On Being Female

I've been thinking about my body a lot lately. It's not that I want to, it's that my body keeps reminding me of itself. When I was twelve, my cousin, who is a pediatrician, gave me a book entitled What's Happening to My Body. It told me everything I needed to know about puberty, except for the fact that teenage boys are also insecure about their bodies, though they are a lot better at covering it up. That guy with the big ego I was ready to die for? Totally compensating. Anyway, I wish that the authors of this book would have written a book for women in their twenties, because the slowing down of one's metabolism definitely alters the shape of one's... shape. Only I had no clue that all of one's fat could be stored in one's rear. I still look like an adolescent boy, but one with twin watermelons affixed to his hind end.

You know how when a skinny woman is pregnant, they say that she looks like a toothpick with an olive on it? Well, that's kind of how I look now. Except that the olive is reversed and a little lower, and I've got two of them.

I don't mind it especially, but it came up recently because I am practicing a lot with an all-female group of dancers for a performance next Sunday. Now let me explain about my being a dancer: I am not in any way a trained dancer. I took obligatory dance classes as a child, but in my teenage years, the only art of dance I perfected was in the mosh pit. (I found release for my pent-up hormonal rage there, until one day the sword medallion hanging from my dog collar hit me in the trachea and it dawned on me that while smashing into other people, I might actually get hurt.) My general idea of dancing is waggling my hips around and maybe adding some arm action if I'm feeling lively. I enjoy it, but mostly because I am so bad at it. So this past fall, I joined the dance ministry at my church. Maybe I thought I deserved the humiliation. As I have blogged before, I am a glutton for punishment.

This is how it came to pass that I was sitting around with a group of all-female dancers yesterday. For some reason, our rehearsals often end in a rap session about the fight against body hair and cellulite. One of my dancer friends, who is very beautiful and intelligent, revealed her deep longing for skinnier ankles, pressing on either side of her calves to indicate the look she wished to achieve. I love to complain about my body parts, too, mostly because of my love for the plaintive voice. So we had a good time talking about feet and eyebrows and double-jointed elbows, and of course my infamous "bubble butt," as my friend so delicately put it (but she swears it looks good on me). Then I wondered why we were wasting our valuable rehearsal time on such nonsense.

What conclusions did I draw from the experience? Women don't just complain about their bodies because of their low self-esteem. Many of us enjoy maligning the body parts we love best, or ones we simply love to hate. I think the fairer sex is definitely endowed with more of a critical eye, and when we're bored, we turn it on ourselves. Identify ten things that are wrong with this picture. Aha! I found thirty-two! It's a point of pride that we can recognize our slight flaws, such as one ear that is three millimeters lower than the other. And we can then tell all our friends, who will be annoyed with us because they can find even more things wrong with themselves. Unlike men, we compare our flaws to prove how perceptive we are. It's a much more intellectual breed of vanity than most people would assume. Some women don't enjoy turning the critical eye on themselves as much as others, while some are just too busy using it on their significant others, but we all have a natural aptitude for it. That is the real reason why women buy Cosmo. Personally I don't need any help sharpening my critical eye. It's like a laser-guided missile, or perhaps a boomerang.

I apologize for discussing my rear end so much in this post. It's simply for the purpose of illustration. Also, it's just that big.

B.S.