I didn't realize I was supposed to be ashamed
0 Comments Published by ginny on Thursday, May 26, 2011 at 2:20 PM.
I’ve been thinking this morning about a curious experience: the moment you realize you didn’t know you were supposed to be ashamed of something.
Now, I’m no stranger to shame. The element I swim in is shame. I know shame as the first, the foundational experience of being: I am I…and I am wrong. And yet there have been a few times in my life in which I have suddenly realized that I was not ashamed of something that everyone else had, by consensus, decided was shameful.
And the curious thing about that experience is that the kind of embarrassment I feel resulting from it is qualitatively different from my normal, foundational shame. It’s not nearly as powerful. It makes me angry. I recognize it as a constructed thing, one I can choose to bow to, but one I don’t have to obey. A few examples:
I am in the class play in fifth grade. We are all getting ready for the play and changing into our costumes, the boys in one classroom, the girls in another. Once the boys leave, I simply take off my shirt to begin putting my costume on. Melanie, next to me, is aghast. “Whoa!” she says. “You just whipped that thing off! Everyone! She’s not shy! She’s just going to get undressed right in front of everyone!”
Now the thing was, I was shy. I simply didn’t realize that some magical barrier had been crossed wherein you were suddenly supposed to be embarrassed about showing your body in front of other girls. I was ten. At nine, at eight, little girls were supposed to be no-nonsense about these things. You just did what you had to do regarding your clothes. But suddenly that had changed. None of us had hit puberty yet, so it wasn’t that. It was a social barrier that I simply hadn’t realized was there until – Wham! – I ran straight up against it.
When Melanie called me out, I immediately began crouching down to change the rest of my clothes. She made fun of me – “Why are you hiding now?” – but even at the time I knew that it was her problem, not mine. I hadn’t liked being called out in front of all the other girls, but I knew, really, that there was nothing weird about changing into your costume for the school play in front of the other girls when it came to be changing-into-your-costume time.
Incidentally, Melanie was not normally mean at all. Although she was a well-liked person, she wasn’t one of the queen bees, nor was she a bully. I think I simply made her uncomfortable. Years later, she came out as a lesbian. This memory may have nothing at all to do with that, but I wonder if perhaps at around that time she might have been realizing that she herself was “different,” as so many queer people do at that time in life, and if perhaps that was a small part of her discomfort. Or maybe her parents had taught her to be ashamed of changing in front of people. Who knows?
What’s interesting about the memory is that, unlike most of the memories I have of embarrassing myself, it doesn’t bring with it a rush of queasy self-hatred and pain. It’s a memory I can look at dispassionately, with some sadness and some humour.
I’m in tenth grade biology class. The teacher, Mr M., is talking about genetics. He’s explaining one-gene traits – things that are phenotypically different on people based on Mendelian inheritance. One of these is having attached earlobes, so he first has everyone check themselves and their neighbours: attached earlobes are dominant, detached are recessive, so you know if you have detached earlobes that both of your parents must have the gene.
Another of these traits is having hair on your fingers and toes. Now, having hair is the dominant trait – if even one of your parents has the gene for hair, you will have it. Because of that, it predominates. Mr. M. asks the class, “So, who has this trait?” I raise my hand – perhaps quite quickly, since I’m excited by the lesson – and in the split second after I raise it, I realize I am the only girl who has done so. Even among the boys, only one or two confident tricksters have their hands laconically raised.
A nervous snicker goes around the classroom. I realize immediately that I have made a mistake. I was supposed to be ashamed of having small hairs on my fingers and toes, but I simply didn’t realize it.
Now here’s the thing. I already know, from the lesson -- everybody knows from the lesson – that the majority of people in the classroom will have small hairs on their fingers and toes. It’s a dominant trait. And yet, the rest of the girls and most of the boys have learned, by conspiracy, it seems, that they have to be ashamed of this hair. It is not to be admitted. It is unfeminine. It is embarrassing.
