How do you greet your body after giving birth?
This chapter is from the book “Healing Childbirth”
How do you greet your body after childbirth? With condemnation? With negative negation? With the desire to urgently change this? Or with acceptance? With love? Gratitude? What thought and what emotion flashes through your head first?
You know how painful it can be to hear women who hate their bodies. Who don’t want to look at themselves in the mirror, calling themselves a fat cow or pig... Who are ready to immediately go under the surgeon’s knife, starve themselves, who remember pregnancy with the same hatred... But this body just gave life to another person, played a huge and important role... How can this be devalued or not taken into account? And how can you not be grateful for this?
I'm not a fan of the British royal family, but I really, really respect Meghan Markle for her first post-baby appearance, when she - consciously or not - emphasized her postpartum belly. And she showed that this is normal. That the stomach does not go away in the blink of an eye, even for the “chosen ones”. Although she was labeled for this - and by “good women.” We are all created the same by nature. Give yourself time. Give your body gratitude and warmth.
We all want to be beautiful. This is a natural desire for every woman. To be beautiful. Be loved.
But sometimes we give up and give up. We look at ourselves in the mirror and tell ourselves, this is terrible and I can’t do anything about it. This is the point. Beginning of the End. The point at which you lose your beauty. When your attitude towards your body becomes indifferent, contemptuous, hateful.
No, the point is not to fight as hard as you can over and over again. It’s not about necessarily doing something about your “ugliness” - be it excess weight, stretch marks, diastasis or painful thinness, sagging breasts or scars, wrinkles or dark circles under the eyes.
Such a struggle - frantic and with bitterness - is a signal that the relationship with the body is far from friendly. This is a signal of internal pain, a symptom of a disease of the soul. And the further you go, the more difficult it is to live with such a disease.
The point is to learn to look at your body with eyes full of love. Love, acceptance and compassion.
And out of love and compassion, out of gratitude - to help your body, which has come a long way. In any condition - look with gratitude! This is generally a wonderful and wonderful body that serves you faithfully and brings amazing gifts.
Your body is not the problem! And you and your body have encountered a problem together - and together you are trying to solve it. You are together. On one side of the barricades. Do you understand? You help him become healthier, feel better, be more energetic, and recover. To do this, you choose the best food for him, take him for an active walk, take him for a massage, and for other procedures. To do this, you cleanse it, support it with superfoods, and rest on time. Out of love! Not out of hatred or shame!
Shame and hatred will only exacerbate problems and make the path to health longer and more difficult. And even if your body is never 100 percent the same as before giving birth, that's no reason to hate it. It can become even more beautiful. You will not have another body, and this helped you become a mother. What could be more important?
So greet your postpartum body with love! With tenderness! With care! With trepidation! How would you greet your child after difficult exams or a marathon race?
With love. With care. With thanks! And it will answer you in kind. Gradually, not immediately, of course. Take your time! Give your body time. Give him care. And learn to be grateful to him ❤
A woman who hates her body
This is a chapter from a book. As in the entire series, this is a collective image from different stories of completely different girls. I combined it for greater brightness, and so that this collective image could touch different souls. And although it is written in the first person, this is not my story, although there are my “pieces” in it.
I hate my body. Since childhood, it has brought me only disappointments and troubles.
When I was little, everyone was taller, and they teased me about being short. I remember asking my mother how you could grow up quickly, and my mother joked that you had to hang upside down on the horizontal bar. And I hung there every day, taking it seriously. It hung and hung and grew. And now I’m the tallest in my class, now they tease me with a tower and a big head. I again hated my naughty body, which had grown more than necessary and at absolutely the wrong time.
It always seemed to me that my body was my enemy. It always brought surprises and most often unpleasant ones. Pimples and colds on the lips on the eve of a date. Or the freckles that I bleached every spring. Breasts that grew before anyone else. A butt that was either too flat or too fat. Hands are hooks, legs are ropes. They called my legs either chicken legs, matches, or a bicycle.
And there’s no way to get out of this body, no way to get rid of it, and it doesn’t want to negotiate.
I remember how I frantically squeezed out pimples, leaving scars on my skin. How I brutally tore the hair off my legs, enduring the wild pain almost with pleasure - I took revenge on my stormy body for all my suffering, but the hair grew back. The body doesn’t want to be friends with me, it eats more than it needs and at the most inopportune moment, and then it all lays out on the sides, and completely unevenly.
Was it really impossible to be born normal and beautiful? My sister looks like my mother and is beautiful. And the eyes are big, and the nose is neat, and the hair on the body does not grow. And I'm daddy's daughter. A huge snob, narrow eyes and increased hairiness. Where is justice in this world?
