Girl vs. woman, part 2

When I was working through my disordered eating and overexercising recovery in 2021, I read “More Than a Body,” by Drs. Lexie and Lindsay Kite. Along with several Intuitive Eating podcasts, this book helped break open a lot of the internalized shame and guilt I’d held about my body not being thin enough, pretty enough, good enough, or worthy enough...for whatever definition of “enough” I was holding in my head.

One of the main concepts the sisters talk about throughout the book, which came from their Ph.D. research, is the cultural phenomenon of “self-objectification.” The TL;DR is that because of how women are portrayed in media, are conditioned to look perfect for their social content, and are often valued for their external appearances above all else, we’re conditioned to not only accept that we’re viewed that way by others—but also to view ourselves that way, too. Basically, we learn to see ourselves through society’s eyes, rather than through our own.

While this book was such an integral part of my healing journey a few years back, I actually hadn’t thought about it in a while. Until yesterday, anyway. This whole exploration I’ve been doing, about who I am, what I want, what makes me a good person (or not)…it’s been seriously fucking with my head. As I’ve been getting more curious about the “what else?” questions I’ve been asking myself, several of those threads keep coming back to my body. And if I’m being fully honest here, my sexuality, too.

So, since I knew I’d be spending a lot of time in the car over these next few days, I downloaded the audiobook of “More Than a Body” in the hopes of finding some new answers, or maybe just new questions, along the North Georgia highways.

I started all the way back at the beginning, with chapter 1. About an hour or so into my drive, Drs. Kite were talking about how sexualization and ridicule from outside sources (media, peers, etc.) often start for girls as soon as they hit puberty. They get cat-called, or stared-at, or in many cases, experience far more traumatic instances of objectification (abuse, rape) at the exact same time in their lives when they’re already confused about who they are, and what their place is in the world. All of those experiences leave some pretty deep scars that can take decades to unravel, if they’re ever unraveled at all.

It made me think about what scars I might still be carrying.

I was never cat-called. Or stared-at. Or experienced any sexual trauma (at least that my consciousness is aware of). I grew up in a home where sex was not talked about. I might even go so far as to say that my childhood and teenage years were actually asexual.

Throughout all of high school, I was never asked out on a date. No one had a crush on me. I reluctantly went to prom with a few friends who bought me a ticket so I wouldn’t feel left out, and spent most of the night crying by myself in a bathroom stall.

These are my scars, but they’re very different from the ones in the book. I didn’t learn to objectify my body as a sexual thing that other people (mostly hetero males) wanted.

I learned that my body was a thing that no one wanted.

It sounds so perverse to think about the fact that I never experienced traditional female gender trauma as a bad thing. There’s probably more I need to unpack here with my therapist. But this realization clicked something for me.

One of the reasons I have such a hard time seeing myself as a “woman” is because to me, that word implies someone else seeing me that way.

Women are wanted. They’re objectified. They’re pined after. They get attention at bars, and parties, and high school cafeterias. That’s what our culture has taught us.

I have never felt that.

I have never “felt” like a woman. I’ve always felt like a girl.

Maybe cute? But not attractive or beautiful.

Maybe fun to hang out with? But not enough to want to take home.

I’ve been with my partner for 23 years, so obviously someone, at some point, saw me differently than I saw myself. (Thank you, dear.) But I can still count on one hand the number of times, before or after we met, that I’ve felt someone’s gaze on my body and that palpable tension of attraction. It’s even rare from my partner, although I accept that after being in a relationship for that long, and literally seeing all sides and parts of each other for more than two decades, those kinds of lustful gazes are harder to come by.

I know. I know.

How fucked-up is it that I’m bemoaning NOT being objectified? That that’s the scar I feel like I carry?

How many other people who identify as female wish that they weren’t constantly sexualized, or valued only for their bodies?

Fucked-up or not, it’s what’s true for me.

In my last post, I talked about how when someone tells you something often enough about yourself, you start to believe it. My mom told me that my instincts or intuition weren’t strong enough, and that I couldn’t trust other people or the world around me, so I that’s what I believed. The world around me told me that I wasn’t appealing or attractive enough to be the object of someone’s wanting or desire, so that’s also what I believed.

One force fueling self-doubt on the inside. Another force fueling self-doubt on the outside.

It’s no wonder I’ve struggled so much to figure out who the hell I am, and why my friend referring to me as a “woman” felt so awkward and uncomfortable.

I am a complex, tangled, paradoxical, confused, insecure, neurotic mess.

I suppose, in that way, maybe I am more like everyone else than I realized.