The thing is, I gained the college freshman 15 and then the sophomore 10 and the junior 10. My curves filled out, and I had the perfect southern-woman silhouette…and still I wanted to hide.
Yes, I’d been waiting for my Coke-bottle shape since I was eight years old, but I was supposed to have a flat belly and overflowing breasts, too. Instead, the curves came with a little belly that I had to suck in and breasts that were still small (but perky) as hell.
My mother would look at me and my new filled-out shape and become emotional. “You’re such a woman now,” she’d say before commenting on my big legs. Then she’d launch into a series of memories about how little I used to be.
I’d been getting harassed on the street since I was seven years old, so I learned very early on that men will say anything to see how far they can go. That a compliment becomes a threat as soon as you ignore a man. Now, men watched me with even more attention.
Everyone had such different reactions to my changing, late-blooming body, that I kept pulling out my Janet Jackson uniform, kept trying to disappear again into the mystery of all black.
When I was twenty-five, I finally fell in love with my body. I was working out semiregularly. I was exploring casual sex and not worrying about whether men found me marry-able. I loved the power I felt in my body, and then it betrayed me. My spleen spontaneously ruptured, and I had to have emergency surgeries that left me with IBS (irritable bowel syndrome). The PCOS (polycystic ovary syndrome) that had gone undiagnosed since my teenage years began causing me problems, like weight gain, increasingly irregular periods, and other digestive issues. The significant scar from my surgeries sliced my torso in half, from just under my breasts to the top of my pubic area. It moved through my belly button, leaving it crooked and no longer a place for a lover’s tongue. Instead, it left me self-conscious about my body and my wardrobe again. I could no longer wear the crop tops that highlighted my small waist. I had to be careful about bodycon dresses so they wouldn’t show the puffiness of my scar or how one side of my belly had healed weirdly and now sticks out farther than the other in a way that sucking in cannot hide.
Whatever color my wardrobe had gained in the brief time I loved my body was pushed to the side to make room for more black.
Black is slimming. Make me disappear.
Black is slimming. Make me disappear.
If you can’t see me, you can’t see all the ways I’m not perfect.
* * *
I’m older now and more resigned to accept that whatever shape my body is, that’s just its shape. I didn’t want to spend so much of my time stressing over my body. I tried for so long to be invisible, but I’m here. It feels like my life is finally starting, and I want my life to be bright and colorful. I still wear a lot of black, but I love reds, corals, yellows, blues, and purples.
During my midthirties, I compromised with myself and began wearing gray, accentuating it with bright colors. Shortly after my forties began, I joined a clothes styling service at a department store, and every two to three months, a professional stylist would suggest outfits for me. I asked him to give me colors and patterns; otherwise, I’d fall back on old habits. I don’t know that I’ll ever love my body again, but I’m fine with it. My body is a hormonal, shapeless mess, but it’s keeping me alive (and this pussy still yanks, so…I’m good).
Janet Jackson’s Control helped empower my mother to eventually break free from a disastrous marriage. Someone’s gossipy throwaway comment about Janet’s weight and shape sent me on a thirty-year mission of hide-and-seek with my body. That’s not Janet’s fault. I latched on to this comment to gain control over how my body was viewed, but it never really worked. Everyone saw what they wanted to see, even myself.
Softness
your skin was always soft
you stayed moisturized
you was supple
—Text messages from an ex-boyfriend
Sometimes I think about Serena Williams. All the many ways she’s been called masculine because of the shade of her skin, the strength of her arms, the power of her skills while simultaneously being lusted over because of her curvy figure. She wears tutus when she plays, and her wedding had Disney princess flourishes, but because she grunts or displays a temper when treated unfairly, she gets called a man. Serena is so many things—she has a clothing line, makes jewelry, went to school to learn how to do nails—but her focused athleticism intimidates many, so they resort to the laziest insult. Her treatment reminds me that for people who believe gender exists as a binary, there are only absolutes. You are either masculine or you’re feminine, and there’s no room for nuance.