Of course I was embarrassed. That’s one reason I remember the incident. But I was also angry, even right then. Normally, if I had been shamed in front of my classmates, something that had happened many times, I would have reacted with overwhelming fear and self-loathing. I would have wanted to run through the wall. I would have imagined doing desperate harm to myself.
But this time, somehow, I knew that their reaction was simply so unreasonable. I was sixteen years old. I shaved my legs and my armpits on a daily basis, something that I have since realized I will likely do every single day of the rest of my life (also unreasonable, but a topic for another time). I was deeply ashamed of the fine hairs on my upper lip that I didn’t know how to control. I knew that there were areas in which women had to control their body hair.
But on my toes? The few hairs on my goddamn toes? This everyone else was conspiring to hide? It was just silly! You can barely even see the things unless you look close. And then there was the fact that everyone was lying about it. Everyone knew women shaved their legs. It’s not like we were all pretending that we didn’t have hair there. But when it came to Mr M., asking in the course of the lesson, for a group of sixteen-year-olds to admit to a completely inconsequential, vastly prevalent evolutionary holdover, none of them but me did so.
This is the most recent experience, the one that got me thinking about this topic again this morning: I was twenty-four or so before I realized that all women were supposed to shave all or part of their pubic hair. (Sorry, I know this is kind of TMI. So be it.)
This is a realization born of the internet. Of course I was aware of “bikini waxes,” and while I didn’t necessarily know what a Brazilian wax entailed, I knew it was a thing. And I knew that before wearing said bikinis, many women might make sure the area around them was shorn. I knew all this.
What I didn’t know was that every woman was now supposed to do these things – and that she was supposed to do them all the time, not just at the beach. I remember it vividly, the realization that most women had been doing daily maintenance on these areas every day for years. Here I was, an adult woman who’d had sex with a number of people, and all along my pubic area had been weird, a statement of political beliefs, unkempt.
“Of course, I keep the area tidy,” all these women were commenting on blog posts about the subject, and I thought “What does that mean?! I had no idea it was untidy!” Because I didn’t much wear bikinis, and I didn’t much pose nude, and I didn’t much worry about stray hairs creeping out from under my clothes, I didn’t think I had to do anything with it at all. That was just how it was.
And the other thing was that no one had commented. People had been seeing my naked body for years, and no one had told me I was weird or out of step with the mainstream. None of the people I’d slept with had expressed surprise, even silently.
All of which led me to think “bullshit!” Bullshit to the immense and uncomfortable extra work it requires. Bullshit to the huge extra expense of getting professional waxing every three weeks. (According to my calculations, that’s a whopping $867 extra dollars a woman who regularly sees a waxer pays every single year.) Bullshit to the idea that there is anything untidy, unkempt, or dirty about this area in its natural state. And most of all bullshit to the idea that everyone does this
It’s been a few years now, and I still can’t believe that overnight this has really become a thing that every woman does. I simply can’t believe it. I know it wasn’t that prevalent when I was a teenager or when I was in college. I saw other women naked during those times and while I certainly wasn’t staring in a place like a high school locker room, as keyed in as a young teenager is to her body being weird, I think I would have noticed if I was significantly out of step with the mainstream.
I can’t believe that in a matter of four or five years this went from one option among many to something you’d be weird not to do. I think people are exaggerating. And I think that there must be lots and lots of women who, like me, were hit with the realization that they didn’t realize they were supposed to be embarrassed about it, and simply never speak up when these discussions arise – either that or they pretend they were always part of the “tidy” crowd. And it’s bullshit. And it makes me angry.
Why should I add this embarrassment to my sea of shame? Why should we all decide we are inadequate in this way? It’s wrong! It doesn’t make sense!
It’s an instance of patriarchy at work, and it sucks. I don’t quarrel with women taking any approach towards their bodies they want to take, but the idea that we should all suddenly be struck with the shame stick about it – that’s ridiculous.
And in addition to making me angry, this kind of realization also makes me feel kind of good. Because in a life of shame, this one instance, where you suddenly run straight against a stricture that wasn’t there before, lets you get outside the shame. It’s a moment when the seams of social control are showing. And it’s a way to fight it.
