Final Draft: I Won't Play Girl To Your Boy No More

I WON’T PLAY GIRL TO YOUR BOY NO MORE.
Growing up is not an easy thing to do. Growing up in a society that constantly pressures everyone to look a certain way is even harder. According to the Eating Disorder Foundation, in the United states alone four out of five women are dissatisfied with their bodies (About Eating Disorders). In my journey from girl to woman, I have struggled to find identity in anything other than the way that I look. In this paper I will explore my individuality and how it has been shaped with my struggle to overcome an eating disorder in three parts: my life before puberty, during puberty, and post puberty. I will do this by exploring the struggles, events, and people who have helped shape me into the strong, feminist woman I am today.

BEFORE PUBERTY

I don't remember exactly when I realized that I wanted to be the thinnest girl in the 5th grade, but I do remember when I realized that I wasn't the beautiful girl my parents kept telling me I was. I was the first girl in the third grade to get armpit hair, as well as distinct leg hair, a uni-brow, and mustache. I was hairier than most of the boys in my class for years. I remember the long bus rides with the prettiest girl in school, and how she would make fun of me and get the boys to laugh at me. I was bullied by the girls in school and ostracized by them. When I moved schools for fourth grade I found safety in becoming friends with the boys because if I pretended to be a tomboy they couldn't make fun of me for not being pretty.

I settled into my tom-boy roll because I felt safe there. I assumed this is how I would always be; dressed in baggy shorts, shirt and boys tennis shoes. By fifth grade, all of my begging to finally shave my legs paid off and my mother gave me a full seminar on how to safely remove the shag carpet from my string bean legs. That was before she got leukemia and passed away the next spring. This is when everything changed.

After my mother passed away, my life was totally out of control. I was unable to control anything other than what I was eating. The pressure to be popular and beautiful was coming from all sides. I was still friends with the boys, but they had changed too. They were constantly talking about boobs, butts, and all the pretty girls they dreamed of being with. None of these girls were me. I remember sitting quietly with them at recess hating myself for not being in the elite circle of dream girls. It is somewhere in this area that I think I decided that if I couldn't be the prettiest, I could at least be the thinnest. This mindset mixed with the loss of my mother and all control of my young life led to a dangerous combination for eleven year old me.

    I began restricting my food intake to a few crackers at lunch and whatever was served at dinner. I faked eating breakfast by preparing oatmeal and flushing it down the toilet before my dad woke up for work. I was still dressing in baggy clothes, but now it was to hide what I thought to be fat. I obsessed over what I looked like in the mirror. I remember not worrying much about what my face looked like because I associated thinness with beauty. The first woman I remember seeing that created this link for me was Keira Knightley. My best friend and I were obsessed with the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, and every time we watched them, I became more and more aware of how thin and beautiful the actress was. To this day I can’t watch
movies with her in them. My parents eventually caught on as I had dropped to 56 pounds, and put me in therapy.

    This period of my life was defined by chaos and what some may call a right of passage for young women in which they learn to be unsatisfied with their bodies. The death of my mother may have been the catalyst to my problems with control and eating, but it forced me to become mature very quickly. This maturity has helped me become a very independent and understanding individual. I believe the struggle that I’ve had early in my life have made me empathetic towards others. My prepubescent years helped make me strong for puberty and everything that comes with it.

PUBERTY

I hit real girl puberty at thirteen, but I was running cross country so my body didn’t develop into what someone would consider a “woman” for a while. My eating issues subsided for a long time until I quit running at age seventeen due to being overwhelmed and depressed. This is when my body finally developed and I was having none of it. It was terrifying to go from an easy 110 to 120. I had waited my whole life for this moment and now that it was happening I wanted nothing more than my string-bean body from the fifth grade. I think this says something interesting about how girls are raised to feel about their bodies. We are told young that we are not allowed to stay flat chested and child like or a man will never find us attractive, but once we develop it never seems to be in the right way. I began comparing myself to women such as Megan Fox and other women who were known for their extreme sex appeal, because in high-school sex appeal seemed to be the way to get male attention. Making comparisons to women like this is unhealthy because a study of the models in Playboy found that at least a quarter of them met the criteria for anorexia (About Eating Disorders). In comparing myself to women that qualified for anorexia, I felt that I also needed to be anorexic to be sexually appealing. I remember talking to my step-mom about my weight gain and her unhappiness over my unhappiness with my new breasts and hips. I explained to her that I didn’t think it would feel like this; that it wasn’t what I expected. I hadn’t bloomed into the perfect, thin waisted, big breasted, perfect assed woman I so desperately felt I needed to be.

Fall of my senior year brought all of my issues related to mental health and eating to a head. I was hospitalized for depression for a week, given anti-depression medication and referred to a therapist who specialized in working with teens. I met with her until graduation  and once again felt equipped to begin the new chapter of my life free of my eating disorder and depression. This period of my life taught me how to be far more level headed and open when it comes to the issues surrounding my body and mental health.

POST-PUBERTY

By the time I reached college I thought had I had left my eating disorder behind, and I would finally be able to flourish and become the woman I was meant to be. I began performing stand up and improv weekly, and making tons of new friends on campus. Everything was going well until my family moved from Ohio to Florida; this threw my life back out of control. I had chosen Ohio University to be close to them and now they were leaving me. At this time I also began dating a boy named Kyle. Kyle was the epitome of a misogynist. He would discuss the pornography he watched, compare me to flawless celebrities and talk very openly about the women he wanted to sleep with that were not me. I began to feel constantly ugly and imperfect because I was not enough for him. He was selfish and very emotionally abusive. We were together for the entirety of my freshman year, and in that year I began restricting my food intake again. My family’s big move and this relationship undid all the progress I had made on my self-confidence and for a while my individuality was defined by depression, anxiety, and overall unhappiness. When we broke up, it took me a while to understand that I was not the one with the problem, he was.

