Fight Like A Girl Read online

  Caring about the omnipresent male gaze though, the one that dictates which people in society get to be seen and heard and made real, living flesh, and which have to contend with being dehumanised on a daily basis? Yeah, I care about that a lot.

  And this is something the calm-your-farmers-we-love-you-just-the-way-you-are gang of dudebros will never understand, because while patriarchy subjects them to a lot of toxic bullshit, it will never teach them as a rule from an early age that having a modicum of fat on their bellies means they are less than a piece of shit on the bottom of some guy’s shoe.

  Think about Margaret Cho, who recounted the following in the must-watch documentary Miss Representation. In the 1990s she created a ground-breaking show called All American Girl featuring an Asian American family with a Valley Girl daughter. It was cancelled by the network after just one season because they said she got too fat. They then replaced it with The Drew Carey Show, a sitcom about a fat man who dates skinny women and whose nemesis at work is a fat woman who wears actual clown makeup. Even the sets were imported from Cho’s show.

  But relax, ladies, it’s all good! Don’t stress, yo. You girls are the ones creating this problem! Girls are their own worst enemies! Chill! We love you just the way you are.

  Fuck off. Because this leads to the second part of the problem, which is that most men who claim to have a broad diversity policy when it comes to dating are gigantic liars. The men who’ll skulk around the comments section of the Daily Mail claiming to love ‘real women’ with ‘meat on their bones’ are the same men who get out their red markers and draw figurative crosses over all the things wrong with Lily Allen’s body as she tries to do a Saturday shop at the supermarket. They’re the same blokes who bleat about how fat women shouldn’t be allowed to wear nice clothes because it ‘promotes obesity’, as if the prospect of a fat woman existing for one minute without thoroughly despising herself isn’t just intolerable, but also dangerous.

  To me, it seems perfectly obvious that the real enemy is the benign permission we give to society to own women’s bodies. We have been allowing culture to tell us for so long what our worth is that we barely even blink anymore. Instead, we apply all these bandaids to the problem and hope that it will go away of its own accord. We tell women that it’s brave to go make-up free, and that to document this Important Act of Bravery they should take a selfie and show the world how brave they are. Look at me, world! See how brave I am? I’m not wearing make-up! LOVE ME! #brave

  Awareness of these different beauty ideals (if not actual understanding) leads a lot of well-meaning people to mourn for a time in which women were supposedly praised for their plumpness rather than vilified for it. Marilyn was a size 16! they remind us, posting twee memes (or twemes, as I call them) of the decidedly not-size-16 Monroe alongside messages like: Before anorexia and implants, there was something called SEXY.

  But as Mel Campbell, author of the must-read Out of Shape: Debunking Myths about Fashion and Fit, once told me, ‘Breast implant surgery has been practised since the late nineteenth century and clinical anorexia nervosa, which has been described since medieval times, got its name in 1873. “Sexy” has always existed but has been expressed in different ways in different eras and societies.’ As Campbell says, we shouldn’t need to retreat into an ‘illusory, imagined past’ in order to express the frustrations we feel with objectification in the present.

  It’s frustrating that women are forced to waste precious time and resources staging rebellions over how much space (both physical and visual) our bodies are entitled to take up. Even though we weren’t party to the negotiations of that social contract, we’re still expected to adhere to them. Because of this, it’s a defiantly political act any time women brazenly flout these unwritten rules.

  Obviously, the day will come when we’ll be able to select an outfit on a screen and then stand inside a 3D imaging/printer capsule and have it directly crafted onto our bodies. Having a high crack won’t matter as much then, because technology will allow for waistbands to mould perfectly against a sway back. This may occur at the same time or slightly before robots rise up to take over the planet and enslave humanity – but at least we’ll feel good as we’re burned to a crisp by shape-shifting humanoids and their perfectly formed laser beam eyes.

  –

  4 –

  LIKE A VIRGIN

  I must admit, when I climbed aboard my bathtub that afternoon I had no idea of the magical mystery tour it was about to take me on.

  Although I had casually rubbed up against it before, it was in more of an accidentally-on-purpose kind of way. You know. Like, ‘Whoops! It seems I have carefully slipped over while stepping out of the shower and my legs have found their way on either side of the rim of this tub and it’s obviously a bit of a shock so I’d better just hover here for a moment and use my thigh muscles to closely grip onto the ceramic so that my core can have a moment to stabilise while I very gently bob up and down!’

  I was a roly-poly child not given to regular exercise, but I suppose this was at least a kind of yoga.

  My affected clumsiness in the bathroom was the natural evolution of a childhood spent fascinated by sex and the feelings it was supposed to provoke. My mother was the kind of person who insisted on referring to genitals by their medical names instead of in euphemisms like hoo-hoo or winkle or the God-awful wee-wee. (Unfortunately, I was also certain that everyone saying the word ‘vagina’ had a speech impediment, and that it was actually pronounced ‘pagina’. I still think this is a very lovely name for it, calling to mind a kind of warm, snuggly pair of thermals made available to a willing and consensual suitor to wrap themselves up in.) Pagina or not, I knew that there were certain things that created funny, good kind of feelings somewhere in the region of my lower tummy. Exactly why and how it felt good was a little hard to describe, but it reminded me of things I liked – ice-cream, for example, or swimming on a hot summer’s day.