Now, I’m no stranger to shame. The element I swim in is shame. I know shame as the first, the foundational experience of being: I am I…and I am wrong. And yet there have been a few times in my life in which I have suddenly realized that I was not ashamed of something that everyone else had, by consensus, decided was shameful.
And the curious thing about that experience is that the kind of embarrassment I feel resulting from it is qualitatively different from my normal, foundational shame. It’s not nearly as powerful. It makes me angry. I recognize it as a constructed thing, one I can choose to bow to, but one I don’t have to obey. A few examples:
I am in the class play in fifth grade. We are all getting ready for the play and changing into our costumes, the boys in one classroom, the girls in another. Once the boys leave, I simply take off my shirt to begin putting my costume on. Melanie, next to me, is aghast. “Whoa!” she says. “You just whipped that thing off! Everyone! She’s not shy! She’s just going to get undressed right in front of everyone!”
Now the thing was, I was shy. I simply didn’t realize that some magical barrier had been crossed wherein you were suddenly supposed to be embarrassed about showing your body in front of other girls. I was ten. At nine, at eight, little girls were supposed to be no-nonsense about these things. You just did what you had to do regarding your clothes. But suddenly that had changed. None of us had hit puberty yet, so it wasn’t that. It was a social barrier that I simply hadn’t realized was there until – Wham! – I ran straight up against it.
When Melanie called me out, I immediately began crouching down to change the rest of my clothes. She made fun of me – “Why are you hiding now?” – but even at the time I knew that it was her problem, not mine. I hadn’t liked being called out in front of all the other girls, but I knew, really, that there was nothing weird about changing into your costume for the school play in front of the other girls when it came to be changing-into-your-costume time.
Incidentally, Melanie was not normally mean at all. Although she was a well-liked person, she wasn’t one of the queen bees, nor was she a bully. I think I simply made her uncomfortable. Years later, she came out as a lesbian. This memory may have nothing at all to do with that, but I wonder if perhaps at around that time she might have been realizing that she herself was “different,” as so many queer people do at that time in life, and if perhaps that was a small part of her discomfort. Or maybe her parents had taught her to be ashamed of changing in front of people. Who knows?
What’s interesting about the memory is that, unlike most of the memories I have of embarrassing myself, it doesn’t bring with it a rush of queasy self-hatred and pain. It’s a memory I can look at dispassionately, with some sadness and some humour.
I’m in tenth grade biology class. The teacher, Mr M., is talking about genetics. He’s explaining one-gene traits – things that are phenotypically different on people based on Mendelian inheritance. One of these is having attached earlobes, so he first has everyone check themselves and their neighbours: attached earlobes are dominant, detached are recessive, so you know if you have detached earlobes that both of your parents must have the gene.Another of these traits is having hair on your fingers and toes. Now, having hair is the dominant trait – if even one of your parents has the gene for hair, you will have it. Because of that, it predominates. Mr. M. asks the class, “So, who has this trait?” I raise my hand – perhaps quite quickly, since I’m excited by the lesson – and in the split second after I raise it, I realize I am the only girl who has done so. Even among the boys, only one or two confident tricksters have their hands laconically raised.
A nervous snicker goes around the classroom. I realize immediately that I have made a mistake. I was supposed to be ashamed of having small hairs on my fingers and toes, but I simply didn’t realize it.
Now here’s the thing. I already know, from the lesson -- everybody knows from the lesson – that the majority of people in the classroom will have small hairs on their fingers and toes. It’s a dominant trait. And yet, the rest of the girls and most of the boys have learned, by conspiracy, it seems, that they have to be ashamed of this hair. It is not to be admitted. It is unfeminine. It is embarrassing.
Of course I was embarrassed. That’s one reason I remember the incident. But I was also angry, even right then. Normally, if I had been shamed in front of my classmates, something that had happened many times, I would have reacted with overwhelming fear and self-loathing. I would have wanted to run through the wall. I would have imagined doing desperate harm to myself.