Mom and sister always laughed at dad and me, calling us eagles for our profile. And they also teased us with furry things. And many sympathized with me. Once, my grandmother, while collecting my thin three hairs on my head (that’s why it’s not the other way around - it would be better to have a bunch of hair on my head and nothing on my body!), sympathized, saying, you’re unlucky, you look like your father, if only you were a beautiful sister, it would be easier to get married there was time to go out, but now there’s nothing to do. You will have to live and suffer. This is where I live. And I suffer.
Dad always looked at me guiltily, saying, I’m sorry, it happened this way, I didn’t mean to. At some early age, my mother realized that in girls’ clothes I looked like a monkey, and she stopped even trying and silently sympathized. She taught me to put on makeup, hiding facial imperfections, but I quickly realized that my entire face was one continuous flaw.
No, my body is definitely my enemy. I had to fight him all the time.
Acne, excess hair, then excess weight, too thin legs and too fat butt. In addition, this body always fell ill when it was not appropriate. Either during exams, then during the holidays, even at my wedding, I walked with a fever.
The longer this body and I live together, the more I hate it. During pregnancy, I was a huge barge that would not fit through any doorway. And of course, after giving birth, the state of my body is to hug and cry. Or rather, cry and hate. It's too much of an honor to hug him. I hate these stupid stretch marks that immediately came out and turned me into a striped tiger, no matter what I smeared on them. Those drooping sides and belly that just don’t want to be the same as before. These saggy huge breasts that fill the whole bed with milk every night, and you have to sleep in a puddle. My arms have become huge from carrying a child, my back is like a wheel, there are bruises under my eyes, my hair is falling out in clumps. Beautiful, me too!
The husband got himself a young and beautiful woman and left. My son is on edge, and I have to work day and night to survive. Work where they pay well, although this is not my thing at all. There is no man and there is no sign of it. Who needs me so scary and already “used”? No one.
I hated my body and starved it, but it still didn’t lose weight. The extra pounds have stuck tightly, and no matter what you do, it’s useless. I went to the most brutal weight loss massages and got results, but then immediately relieved stress with the most disgusting crap I could get my hands on. Either burgers, or chocolate cake, or fried potatoes. It was impossible to stop. And then I went for a massage again, where my whole body was covered with bruises. I abused my body no less in the gym with weights and barbells, but it stood its ground. He didn’t give anything away, he didn’t make contact. And I stopped trying, now I just don’t look in the mirror and only wear black and baggy clothes.
When I have to go to the beach, I experience a lot of stress. I'm looking for a swimsuit that will pull it all in and hide it. But so far I haven’t found anything like it. And I probably won’t find it. That’s why I don’t like to relax at sea.
When everyone is taking pictures, I want to sink into the ground so as not to spoil the overall photo with my fat and scary body. I always look worse than everyone else in photographs, no matter how hard I try.
I hate my body. It's mocking me. Another body would have agreed to cooperate a long time ago and would have lost weight and become toned, but this is not at all.
Also wrinkles. Oh, I'm only thirty, and I have wrinkles on my forehead. Mom told me not to wrinkle my forehead! But no, and now I’m thirty, and I’m already thinking about going for some injections or something. Let them poke this stupid body with needles, since it doesn’t want to be good. Stupid and ugly body!
I hate my body and it hates me back. And the longer I live, the colder our relationship becomes. It seems to me that other bodies are more accommodating and nicer. And mine becomes only a source of disappointment and pain.
But I can’t change anything, I can’t come to the market and exchange bodies with someone. I can lie under a surgeon’s scalpel, but I have a suspicion that this hatred will not go away, and I will always find something to hate about my body. It's like I'm trapped in a space I don't like. But you can’t go out.
Sometimes it seems to me that all my other problems - in relationships with men, with finding my own business, with a child - begin at the point when I decided to hate my body. But I guess it's just my imagination. What does this have to do with the body!
Olga Valyaeva — valyaeva.ru
Five imposed myths about the female body that distance us from true sexuality
Trigger: Sexual Assault
One morning in my early twenties, I woke up to the guy I considered my sexual partner pushing his boner into my thigh.
I hate it when guys do that.
Before I even had time to open my eyes, he was already on top of me and trying to pull my shorts off.
“Wait,” I say, suppressing a yawn. - I’m not ready yet.
He glanced sideways in confusion: it seemed that all these metaphors about “warming up” had passed him by.
-What do you want me to do? - he asked. — Should I kiss you or what?