  But my knowledge was patchy, limited only to knowing how babies were made. When I was five, my mother dragged out a ream of butcher paper after dinner one night and drew in minute detail the journey of the sperm from penis to egg. (It was one of many strange and serious lessons she would impart about life, including the forced annual screenings of a a doe-eyed Nicole Kidman in Bangkok Hilton so we could understand the consequences of accepting gifts from handsome strangers met in Asia. Spoiler: You always end up in jail.)

  I remember my mother nudging the point of a pen just slightly onto the paper so that it made the tiniest mark. ‘There!’ she declared triumphantly. ‘The egg is even tinier than that!’ My brother and sister and I gazed at the mark, sheer wonder at life’s design momentarily wrestling our attention away from wondering whether or not there would be a post-dinner pudding option.

  The microscopic size of a human egg was easily the most accurate fact I had to hand, despite my efforts to secure more information. When I went off to boarding school at eight, my attempts were further confused by other children. One day, I heard a grade five boy talking about condoms with one of the junior housemasters.

  ‘What’s a condom?’ I asked.

  The boy flicked a knowing glance at the housemaster. It was a look that said, ‘Ugh . . . children.’

  ‘It’s a rubber ring that you you put around your dick to stop girls getting pregnant,’ he explained confidently.

  Of course I had no idea that my schoolmate was as ignorant as I was, and had somehow mistaken a prophylactic for a cock ring. Indeed, I would think of it as such for years to come – which probably explains the two abortions. (It’s okay, you’re allowed to laugh at that.)

  I recall another time, when I was around nine, suddenly blurting out at the dinner table, ‘What’s oral sex?’

  My parents exchanged an uncomfortable look.

  ‘Er . . .’ my father hedged. ‘It’s when you talk about it.’

  ‘Oh!’ I replied again, once more illuminated by the wrong information but feeling older and wiser anyway. Year
s later, I would reflect on how lucky it was for my parents that I hadn’t gone to school the next day and answered any questions about what I’d done the night before with an enthusiastic, ‘My family and I ate spaghetti Bolognese and then we had oral sex around the table!’ This may have been the eighties, when you could eat vegetables that had been chopped on the same board as raw chicken, but there was still some semblance of child protection.

  Despite my questions, I still knew nothing about what sex really entailed. But the romantic movies and badly lit thrillers that my family regularly brought home from the video store and to which I had unfettered access due to a lack of any real parental supervision taught me that it was either called ‘fucking’ or ‘making love’.

  The former was done in a frenzy of breathless passion, mostly up against a wall and either between enemies or co-workers. It typically lasted around thirty seconds and, if the mutual squeals and carefully choreographed moans were anything to go by, everyone always had a very good time.

  The latter was a more sedate affair. The women wore satin nightgowns (or ‘teddies’, as I’d heard them called) and lots of rouge, while the men moved slowly above them. There were always lots of long, lingering looks and closed-mouth kissing.

  Making love didn’t seem as appealing to me as fucking, but it was still better than nothing. I eagerly recreated everything I’d learned upstairs with my Barbies, my door firmly shut against what I was sure would be disgust and disappointment if anyone was to happen upon the seedy evidence of my childhood sexual desire. In secrecy, I dressed Ken and Barbie up for their date, made them flirt awkwardly for a few minutes and then stripped their clothes off and frantically humped Ken against Barbie’s crotch with wild abandon. It wasn’t that different from Tinder, when you think about it.

  When I needed something a bit more risqué than my adventures with Barbie and Ken, I’d pull down the typewriter in the study and write notes to myself.

  Dear Ms Smith, they would say. I’m coming over to your house tonight to fuck you. Love from your boss.

  In these fantasies of illegal workplace sexual harassment, I played both boss and secretary. Just typing the word ‘fuck’ made my belly flip-flop. When I put the final full stop on the page, pulsing from the erotic dirtiness of the whole thing, I’d rip the paper from the typewriter, gaze at it for a few seconds and then tear it up into tiny pieces, making sure to carefully slice through any incriminating words.

  The excitement this activity aroused in me was mingled with guilt and shame. As much as it turned me on to play sex games with myself, I was terrified that people (read: my parents) would find out. I was sure that my perversions were written all over me, and that one would only need to look close enough to see it. I began to turn my head away during innocent kissing scenes in movies, feigning disgust so that my family wouldn’t know that I was a closet sex fiend. When a boy at school asked me a few years later if I masturbated, I replied pompously, ‘Well, I have heard that masturbating is when women put their fingers inside themselves and I most certainly DO NOT do that!’ He nodded approvingly. Women weren’t supposed to touch themselves. It was disgusting and embarrassing.