In 2004, Maria Sharapova won Wimbledon against Serena. She has since lost to Serena nineteen times, and yet their relationship has been labeled a rivalry. Sharapova got lucrative brand and modeling deals and made it a point to highlight how she didn’t want to become too muscular while training, a dig at Serena’s build. Despite being six two to Serena’s five nine, Sharapova is seen as the dainty one, the feminine one. Perhaps Sharapova’s fear of being unattractive is why she could not seem to beat Serena again, why Serena has surpassed her to become one of the greatest tennis players of all time. Sharapova was even suspended for over a year for using a forbidden substance, although she played the innocent victim. It could be said that the need for femininity led her to make career-disrupting decisions, and now she’s retired at thirty-three, while Serena, currently thirty-nine, keeps going.
I don’t want an outdated idea of femininity to keep me from being my best self.
* * *
I’m terrible at flirting. I’m too up-front. I don’t want to be coy. *Barney voice*: You like me / I like you / Let’s go see what it do. I’m not particularly smooth and, in fact, can be pretty awkward, but I believe in putting my cards on the table. I don’t want to waste my time. But men like to chase, the world tells me. In my early twenties, my mother and sister would tell me, “Men like to feel like men.” I’m not sure how being up-front about what I want or refusing to deal with bullshit means I’ve changed someone’s entire gender, but that’s the kind of stuff people would repeat ad nauseum so that I would soften up and become more feminine. However, the woman who bats her lashes and plays dumb to impress a guy has never felt good on me. I’ve tried that personality several times, and it pinched me to the point of numbness. Banter is great, but I can volley only so many times before I want to throw down my tennis racket and jump the net, you know?
* * *
When I started kindergarten, Muh’Deah gave me a navy-blue dress with red flowers (or maybe strawberries) all over it. It had cap sleeves and was A-shaped, so it flared out from under my arms and made me look like a little bell, or so I thought. I loved that dress. I was so excited to wear it to school, and my mom loved it, because she’s always liked seeing her children dressed up. She’s been particular about clothes as long as she’s been on this earth. Maybe we didn’t always have a lot of money, but my mom made sure we looked good. She loves shopping for clothes, especially stuff that’s on sale. She’s one of those women who can stick her hands into the messiest clothes rack in a store and pull out the only pretty item marked down to three dollars. Unfortunately, I don’t have that gift.
I went to kindergarten feeling like a pretty little bell. I was a little nervous, too, because it was the first day of real school, not day care, but my sister was in the same building so I felt like everything would be okay. While waiting in line in the cafeteria for lunch, I looked around for Izzie. One of the older students walked by me and said out loud, “I thought that little girl was pregnant!” She and some other girls started laughing and looking at me, and all the pleasure of my little bell dress disappeared. I felt self-conscious and embarrassed, even though I didn’t know why. I spent the rest of lunchtime trying to hide the shape of my dress by folding it under my legs when I sat.
By the time recess came, I had forgotten about my embarrassment in anticipation of the monkey bars. I loved the playground and
swinging as high as I could on the swings. Crossing the monkey bars made me feel like a superhero. I could skip a bar and move so quickly my friends would call me a show-off. Playing outside, I would feel the freedom of the wind against my face as I tried to find the bluest corner of the sky.
I was hanging from one set of bars, waiting for the kids in front of me to move along so I could have my turn to cross. A boy walked up to me and asked if I wanted to be his girlfriend. I said, “No! My mama said we can’t have no boyfriends till we in high school.” I kicked my feet out a little bit so I could have the momentum I’d need to swing forward, and he grabbed one of my legs to hold me in place and ran his other hand up my leg, trying to get to my underwear. I screamed and kicked with my other leg. I yelled out how nasty he was, and I was able to land a kick or two before he let me go. Then I dropped down from the monkey bars and ran to the picnic table where the teachers sat while pretending to watch us.