I can already imagine how at this moment all my readers with vaginas raise their hand to their faces from the hopelessness of the whole situation.
Actually, yes, I need to be “kissed or something.” But he believed (as is often the case) that my body worked in ways it didn't, and that acknowledging my needs was "moving him away from his goal."
And although this is just one particular case, the idea is that all my life I have heard from every corner: “Your body should be such and such. This is exactly what will definitely attract any man.”
Hello patriarchy! So that's the meeting!
There are a million ways patriarchal oppression can manifest itself in relation to women's bodies and sexuality. Our bodies are controlled by diet, reproductive rights and street harassment. And sexuality in general is limited by a bunch of things: from the idea of “virgin/whore” to the fetishization of our queer identity.
Intersecting, these questions only become more complex, because all those myths about the body that society imposes on us affect how we express our a/sexuality.
Women have long been turned into objects to satisfy men's desires and pleasures. We have been deprived of the ability to know ourselves through the prism of our experience and replaced with stereotypes rooted in the mass consciousness, which are saturated with misconceptions.
How then do you think we should express our a/sexuality if our relationship with our bodies is destroyed by societal standards?
But, unfortunately, this is exactly how infringement works: it depersonalizes us.
Despite the fact that we differ from the “ideal image”, patriarchy continues to brainwash us into how we should look and behave, thereby depriving a person of the right to a physical and a/sexual self.
We are fed these bitter lies, and we begin to doubt our reality, when we should be worried about the system. So let's look at the five most common myths that women are told and realize that they are complete nonsense.
Myth 1: If you have a vagina, it must look “appropriate”
Let's start with the fact that not all women have vaginas and not all people with vaginas are women. That's it, period. Genitals and gender are not inherently related. If you want more details, I suggest you go here.
A vagina is not an indicator that you are a woman. And just because you're feminine doesn't mean you have a vagina.
Because of these ideas, violence against trans women is considered “normal” and even encouraged in our society.
But even if you are a woman with a vagina, from every iron they dictate to you what your “pussy” should look like. Unfortunately, beauty standards have gotten into our damn panties.
© Giulia Bersani
But listen: your vulva is beautiful, no matter what it looks like. I give you my head to cut off - hairy, spotted, asymmetrical or with pimples, it is magnificent.
The stereotypical myth about the vulva is very biased. “She should be small. It should be narrow. It should be smooth and no hair. The labia minora should not peek out...” Yeah, of course, they ran away! It sounds like society is trying to organize our bodies: take up less space and pack as much space as possible...Sucks!
Even more “fun” is that the vulva “should” be pink. And this is racism, since the vaginal mucosa can only be pink if you are white.
And in general, everything related to the appearance of the vulva has been sucked out of thin air.
So, if someone says that your womb looks strange or you yourself think so, know that such a vision is imposed by society. And now let's go with these three-letter stereotypes.
Myth 2: Breasts are the most important part and they must be perfect
Am I repeating myself again? Okay: not every woman has breasts, and not every person who has breasts is a woman.
This is especially noticeable for people from the trans community. However, there is another group that we often forget about, but which is nevertheless negatively affected by false ideas: women who have had a mastectomy.
By associating breasts with femininity, we create tension among women with breast cancer. While trying to save their life, they lose that part of the body that is closely related to gender determination.
And breast cancer awareness campaigns are taking full advantage of this. You know what I'm talking about: those dirty pink bracelets that say "I (heart) breasts" that are sort of dedicated to this issue. Now let's look at the situation through the eyes of men.
The fact that "Save Second Base" was used as a slogan shows everything you need to know about who breasts are made for, so to speak. Forget about saving your life. At all costs, save what you can touch. [Note: here we are talking about American dating culture, where the first “base” is kissing with the tongue, the second is feeling your partner’s chest through clothes].
In fact, breasts or the “lack of them” are cool simply because they are natural. Flat, saggy or hanging, pointed or asymmetrical - good in any form.
© Giulia Bersani
They tell you that “ideal boobs” are huge round and elastic balls with pink, straight-out nipples and without any stretch marks. Yes, this is bullshit!
The nipples point downwards to help breastfeed babies. Stretch marks appear due to sudden rapid growth. Veins, hair, scars... All this is possible due to the fact that the breast is made of skin, and our roundness sag due to, damn it, gravity.
The only problem is that we are always waiting for something else.
In short: orgasm is awesome, no matter how it manifests itself. Moreover, it's cool even if you don't have one.