But this time, somehow, I knew that their reaction was simply so unreasonable. I was sixteen years old. I shaved my legs and my armpits on a daily basis, something that I have since realized I will likely do every single day of the rest of my life (also unreasonable, but a topic for another time). I was deeply ashamed of the fine hairs on my upper lip that I didn’t know how to control. I knew that there were areas in which women had to control their body hair.
But on my toes? The few hairs on my goddamn toes? This everyone else was conspiring to hide? It was just silly! You can barely even see the things unless you look close. And then there was the fact that everyone was lying about it. Everyone knew women shaved their legs. It’s not like we were all pretending that we didn’t have hair there. But when it came to Mr M., asking in the course of the lesson, for a group of sixteen-year-olds to admit to a completely inconsequential, vastly prevalent evolutionary holdover, none of them but me did so.
This is the most recent experience, the one that got me thinking about this topic again this morning: I was twenty-four or so before I realized that all women were supposed to shave all or part of their pubic hair. (Sorry, I know this is kind of TMI. So be it.)This is a realization born of the internet. Of course I was aware of “bikini waxes,” and while I didn’t necessarily know what a Brazilian wax entailed, I knew it was a thing. And I knew that before wearing said bikinis, many women might make sure the area around them was shorn. I knew all this.
What I didn’t know was that every woman was now supposed to do these things – and that she was supposed to do them all the time, not just at the beach. I remember it vividly, the realization that most women had been doing daily maintenance on these areas every day for years. Here I was, an adult woman who’d had sex with a number of people, and all along my pubic area had been weird, a statement of political beliefs, unkempt.
“Of course, I keep the area tidy,” all these women were commenting on blog posts about the subject, and I thought “What does that mean?! I had no idea it was untidy!” Because I didn’t much wear bikinis, and I didn’t much pose nude, and I didn’t much worry about stray hairs creeping out from under my clothes, I didn’t think I had to do anything with it at all. That was just how it was.
And the other thing was that no one had commented. People had been seeing my naked body for years, and no one had told me I was weird or out of step with the mainstream. None of the people I’d slept with had expressed surprise, even silently.
All of which led me to think “bullshit!” Bullshit to the immense and uncomfortable extra work it requires. Bullshit to the huge extra expense of getting professional waxing every three weeks. (According to my calculations, that’s a whopping $867 extra dollars a woman who regularly sees a waxer pays every single year.) Bullshit to the idea that there is anything untidy, unkempt, or dirty about this area in its natural state. And most of all bullshit to the idea that everyone does this
It’s been a few years now, and I still can’t believe that overnight this has really become a thing that every woman does. I simply can’t believe it. I know it wasn’t that prevalent when I was a teenager or when I was in college. I saw other women naked during those times and while I certainly wasn’t staring in a place like a high school locker room, as keyed in as a young teenager is to her body being weird, I think I would have noticed if I was significantly out of step with the mainstream.
I can’t believe that in a matter of four or five years this went from one option among many to something you’d be weird not to do. I think people are exaggerating. And I think that there must be lots and lots of women who, like me, were hit with the realization that they didn’t realize they were supposed to be embarrassed about it, and simply never speak up when these discussions arise – either that or they pretend they were always part of the “tidy” crowd. And it’s bullshit. And it makes me angry.
Why should I add this embarrassment to my sea of shame? Why should we all decide we are inadequate in this way? It’s wrong! It doesn’t make sense!
It’s an instance of patriarchy at work, and it sucks. I don’t quarrel with women taking any approach towards their bodies they want to take, but the idea that we should all suddenly be struck with the shame stick about it – that’s ridiculous.
And in addition to making me angry, this kind of realization also makes me feel kind of good. Because in a life of shame, this one instance, where you suddenly run straight against a stricture that wasn’t there before, lets you get outside the shame. It’s a moment when the seams of social control are showing. And it’s a way to fight it.
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