Yay... Cramps...

My relationship with my body when I was younger? Hmmm… I guess it wasn’t the worst. Of course I dreamed of a perfect flat tummy like some of the girls around me. You know who I’m talking about, the naturally thin girls, the girls that claimed to NEVER work out. I hated them for their natural thinness. It wasn’t that I had an urge to be thinner, I just liked the idea of a super flat stomach, and I still do. But I never dwelled on it too much, and I don’t now. I didn’t have weight problems as a young girl. The only time I came close to that was the time during puberty where you are not fitting in junior sizes anymore, but you are still too young for regular sizes. That was pretty frustrating. I remember crying in the fitting room with my mother when nothing from the junior department seemed to fit, and I couldn’t wear any of the clothing from the women’s department. That was no fun. In the article about models being so thin, one of the experts referenced how even in Greek sculptures and paintings a thin figure is idealized. I could be wrong about this, but if I remember correctly from my humanities classes, the Greeks and Romans actually preferred women soft and supple. This can be seen in many sculptures of the goddess Venus. I think this is something that should be brought to attention.

Oh the wonderful blessing of having a period! My first experience was not bad. My mother is a nurse so I was lucky. I had trouble putting tampons in a first, so for my first few menstrual cycles I used pads. I HATED them! I will never wear pads again. They made me feel like everyone knew I was on my period. Now the only thing I’ve come to feel toward my period is a slight bitterness and a sense of humor about it. Guys act so freaked out when it is talked about around them. I try to explain that, in my experience at least, women just become numb to it. I don’t have a problem talking about every bloody detail because I am so used to it now. It’s just this crappy thing I have to deal with every once in a while where I get extra emotional, extra sleepy, extra hungry, and have to deal with this nagging pain in my lower back and pelvic area. Then there is the planning. How many tampons should I bring to work? Should I bring an emergency one to school? Is it light enough to move to a smaller size? To me it just plain sucks, but I am proud to be a woman, so I will deal with it! I don’t think men could handle having something like a period! (;

I don’t think girls are educated enough about their bodies. There are told that these crazy changes are going to happen during puberty, and it all seems to be very mysterious. Some of the websites we looked at this week could definitely help. I would have killed for a website like Gurl.com and Scarleteen. Girls need to be taught to embrace their bodies, no matter what shape or size. Puberty is presented in such a black and white way in schools. It doesn’t deal with the emotional side. Maybe if girls were presented with an idea of the emotional hurtles of puberty it wouldn’t be so bad. I think if there were a way for girls with similar body types to connect it might be easier. Society has turned menstrual cycles into a gross thing. It has made it so girls feel shame when they are going through puberty and having their period. If a woman gets emotional it is often followed by a comment like, “Oh it must be PMS.” I HATE that. I know young women now who are afraid to even say tampon out loud in front of a guy. Guess what guys!? We don’t love our period and we don’t think it’s super fun. It’s something that we have to deal with, and it’s part of being a women. So just leave us alone about it. If we happen to get emotional please don’t ask us if we are on the rag! You might get punched.