“Mrs. S, that boy tried to touch my privacy!” I declared, pointing a shaky finger at him. He had scared me. Nobody was supposed to touch me anywhere my clothes covered, so why did he do that? I could tell my teacher wanted to laugh, and the other women at the table turned their smiles away. I couldn’t understand: Why was everyone laughing at me? I just wanted to look pretty in my dress and fly free on the monkey bars. But somehow I had become a joke. It didn’t make sense.
By the time I got home, I’d resolved never to wear that dress, or any other dress, to school ever again. Little girls are supposed to wear dresses, but in my mind, it gave people permission to make fun of me and to make me uncomfortable with my own body. That boy had put his hands on me, and even though I’d fought back, I had been worried about how I could control the situation without exposing my panties, because that’s another rule: Little girls have to wear dresses, but make sure no one can see your “imagination.” (That’s country old folks talk for your coochie, as in “Nicki, pull your dress down. I can see your imagination.”) Wearing dresses came with too many rules, and even if you did nothing wrong, you could still end up violated somehow. So in my little-girl mind, I vowed: No more dresses at school.
Now, Mama will tell you she still put me in dresses for school, but the way I remember it is fighting and fussing to wear pants and shorts. I’d wear dresses to church, but that was it. One time, my grandfather bought me a floofy pink dress for my birthday, and when I pulled it out of the box I said, in as disgusted a tone as an eight-year-old can manage, “Another dress?” Mama pulled me into the kitchen, under the guise of fixing drinks for everyone, and talked to me, so I had to come back out and apologize and tell Gran’daddy I really liked it.
My refusal to wear dresses or let Mama buy me flower-print anything was my own personal rebellion against the patriarchy, even though I hadn’t heard of that word yet. When I protested, Mama would try to cajole me: “Don’t you want to look pretty? Don’t you want to look like a cute little girl?” Meanwhile, I was thinking, What would I look like in pants? Am I only cute, only a girl in a dress? I’m a girl all the time no matter what I wear! My sister is the opposite. Izzie played with dolls and collected Barbie stuff while I chewed my Barbie dolls’ hands and feet and broke their legs so I could see their “bones.” Izzie wore dresses regularly and played in makeup. She enjoyed going to church and sang in the choir. She waved at strangers and always had a nice smile for people. She could talk to anyone, and everyone would tell Mama what a little lady Izzie was. I was not a little lady.
The thing is, I wasn’t even a tomboy. Southern folks can excuse a lack of ladylike behavior if you’re athletic, good with your hands, or something along those lines. If you’re a girl with a masculine presentation, it has to have a purpose that still serves others. If you’re an athlete, you can help bring in a school championship. If you can fix cars, you can give people discounts or keep the family car going. And even though it might make them frown up or think nasty thoughts, people can understand if a woman dresses like a boy and likes girls; if you want to look like a man, it makes a certain kind of sense you wanted to “act like a man” in other ways. But if you don’t like wearing dresses and you don’t act like a tomboy and you’re attracted to men but don’t dress like you want to attract men, no one knows how to classify you. They just know you’re lacking somehow.
No one could figure me out, and because of it, I felt like I didn’t belong anywhere. I don’t like playing sports. I abandoned track in junior high, because I felt like my time was better occupied by reading. I devoured romance novels but did little else to validate my femininity. How could I like romance novels, the ultimate sign of empty-headed girliness, but not wear dresses or like the color pink? When my classmates started paying attention to the paperbacks in my bookbag, they’d laugh before saying I didn’t seem like the type to like “those kinds of books.” I showed them the pages where I’d underlined all the sex scenes in red, and that seemed to explain everything. I was a flat-chested, skinny, bucktoothed, four-eyed girl with terrible hairstyles that no boy was really interested in, and yet I turned everything into a discussion about sex. I didn’t fit neatly into any box.