  And then . . . the bathtub.

  My yoga sessions had been growing more frequent. I had taken to acting out girl-on-top, bobbing up and down on the ceramic rim and leaning forward to kiss the wall in front of me. I assumed this was what sex was like. Something warm and relaxing, the way a cat must feel to get its tummy stroked. On this particular day though, the pussy rub was fated to turn out quite differently. As my rhythm grew more furious, a hot feeling began to spread throughout my . . . area . . . My heartbeat began to quicken until it was racing. My cheeks grew flushed. My thighs started to shake, the pressure of holding a squat both adding to my excitement while making me weaker. So taken was I by the sensations that I even had to stop kissing the wall.

  Suddenly, an explosion! My stomach dropped out from beneath me, and what felt like an electric shock ran up between my legs and back down again. I felt like the deepest, most secret part of me had erupted in a dazzling fireworks display.

  What I haven’t told you yet is that as a child I was a hypochondriac. Every twinge of pain heralded cancer. Blurry vision was the onset of blindness. Terminal illness lurked around every corner. So my enjoyment of my very first orgasm was hampered somewhat by the fact that I was convinced I was having a stroke. My thighs suddenly re-energised from the adrenaline, I leaped from the bathtub and whipped around to stare at it accusingly. WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME? I screamed silently.

  This was what happened to dirty girls.

  If only I had kept my perversions in check! If I survived, I promised myself and God and whoever else might be listening that I would never touch myself again.

  As you’ve probably gathered, I did survive. My stroke symptoms disappeared as the after-effects of my climax subsided, and I soon realised what it was that had actually happened. Still, I kept my promise to keep my hands firmly where the good Lord could see them . . . for about two days. Now that I’d discovered this marvellous secret, I couldn’t stay away. This was better than ice-cream and swimming.

  Rhonda, it was better than ‘Dancing Queen’.

  Now, I do it everywhere – in the shower, in aeroplane toilets when I’m bored, sometimes in the car for a real thrill ride. I do it on the couch when I’m procrastinating with work. My friend Ben calls this ‘procasturbation’. I have honed it to a fine art – I’ve got so good at it that I can rub one out in fifty-nine seconds or less. I am so passionate about the importance of self-love that some friends call me a masturbation evangelist. I’m so good at it that sometimes I orgasm accidentally without even touching myself. Reading porny stories or watching pornier videos can be enough to get me off. Once, I came in a gym class while doing push-ups on an exercise ball. The instructor had us rolling in and out and engaging our cores, and what can I say? I just have a really good core, I guess. I realised I was about ten seconds away from ‘arriving’ when she told us to take our balls and use them to squat against a wall. Well, you’re not going to throw something like that away, so I had to feign great interest in checking that my alignment was okay and that I was ‘doing the exercise properly’.

  Trust me, that is definitely the proper way to exercise.

  Look, masturbating is awesome. And it makes sex awesome! I truly believe that discovering the abilities of my body at such a young age has led to an easier experience with sex in general. Pleasure has always been within easy reach, and I’ve been able to communicate to partners exactly what floats my boat. I’ve always been bothered by the narrative that holds it’s the responsibility of someone else to ‘give’ a woman an orgasm. No! How can you expect someone else to invest that kind of time in you when you don’t even want to do it yourself?

  I’m speculating here, and I don’t think I need to point out that I’m not an expert in anything other than my own clitoris and Buffy the Vampire Slayer – two concepts that are brought together far more often than you’d think – but it’s always seemed to me that the reason some women find it difficult to come is precisely because they didn’t accidentally stumble onto their own pleasure at a young age. If you don’t know how to jerk off, it can take a long time to ‘get there’. The bonus of starting young is that usually you aren’t sure of what to expect. You can take your time and go the long way round, and when you finally reach your destination it comes as a nice surprise – one you’re eager to keep revisiting and figuring out shorter and shorter paths to.

  I’m alarmed at the number of women I’ve met over the years who’ve told me they don’t mazz because they get bored or because it doesn’t work. They give up after twenty minutes and decide that it’s not for them. Trust me – masturbating is for everybody. But you wouldn’t think that given how uncomfortable many folks still seem to be with the thought of women venturing into the basement and having a good rummage around. Obnoxious magazine articles berate women’s partners (who are always assumed to be m
en) for not being able to get them off, while jokes still persist about how rubbish men are at figuring out how to find a clitoris.

  If you know how to get yourself off, you don’t need anyone else to do it for you. Any expertise they bring to the table is just a nice bonus.

  It’s concerning that pleasure, and the pursuit of it, remains so absent from youth education programs. To the uninitiated, orgasms can be a perplexing and unpleasantly overwhelming experience. I’ve met women who, even as adults, have talked themselves out of climaxing because they find the feeling too intense and anxiety-inducing. When pleasure isn’t taught as a key component of sexual engagement and intercourse (particularly for girls and particularly in hetero contexts), female participation is reinforced as something passive and secondary to the male role.