    We broke up while I was in Washington, DC for an internship. I remember crying and waking up the next day feeling totally relieved that I didn’t have to deal with him anymore; it was one of the best days of my life. However, the mental damage he left me with has lasted through almost all of college; there is still a voice in the back of my head that tells me I am not attractive enough for the boy I am dating now. I have learned how to attack those feelings with music.

    The night Kyle and I broke up, my uncle sat me down and taught me to play drums. This moment changed my life because it showed me how insignificant the relationship had been in comparison to learning to play the drums. Over the summer, I would practice for five hours at a time learning my favorite songs. Later that summer, my uncle gave me Bikini Kill’s first album, Pussy Whipped. This was how I discovered feminism. I had never identified as a feminist before because I never really felt angry with men, but after listening to Kathleen Hannah sing about unrealistic expectations that society and men place on women, I was angry too. In one of Bikini Kill song Kathleen screams, “I'm a self fulfilling porno queen yeah I mimic out your every fucking fantasy yeah yeah And now, And now, Here is my head I'm on my knees Oh baby! Why can't I ever get my Sugar?” (Bikini Kill, 1993). This song made me understand that I should be in control of my body rather than a stupid boy or a stupid societal definition of what my body should be; I realized that I was allowed to love my body. After hearing these lyrics and many like them, I slowly realized that my identity was not at all based on what Kyle or the boys I hung out with in school, or my dad told me I needed to be.  I was not the one with the problems just because I looked like a normal person, and this allowed me to slowly identify a feminist fighting against my eating disorder rather than letting it, or any man run my life.

    I returned from my internship with new confidence, but my families move was still causing me some problems. During the fall of my sophomore year, I began making myself throw-up when I felt out of control. When I visited my family, the stress was so great that I stopped eating and lost close to ten pounds. Fortunately, this time around I had much more support than I did my freshman year. I began dating a sweet boy in the fall named Matt who has supported me through all of my fighting against this disorder. I was also able to talk more openly with my parents about the confidence issues I was having. This support system made me stronger against the eating disorder and all of the negative thoughts in my head. I have struggled to overcome throwing up and restricting my eating, but in the spring of my junior year, I am stronger than I have ever been.

    I began therapy again in the fall of my junior year to help deal with depression, anxiety, and my eating issues. I was prescribed an anti-anxiety medication which has helped immensely with my constant worry and harmful obsessions. Therapy and medication have helped clear my head of negative thoughts and made room for confidence and positivity. I perform improv once a week, and two years ago I was too terrified to go out on stage. Now I love going out and performing to make people laugh; I feel so confident in my performing ability. My boyfriend and I play music together regularly, and have even organized a few shows where I have played drums and sang in front of a large group of people.One of the largest influences of my new found confidence has been female musicians. Bikini Kill introduced me to feminism through music, and from there I couldn’t be stopped. I discovered Sleater-Kinney, Bratmobile, Patti Smith, PJ Harvey, Le Tigre, and so many more. These women showed me that you can be influential and important without being a super-model. These women are gorgeous in their own ways because they are doing what they love for themselves and for others that have been victims of the patriarchy. I had the chance to see Sleater-Kinney over spring break and began crying as soon as they walked on stage because I was so overwhelmed by finally seeing an all female band in a sold-out venue. When they performed one of their most popular songs, “Modern Girl”, Carrie Brownstein belted out the lyrics “HUNGER MAKES ME A MODERN GIRL” (Sleater-Kinney, 2005). These lyrics resonated with me because to me they mean that being hungry and eating is normal and more than okay; I always remember this moment when I panic about eating. These women have given me the power to become confident in who I am as a person, not as a body. Surrounding myself with strong female influences has also allowed me to understand that my body is not here for the pleasure of a man, but for my own devices. My body and who I am are my own, and I am in charge of how I look and how I function. Becoming a feminist has allowed me to become far more passionate about what will make life easier for women, rather than what will make my female form more attractive to a man. I now do what I want for me, and no one else.

    The past ten years of my life have been hectic and all over the place, but since discovering feminism, female musicians and surrounding myself with those who respect me as a human being, I have begun to fight back against my eating disorder. All of these events have helped me become a stronger individual who stands up for myself and for what I believe in. Everything from being bullied by girls on the playground, to losing my mother, to dealing with an eating disorder for over half of my life has made me a fighter. My eating is still a daily issue, but I am now able to fight against it and control it with the help of my friends and the women in bands I look up too. Through my journey from girl to woman, I have become a bold musician, comedian, and overall a proud feminist.

Works Cited

"About Eating Disorders." The Eating Disorder Foundation. N.p., 2013. Web. 27 Apr. 2015.

Brownstein, Carrie, and Corrin Tucker. Modern Girl. Perf. Janet Weiss. Sleater Kinney. David         Fridmann, 2005. MP3.

Hannah, Kathleen. Perf. Billy Karren, Tobi Vail, and Kathi Wilcox. Sugar. Bikini Kill. Stuart Hallerman, 1993. CD.