As I have reflected on my own thoughts and views of women, men, restrictions and equality, I have realised that many of the moments in the mirror – the self-doubt – sound an awful lot like the words of some women I have known.
Friends who have had distinct views on men and relationships have influenced me and shaped my thoughts at different times in my life. We are all surrounded by each others views all the time, especially now that we can give them from across the world. Even when you don’t agree with a view, it still has the ability to stick with you years on. One woman I knew viewed men as a tool who were not allowed to get too close; the other would bend and mound herself to what the stranger, aka potential husband, might possibly expect of her. When the relationship went south, one would blame the men for whatever slight she could remember and the other would blame herself for whatever ‘crime against perfection’ she could find in the mirror.
Here’s the clincher, both women were confident, funny, talented and beautiful, which they knew…until a man entered their lives. The patriarchal programming was jarring to me at the time and sickens me in retrospect.
I was once told by one of these ‘friends’: “if you don’t wax your arse, he’ll never want to stick his dick in it”. As if it was my responsibility to remove hair I didn’t know I had, just in case a guy I had just met wanted anal sex. My response was along the lines of it being ‘his problem’ but the shock from the depth of that statement has rung with me for a long time. The implication that if a man doesn’t want to have any kind of sex with me that it must be my fault! That something as natural as body hair could make me unattractive! That my appearance could be such a turn off after I had wooed them with my personality and wit!
In my darkest moments, I felt naïve that I had underestimated the aesthetic appeal, that I was a joke for thinking I could ‘compete with beauty’. However my façade, and now my darkest voice too, calls bullshit! My dad’s last argument against my first tattoo was ‘what if you meet a man who doesn’t like tattoos’, to which I responded ‘well I won’t like him very much either, so he’s obviously not the man for me!’ I stand by that. If you don’t like me for how I am, fuck off. I am not contorting, waxing, plucking, starving myself for anyone. I like me. I am funny, interesting, clever and strong, whether my legs are hairy or not. No “double agent for the patriarchy” (J Jamil, 2018) is going to tell me otherwise.
So I guess my point is that I am now much more critical when listening to well-meaning advice. For generations upon generations, we have been programmed by the patriarchy but at least if we can be aware of it and censor the programming from being redistributed from our mouths to other women, we stand a chance of evolving.
Read more about female body image: Planting seeds
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