For some reason, it is believed that orgasm for people with vaginas is a mystery shrouded in darkness. We talk about him as if he were a puzzle like a Rubik's cube. You won’t believe how many people have told how their partners reproached them that there was “something wrong” with them because they orgasmed “somehow unusually” or did not orgasm at all.
But the truth is that we have a very limited understanding of what an orgasm should actually look like. All these piercing screams and loud sighs, blurred glances and squeezing of the sheet, the ecstasy that he “entered”, as they say, “half a lump”... Damn, you can’t even call it a myth - just window dressing.
© Giulia Bersani
Most people with vaginas cannot achieve orgasm through penetration alone. Some experience light waves of pleasure instead of violent ecstasy with fireworks and fanfare. Some may experience multiple orgasms, while others go through a refractory period similar to people with penises. Some vaginas ejaculate. Some people just don't orgasm.
The main thing to remember is that all of the above are manifestations of orgasm.
Myth 4: Fat should make us feel ashamed and disgusted.
Stop and listen: Every person on this earth has jiggly jellies. If we didn't have body fat, we would simply die.
But despite the fact that body fat exists to support life, there is an unjustified hatred of it in the culture. It is a fat stigma that is associated with oppression based on size.
This is nothing more than the marginalization and exploitation of fat people, ingrained in everyday life and in social institutions. And hatred of them as a group makes us afraid of even a little fat on our body.
Unsurprisingly, this is especially true for people with ovaries, many of whom are women. After all, it is the ovaries that are responsible for the production of estrogen, a hormone that affects the body’s production of fat cells, especially in the hips, buttocks, sides and chest.
© Giulia Bersani
And this stupid fear of the natural processes of our body plays precisely into the hands of capitalism.
Let's take cellulite, for example. This **** is a complete fabrication. Up to 98% of women (or people with ovaries) have orange peel on their bodies, and it's just one way fat can look on the surface of the skin. Nothing more than a natural physiological phenomenon - and yet a “cure” for cellulite on every shelf!
We pathologize the female body. We invent dysfunction and disease where there is none. We panic, thereby causing self-loathing. Is it any wonder that a third of women have difficulty achieving orgasm because they are too focused on how they look?
Fat is normal. It's okay to be fat. Learn to love yourself.
Myth 5: Your body is not a human body at all, so don’t let it function
I once heard a story about a man having anal sex with a woman. He was shocked by the fact that when he came out of the partner, his penis turned out to be... how to say, a little dirty. Laughing with his friends at this “curiosity,” he complained about how disgusting it was to see feces in such an intimate moment, and his friends shook their heads approvingly, saying that this woman clearly sucked.
And here is another story about an unsuccessful date of a young girl who somehow turned to me. When she was giving her partner a blowjob, his unit entered her mouth too deeply and... long live the gag reflex... the girl vomited. Right on the guy's lap. She said she was depressed and asked how she could avoid meeting the “victim” again.
Of course, such moments can be quite unexpected and awkward, but, damn it, this does not mean at all that this is something abnormal.
In fact, sometimes our bodies do strange things. We cough. We sneeze. We hiccup. We spit and drool. We burp and fart, sometimes even with our vagina. We have periods. We pee and poop. Sometimes we vomit, cry, squirt, leak.
This happens to everyone who has a body.
*** All of the above, and even more, is something that many would be embarrassed to do in the midst of sex. But these are just physiological functions of our body that are performed regularly or even daily. The main problem is that everyone thinks women don't do this.
We are believed to be “the fairer sex,” and our beauty is wrapped in this goddess-like purity—a concept that has historically been used as a synonym for purity and lack of physiological needs.
Avoiding sex and food is commendable for a woman, while men are allowed to eat both.
But the idea of this purity is unfair, since it simply does not exist.
It is inhumane to deny women's bodies the ability to simply exist. When we view women as sexual objects, we do not see them as human beings.
We cannot truly express our a/sexuality if we are uncomfortable with our body, how it looks and how it functions.
We need to create an environment where we collect all the views that society has put in our heads, erase them to hell and finally reunite with our bodies and with ourselves.
Virgie Tovar once wrote: “When we teach women to be ashamed of their bodies, we deny them the opportunity to experience sexual pleasure and exercise sexual freedom.”
Therefore, it’s time to win yours back.
*** Melissa A. Fabello is a feminist writer and speaker on body politics, beauty culture, and eating disorders. Her work addresses topics in recovery from eating disorders. She also fights against size oppression and brings a small dose of radical views to the popular body positivity movement. She is a PhD candidate in human sexuality at Widener University. Find out more about her work (and sign up for her newsletter!) on the website. Also follow her on Twitter @fyeahmfabello.
