inevitable. Fantasy is not necessarily a bad thing. But, when does it ever come back to, well me?
There’s an incredible episode of I hate Suzie, where she spends the whole 45 minutes or so deciding what to masturbate to, or attempting to force herself to masturbate to something deemed acceptable in the eyes of her best friend who watches on in a very surreal sequence i.e. to wank about her husband and not her boss that she’s sleeping with. But then just the moment before she finishes, it switches to her true desire. Where she goes when her sexuality is just about what she wants, not what she is told she should be thinking about.
Sexiness is such a funny thing. It’s this ever fluid notion that changes depending on where your body is, who you’re with.
Some of my friends masturbate in front of the mirror, I’ve never done it, and wonder how I would feel if I do. Repulsed? Aroused? Both? Have you ever? I’d love to hear about how it made you feel about yourself.
Sexiness is such a funny thing. It’s this ever fluid notion that changes depending on where your body is, who you’re with. I know how it feels, when I feel sexy, but objectively I don’t think that my body looks it. Doing the washing up. On a walk. Even in bed. There’s a strange disconnect and always a slight feeling of surprise when somebody else does think that it is. This is not something I need a pep talk on, really, or a t-shirt saying “every body is beautiful”, because, well, that’s not quite true. A golden ratio does exist... but it’s also true that beauty can be found in the most banal places. A freckle. A scar on someone’s ribs involving a minor seesaw accident as a youth.
Thinking about my body at the moment, without having the distraction of another person’s approval or a fantasy, has made me want to actually figure out how to love it, not in a branded quote-y way, but in a real way that embraces the imperfections without airbrushing them or championing them in a false “empowerment” narrative. To love it, or maybe I’d settle for just liking it and to live with it and use it in a way that makes me feel sexy, in reality and all just for myself. Maybe after these 40 days I’ll be a little closer to feeling like that. Here’s hopin’.
Keep your ears peeled for the first voice note from the un/satisfied fam bam hitting your ear waves soon.