Tags
abortion, beauty, body, breasts, change, feminism, fuck, girl, girls, pregnancy, rights, woman, women, write, writing
My body didn’t do what my brothers did. Growing up everyone told me things like you look just like your dad and you and your younger brother could be twins. It was clear later that they were only referring to my face because my body didn’t end up the way my brothers did. Where he grew in height I grew in weird horizontal directions. My baby brother passed me in height and without me even noticing we stopped physically fighting because he had an unfair advantage. It was then that I realized he had stopped fighting me because he had grown much stronger and knew he would hurt me. He did it to protect me. The law about men not hitting women then made sense to me. All the while where his chest and nipples stayed the same, mine grew two chunks of fat behind my now enlarged nipples. The law then told me I wasn’t allowed to show them like my brother could. While he could go to the beach in just swim trunks or just walk around with no shirt on, my extra lumps stopped me from being able to do that. My body turned “Indecent” while his just got stronger and taller. I also began growing hair in areas of my body that hair had never been long before my brother did. While I started shaving my armpit in grade 5 and my legs in grade 6, around the same time I began to wax my eyebrows every two week, my brother didn’t began to grow hair until he was 15. The difference was he was just focused on recess and the struggles of elementary school during those grades when I was realizing my body was changing forever and I was hating my body for that. The next step was when my pubic hair began to grow past my bathing suit line and I had to undergo painful shaving, waxing and razer burn in an area I hadn’t even really discovered yet. But when my brother began to grow hair at the age of 15 is when I noticed that this brought very little change to him. Instead of a burden to him he was now considered “more manly” because he could grow a beard. On top of all that he wasn’t expected to shave it. His body hair was a sign of his manliness while mine was considered disgusting and had to be shaved every single day. My facial hair that grew the tiniest bit above my upper lip deemed me unkissable and so that too I began to wax. The next change was the worst. I knew it was coming but that one day I noticed blood in my underwear somehow hurt the most. I knew from then on I would pay each month for products to stop this bleeding. Nothing can describe how it felt to be a young girl forced to shove a tampon up her tiny vagina. Nothing can compare to the stress when it hurt so bad and I still couldn’t get it in. It took many tries with days in between for recovery and when it finally did go in I had to lay on my stomach in my bed for an hour in pain with a heating pad under me. I could hear my baby brother downstairs playing video games with his friends completely unaware of the pain I just went through, that he would never have to. And then there were the cramps. It was something unlike any pain Id ever felt before, it was crippling. I had to walk hunched over some days and spend hours on my stomach, grouchy and emotional and in so much fucking pain. This goes on for a week every month, with no less pain. I was expected to do everything my brother was at that age while in this pain and dealing with so many more things than him, how was this fair? As a girl I also realized quickly that boys were allowed to joke about shitting and masterbating but I was not allowed to mention my period or any of those topics myself. Boys winced hearing just the word and cashiers made me feel awkward buying myself the equivalent of toilet paper, tampons and pads. How would you feel if everytime you bought toilet paper you got embarrassed? So again my bodily changes were indecent and frowned upon by society. I started to notice also that though my brother could speak freely on shitting and masterbating and watching porn, when I wanted to it was considered gross and “unlady like”. I had to do all these things in private because I was made to feel shame about things my brother was made to feel proud of. Then came sex where I was now expected to please men any way I could. I was expected to let things much larger than tampons enter my tiny hole and boy did it hurt like a bitch that first time. The first time wasn’t enjoyable and honestly neither were the second and third. But for my brother his first time felt awesome, he got to finish. As a woman I realized I was also expected to fake an orgasm when I didn’t achieve one during sex while a man was almost always guaranteed one. I also now had to go to the doctors every couple of months and take a pill every day to prevent a baby. Honestly, at times I also had to buy the condoms to protect myself because I knew if I got pregnant it would not be the boys body that changed, it would be mine. And I knew it would not be the boy who had to squeeze a very large baby out of a hole that once hurt to put a tampon in, it would be me. And on top of that it would not be the boy who’s life had to be changed forever, it would be me giving up school and a career to raise the baby alone. The other option would be to go to a clinic and pay for a painful operation that would weigh on my conscience for the rest of my life as I kill my unborn baby. While he would be home playing video games without a care in the world. On top of all of that now every year I had to get my vagina cranked open in a cold room by a male doctor to make sure I was clean. All the while I was waking up earlier than my brother, doing my hair and makeup and choosing an outfit to impress boys and my brother would wake up fifteen minutes before class, fall asleep in the shower for a bit and just run to school as is. This doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of what it means to be a girl and the struggles we all face. But at least I can vote and wear pants now right?
-XOV