When I finally became shapely like a woman and started wearing dresses willingly, I was told that they were the wrong dresses—too short, too tight. And that my red lipstick was inappropriate. I finally looked like a girl but the wrong kind of girl. First, too boyish, and now, too womanly. When would my body ever be right?
Serena Williams has faced similar hypocritical judgments. During the 2018 French Open, she once wore an athletic jumpsuit that covered her entire body, leaving only her face and arms visible, and was scolded for dressing too provocatively. Never mind that she wore the jumpsuit because the compression garment was helping her manage a serious medical condition. People could see her bold curves, and it made them uncomfortable. How could they say she’s too masculine while warning her to cover the shape of her breasts and ass? What does it mean that they could possibly be turned on by the body of a woman they swear is unattractive? All of these internal biases projected onto Serena’s exterior encroach upon her life and mine. They all send a clear picture: People expect women to be everything at once, and there is no way to please everyone.
I was in New York and freelancing when this unnecessary uproar happened, and it instantly jolted me back to an episode from my previous more traditional work life. I was an administrative assistant and was wearing gray slacks from The Limited and a pink oxford shirt with cuffed sleeves. My department was having a meeting, and I stood to give my report. My booty was in serious poke-out mode, and the slacks emphasized its shape. An older woman, a department head’s executive assistant, tutted loudly at me, rolled her eyes, and turned away with a huff. Several people around us noted her actions and widened their eyes. She went red in the face, and I self-consciously pulled at my shirt to make sure it was in place, only to realize that she was simply disgusted by the shape of my ass, annoyed that the body I had was not unremarkable.
* * *
I knew what I wanted: to hide away from judging eyes, to reject the expectations of what a woman had to look like to be respected, while being soft and naughty and femme underneath it all for me and mine (but mostly for me). As much as I loved Prince, I could never pull off androgyny like he did, and I didn’t want to appear androgynous, but I did draw on his attitude of doing what suited him—fuck everybody else. After years of being assessed and found lacking somehow, I decided I would please myself. I knew I’d never be fashionable enough or shaped right or properly dressed, so I began to pay attention to the parts of me that only those granted intimacy would know. I resented people trying to be the authority on my body. A quick scan, and they think they know you.
Beneath Serena’s tennis skirts, she is a Disney princess. Beneath my all-black attire, beneath the T-shirt and jeans, I wear the sheerest, sexiest underwear I can find. I’ve never really cared for perfume, but I rub scented lotion into my thighs, so that every time I go to the bathroom, I smell the extra sweetness of m
e and want to kiss my damn self. While my sister played in makeup as a child, I played in my mother’s scented lotions. Today, I exfoliate my skin with loofahs to make it as soft as possible. I also use shower gloves and body scrubs. My mother and sister tease me about how greasy I am because I keep my body so well moisturized. I will definitely leave cocoa- and mango-butter handprints on every slick surface. Someone out there will try to tell me I shouldn’t do so much to my skin, but please keep that crunchy-skin nonsense to yourself.
In my late thirties, I was diagnosed with some kind of adult-onset eczema due to stress. (I really hated my job at the time.) Not to be too dramatic about it, but I cried. Patches of dry, bruised-looking skin decorated my arms, thighs, and cheeks. My skin, my secret weapon of mass femininity, was betraying me. It was the thing I always answered whenever anyone asked, “What do you like most about your body?” When I’m getting to know someone on a dating app, I like to ask what their favorite compliment is that they’ve received from an ex. Sometimes they say something sweet but boring like, “I’m good at making them laugh.” Sometimes they say what they think I want to hear: “I was the first person to make her come.” (Sure, dude.) Whatever they answer, they send the question back to me, and I say, “Well, I’ll tell you my second favorite…” I won’t tell them my top compliment because I don’t want them to regurgitate it. The best thing, my most favorite compliment, is to tell me how soft my skin is, but I want it to be organic. I want to surprise a lover with how much he wants to keep touching me.
Sometimes I Trip On How Happy We Could Be Page 7